4 ms·

If I understand you correctly, biological taxonomy, a thing we've had for hundreds of years, and over which huge intellectual battles have been fought, is basic

If I understand you correctly, biological taxonomy, a thing we've had for hundreds of years, and over which huge intellectual battles have been fought, is basically all about making scientists happy, and has little to do with the actual reality of a vast population of living things that is constantly changing over time. Because, if I did understand you correctly, I completely agree with that.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Not entirely, though there's a fair element of that. With gene sequencing and techniques such as molecular clocks we can determine evolutionary trees and the approximate time between mutations. This gives us a fairly clear understanding of what current species are placed where on the evolutionary tree --- where you draw the boundaries still has some ambiguity, but it's usually possible to at least say which of two specific samples is closer to or further from a third. We've also realised that genetic inheritance and transfer is not strictly along descendent lineages --- there's swapping of genetic material, espeically between living organisms and viruses, as well as amongst complex organisms and bacteria. Your mitochondria --- common to nearly all eukaruyotes --- is itself an entirely distinct organism which has become entirely symbiotic with you. So there's nearer and further, and indirect inheritance. But there remains a great deal of cases --- remember, 99.9% of all life forms on Earth have gone extinct --- where we simply do not know. Or where knowledge isn't sufficient to make a clear or unambiguous distinction or classification. Jainism has the concept of Anekantavada, "many-sidedness", exemplified in the fable of the blind men and the elephant. It's useful to recognise that our perceptions are arbitrary --- they're dependent on both the particular subset of reality we're observing, as well as the limited channels through which we're making that observation, and the conceptual frames by which we organise it. That said, many sidedness is not any sidedness --- all interpretations are not equivalently valid. That's the gist of a utility model of epistemology: usefulness is context-dependent, but also exists on a spectrum, from high usefulness (greater truth value) to low (likewise). Arbitrary is not indifferent. Mind as is usually the case I'm speaking of an area in which I have largely lay knowledge, though I think I'm not going too badly astray.
3np 5y ago
I also read it as utility an usefulness in a more practical sense. It's useful to differentiate between horses and donkeys, so we call them different species.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Other cases might be the various organisms we classify as "trees" or "fish" or "crabs", which are valid from a functional or role-based sense, but which aren't robust when considered strictly based on genetic evolution. That is, there have been multiple convertent evolutionary paths which have arrived at similar forms, roles, and niches, despite having hearer relatives or ancestors which don't fall into that category.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  Well, we have names for that: "horse" and "donkey". I get that having formal names is useful, and basing those names on ancestral characteristics seems sensible. But it doesn't seem to take into account that this is a moving target: everything is evolving, and populations are not going to stay the same over time. Trying to classify every living thing into neat categories is like herding a million very slow cats. Especially with palaeontology, where the timespans are large enough for evolution to really matter.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Not entirely, though there's a fair element of that. With gene sequencing and techniques such as molecular clocks we can determine evolutionary trees and the approximate time between mutations. This gives us a fairly clear understanding of what current species are placed where on the evolutionary tree --- where you draw the boundaries still has some ambiguity, but it's usually possible to at least say which of two specific samples is closer to or further from a third. We've also realised that genetic inheritance and transfer is not strictly along descendent lineages --- there's swapping of genetic material, espeically between living organisms and viruses, as well as amongst complex organisms and bacteria. Your mitochondria --- common to nearly all eukaruyotes --- is itself an entirely distinct organism which has become entirely symbiotic with you. So there's nearer and further, and indirect inheritance. But there remains a great deal of cases --- remember, 99.9% of all life forms on Earth have gone extinct --- where we simply do not know. Or where knowledge isn't sufficient to make a clear or unambiguous distinction or classification. Jainism has the concept of Anekantavada, "many-sidedness", exemplified in the fable of the blind men and the elephant. It's useful to recognise that our perceptions are arbitrary --- they're dependent on both the particular subset of reality we're observing, as well as the limited channels through which we're making that observation, and the conceptual frames by which we organise it. That said, many sidedness is not any sidedness --- all interpretations are not equivalently valid. That's the gist of a utility model of epistemology: usefulness is context-dependent, but also exists on a spectrum, from high usefulness (greater truth value) to low (likewise). Arbitrary is not indifferent. Mind as is usually the case I'm speaking of an area in which I have largely lay knowledge, though I think I'm not going too badly astray.

3np 5y ago

I also read it as utility an usefulness in a more practical sense. It's useful to differentiate between horses and donkeys, so we call them different species.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Other cases might be the various organisms we classify as "trees" or "fish" or "crabs", which are valid from a functional or role-based sense, but which aren't robust when considered strictly based on genetic evolution. That is, there have been multiple convertent evolutionary paths which have arrived at similar forms, roles, and niches, despite having hearer relatives or ancestors which don't fall into that category.
marcus_holmes 5y ago
Well, we have names for that: "horse" and "donkey". I get that having formal names is useful, and basing those names on ancestral characteristics seems sensible. But it doesn't seem to take into account that this is a moving target: everything is evolving, and populations are not going to stay the same over time. Trying to classify every living thing into neat categories is like herding a million very slow cats. Especially with palaeontology, where the timespans are large enough for evolution to really matter.