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I think the fundamental problem though is that there are plenty of areas in biology where this breaks down on a practical level. The problem is actually a nomo

I think the fundamental problem though is that there are plenty of areas in biology where this breaks down on a practical level. The problem is actually a nomological problem, which deals with the limits of ontologies. Do "species" exist as such? Or are the limits which we place on them projected by us? Obviously a bat is not a dolphin, but where do you draw the line between species and subspecies, between one species and another closely related one, or between one genus and another closely related one? These turn out to be remarkably tricky questions which is why Linnean classification is not as stable as we would like to believe..... It mostly works, but only to some extent, which is the problem.

mattfenwick 13y ago
And with the limits not only of ontologies, but of models in general. All models are wrong. Some are useful. As you pointed out, there is no such thing as a species in the real world -- it's just in the model that there's a species. The model has been so successful that, unfortunately, it's treated as "true" by many people, which means that 1) they don't understand its limitations, and 2) they don't work to improve it. +1, I'm glad you mentioned this.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  The example that comes to my mind is Rosa gallica vs Rosa alba vs. Rosa damascena. Trying to understand why these are species rather than subspecies, given the ease of interbreeding (over many generations and hundreds of years), leads to very big headaches.