Re: KT boundry event


John Harshman wrote:


All dinosaurs died out at th eend of the Cretaceous. It's really a very
simple concept.

Simple, but wrong. That depends on what a dinosaur is. Why are you
insisting so strongly that birds are not dinosaurs? What's in it for
you? "Because they aren't" won't be acceptable.

No, 'birds' are not 'dinosaurs'. 'Aves' are indeed 'Dinosauria'. The
word 'dinosaur' refers to extinct, often massive creatures, most of
which had arms or legs, not wings.

The word 'bird' refers to living or recent animals that are mostly
small and winged.

The problem is one of the use of the terms 'birds'and 'dinosaurs' as
synonyms of 'Aves' and 'Dinosauria'. They are NOT synonymous.

Ancestors of birds originated among early dinosaurs, but that is not
the same thing as saying 'birds are dinosaurs'. They are linguistically
distinct statements.

Actually, they are cladistically identical statements, and cladistic
thinking should be encouraged.

Not using colloquial language. If you want to be technical, be
technical. 'Birds' are not 'dinosaurs', even though Aves may be
Disosauria.

Why?

Because the word 'bird' is not synonymous with 'Aves',

Actually, according to your dictionary, it is.

No, it is not.

and the word
'dinosaur' is not synonymous is not synonymous with 'Dinoauria'. The
difference is all-important.

Why is it important? And why shouldn't "dinosaur" be synonymous with
"Dinosauria"?

Because they ARE not. The meanings of the words ARE different, that's
why. You have to respect the meanings of words! Humpty-Dumpty was
WRONG!

I will agree that the popular definition of "dinosaur"
doesn't include birds.

NOW you understand.

Is that all we're arguing about?


YES!!!!!

The point is
that it *should*.

But it DOESN'T. That is NOT the role of science!

"The role of science is not to clarify or modify words, but rather the
concepts to which they refer."

Who said this? The botanist Julius Sachs...

Many evolutionary biologists (including me) are
campaigning to make it so. You ran into that. But what's the problem
with making the change? It's good for you.

No, it's pernicious, and I'm here to tell you so.

Do you think it useful to say baseball is cricket? I don't! Baseball
came from cricket, or so it is believed, but it now is distinct and is
referred to by a different name.

I suggest you read Umberto Eco's book:

Kant and the Platypus

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/015601159X/sr=8-1/qid=1145547304/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1737020-1779102?%5Fencoding=UTF8

(Cladistics summed up in a sentence:
"Once a fish, always a fish.") I really don't understand why you're so
adamant on this point.

Still don't.


There are
advantages to cladistic thinking that you should definitely consider.
"Dinosaurs" as a group excluding birds is just an arbitrary collection
of species. If you include birds, though, it's a clade, a real
evolutionary entity. Including birds as dinosaurs can save you from
categorical mistakes like you indulged in at the start of this thread.

Birds are fish too, by the way. We're all fish. Just particularly weird
fish with a variety of bizarre adaptations to a terrestrial lifestyle.
If you think of it that way, evolutionary history becomes much more
compelling, in my opinion.

At some point, all such distinction arbitrary. Many find it useful to
distinguish birds from dinosuars. Distinction into classes based on
appearance is a useful feature of language, so that when I say the word
'Esquimaux' people don't think I am talking about Watusi. They picture
in their mind the dwellers of arctic regions, rather than of tropical
ones.

Same thing applies to 'polar bear' and 'tiger'.

All of which is irrelevant. Nobody says that eskimos are watusi, or that
polar bears are tigers. These are examples of disjunct groups. Birds and
dinosaurs are examples of nested groups.

Birds are current animals. Dinos are not. Some dinos were ancestors of
birds. Then birds evolved from those. That makes them different.

You seem incapable of doing anything to support your views other than
repeating them.

I'm trying to educate you about how to use English. I am not doing
science.

That much is clear. Nor, apparently, are you doing English. Your
definition is your own personal one. Nobody else uses it.



That's not what we call support around here. Not even if
you repeated them in all caps.

You seem not to understand the concept of 'anachronism'.

No, you don't. You aren't thinking clearly on this for some reason.

It's perfectly clear. The term 'bird' developed eons before the concept
of evolution or ancient species or an ancient Earth. The term 'bird' is
discursive: it refers to a collection of species having certain shared
characteristics. The supposition or fact that they are the result of
shared ancestry is absolutely irrelevant to the concept 'bird'. That
shared ancestry may be highly interesting and scientifically
investigatable, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the meaning of
the English word 'bird'.

Once more you appeal to the meaning of the English word, despite the
fact that you reject this meaning as it is commonly applied to various
extinct species. Now, common meanings can be vague; "cup" is as hard to
separate from "glass" as "bird" is from "dinosaur". So far the bottom
line seems to be that a "bird" has feathers and wings, and a "dinosaur"
in popular usage may have feathers, but never wings. Then again, the
meaning of "wing" is also unclear, because wings need not be used to
fly, and a number of theropods have what rather look like wings, or at
least as much as an ostrich's wing does.


If I hear my friend say 'I heard some birds last night' I am fairly
certain he did not mean dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are extinct, so far as we
know.

Once again, you confuse the concept of nested groups.

No, I do not. The 'dinosaurs' are extinct. All of them.

If he heard some
birds last night, he heard some birds. Tyrannosaurids aren't birds.
Birds aren't tyrannosaurids. Your problem is that you persist in
imagining that if we call birds "dinosaurs", that means that birds must
be giant, lumbering beasts.

What you say is true.

In fact many (traditional) dinosaurs were
also small, and some had wings. And saying that birds are dinosaurs
doesn't change them in any way.

The word 'bird' refers to living or recent animals. The word 'dinosaur'
refers to a different group, all of which are extinct. Whales are not
their land-dwelling predecessors. They're whales. the term 'whale'
exists precisely to refer to whales.

Dinosaurs are extinct except for one particular clade, the birds.

False. All dinosaurs are extinct.

This is true:

"Dinosauria are extinct except for one particular clade, Aves."

And
your friend meant that he heard dinosaurs whether he knew it or not.

It's impossible to mean what you don't mean. See the Sachs quote,
again.

Anyway, we are agreed that "bird" and "dinosaur" are disjunct terms in
common, popular usage, though you are wildly mistaken about the common
dividing line.

The dividinng line is the one you find in the dictionary.

Which is not the same as the one you are claiming. Under the dictionary
definition, Archaeopteryx is a bird, and there are many Mesozoic birds.

No, it is not a bird. The word 'bird' does not refer to animals that
lived before the KT boundary event. Before that, the ancestors of birds
and dinosaurs were mixed together. Afterwards, they are distinct.

I'm trying to tell you that it's useful and salutary to refer to birds
as dinosaurs.

No, it isn't. You don't understand, at all, the role of language. It's
primarily about REFERENCE, not cladistics. The word 'bird' does not
describe historical relationships, it refers to a class, objects that
are grouped conceptually by reason of their similar overall
characteristics.

The main argument here isn't over "bird", but over "dinosaur".

'Dinosauria' and 'dinosaur' do not mean the same thing. One is a
technical term used in paleontology. The other is a common term used by
laymen.

The
common conception is that they are separate, because dinosaurs are
giant, extinct beasts, and birds are little, flying, feathery things.

That's right.

This distinction becomes much harder if you look at the actual fossils,
where one grades imperceptibly into the other. The dividing line is
arbitrary, as witnessed by your disagreement with the dictionary. It's
really hard to tell where theropods ought to end and birds begin. The
problem becomes easier if we don't have to decide where theropods end,
and just worry about where birds begin. And this is the practice we
follow most everywhere else. We don't talk about "primates and mammals".

Read the Sachs quote again.


(We do, however, talk about humans and apes. Are you willing to agree
that you are an ape?)

No, I am a man. Seems simple enough.

In scientific terms, I am a member of the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens,
of the family Hominidae.

You respond "but they aren't", as if this was some
elementary statement of fact rather than a strictly arbitrary
distinction. What exactly is your stake in this?

Why do we refer to things by different words? Because it's useful. When
I tell my friends I bought a Buick, my friends know what I am referring
to. Using this clever device saves me the trouble of explaining the
history of the internal combustion engine, the organization of general
motors, and the application of paint in assembly line production.

All irrelevant. When I say I birds are dinosaurs, what is confusing you?

It's very relevant. Is a Buick a chariot?

You have not been able to defend your
idea that birds are current animals (which would seem to deny that there
can be such a thing as an extinct bird).

No, it does not exclude that.

Then what's all that about anachronism? You understand that whatever
defining characters you pick, the difference between "bird" and
"non-bird" is an arbitrary division of a continuum, right?

Of course! Now you are beginning to understand.

I'm worried that you don't.


Evolutionary
transformations are gradual. Your division seems more arbitrary than
most, especially since we can't actually tell what it is so far. Your
ideas of "toothless" and "post K/T" are mutually contradictory, for example.

Not so. That's just a rough guide to where we can begin to start using
the word 'bird'.

It's a useless guide since the two contradict each other. You don't
think that's a problem?

There is no contradiction at all.

Only because you are ignorant of the fossil record.

The fossil record has nothing to do with what the word 'bird' refers
to.

Toothless birds long
predate the K/T boundary. So if "toothless" and "post K/T" are both
criteria, there are many birds that satisfy one and not the other. Are
they birds (because toothless) or non-birds (because pre-K/T)? That's
what we call contradictory.

As for your second sentence,
nobody is daying that dinosaurs are birds, just that birds are
dinosaurs.

But that's simply false, even though Aves are part of the Dinosauria.
'Birds' are not 'Aves' and 'dinosaurs' are not 'Dinosauria'. NOW do you
understand?

I understand the difference. But why is is simply false that birds are
dinosaurs?

Because the WORDS mean different things, as can be established by
looking in the DICTIONARY.

Yes, the dictionary says that. But why are we to be bound by the
dictionary?

So that we can understand each other. Seems simple enough.

You certainly aren't, because you disagree with the
dictionary definition of "bird".

No, I don't.

By the way, the dictionary is unclear
too, because it says that dinosaurs are members of Ornithischia and
Saurischia. But birds are members of Saurischia, so by that token, they
are dinosaurs even according to the dictionary.

The definition should leave out the reference to 'Aves'. It's not
relevant.

Because the words mean different things. Cows are not sheep because we
refer to two distinct groups when we use the words 'cow' and 'sheep'.
Hell, we evenhave a word for different stages of the same organism! A
tadpole is not a frog, even though it will become one. You simply
conflate the distinctions that language has made for good reasons.

Once again, you use disjunct groups to tell me what should be the
practice for nested groups. I think this is no accident, because if you
used nested groups it would sound ridiculous even to you.

Is baseball cricket? Or did baseball evolve from cricket? We have
different names for them because they are different, even if one came
from the other. Their historical relationship is irrelevant for
reference.

Once again, you use disjunct groups to discuss nested groups. Do you
even notice this?

HUH? Cricket still exists, right? Baseball came from cricket, but is
not evolved into something else, right? The parallel is exact.

But yes, the common meaning of "bird" and "dinosaur" are disjunct.

Baseball. Cricket.

Baseball isn't descended from cricket, by the way.

OK, pretend that it is for the sake of argument. It's just an example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball.

It's
become standard among paleontologists and many who are up on this kind
of thing to change the traditional, popular meaning of "dinosaur" to
include birds, because it reveals an important truth about the natures
of these groups, doesn't cost anything, and encourages correct
understanding of how nature really works.

It's a mistake to do so, even if it true that Aves are Dinosauria.You
don't go messing with language like that!

Why? Are you some sort of fanatical prescriptivist?

No, not fanatical. See Kant and the Platypus. See the Sachs quote. Our
understanding of where birds come from does not in the least affect the
referennt of the term 'bird'. The term 'bird' evolved in English to do
a job: to refer to birds. That job has not changed one iota. What is
bird is has not changed one iota. What has changed is what we know
about the ancestors of birds.

"Simply false" seems to imply some objective standard of
difference, as if you don't understand the arbitrary nature of this
division.

The dictionary recognizes the division in quite plain language:

Bird:

"Any of the class Aves of warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered
vertebrates with forelimbs modified to form wings."

I would leave out "of the class Aves" because it's a technical
definition that adds no understanding

You understand that under this definition Microraptor gui is a bird,
though it's a dromaeosaur. Does that cause you any problems? Also, this
contradicts your defnition, since Archaeopteryx is a bird under it, and
you say it's not a bird.

Nope, Archaeopteryx is not a bird in the modern sense of 'bird'. We
need a new word to refer to it. Proto-avian sounds nice. What do you
think?

So now you don't like the dictionary. I thought the dictionary was your
friend.

Depends on which dictionary you use, doesn't it?

Dinosaur:

"Any of various extinct, often gigantic, carnivorous or herbivorous
reptiles of the orders Saurischia and Ornithischia that were chiefly
terrestrial and existed during the Mesozoic Era".

Yes, that's the standard, common understanding. People who know better
are trying to modify that understanding. Why do you have a problem with
that?

Because the referents of words should not change, even if our
understanding of what is referred to does.

Ah, so you are a prescriptivist. I'm afraid that you are trying to stem
the tide. Languages always change, despite what you or the French
Academy might prefer. There's really no way to stop it.

I quote from Julius Sachs, the botanist:

"Das Wort »Zweckmässigkeit« ängstlich zu vermeiden, wie manche
neuere Schriftsteller wollen, weil es an veraltete teleologische
Anschauungen erinnert, scheint doch des Guten zu viel; das Wort
»nützlich«, welches man dem »zweckmässig« substituirt, hat eben
auch teleologische Bedeutung in menschlichen Verhältnissen, und wenn
man alle Worte, die früher einer unrichtigen Theorie gedient haben,
über Bord werfen wollte, so würde diese Verminderung unseres
Wortschatzes gar bald eine fühlbare Verarmung der Sprache
herbeiführen; die Wissenschaft hat nicht die Worte, sondern die durch
sie bezeichneten Begriffe zu klären und zu verändern. Sollen wir aus
der Botanik etwa das Wort Wurzel entfernen, weil man früher ihm einen
ganz anderen Sinn unterlegte als jetzt?"

My translation:

"To shrink from using the word »Zweckmässigkeit« as some modern
writers are inclined to do, out of fear that it suggests outdated
teleological views, appears to be carrying a good thing too far. The
word »nützlich« which is substituted for »zweckmässig« also has a
teleological meaning in human contexts; if we were to throw overboard
every word that once served a discredited theory, such reduction of our
vocabulary would soon result in the distinct impoverishment of our
language. The role of science is not to clarify or modify words, but
rather the concepts to which they refer. Should we strike the word
'root' from botany only because we formerly attributed to it a
sense quite different than at present?"

Doesn't this argue exactly against your position?

Nope.

Do you have trouble with reading comprehension?

He's advocating
changing the meanings of words instead of abandoning them.

Nope. He's proposing that we continue to use the word
»Zweckmässigkeit« (which can be translated as 'design' or
'suitability' to refer to what we now know to be the product of
adaptation or evolution, even though the word 'design' has telological
implications which we reject.

So, we continue to us e the word 'bird' to refer to birds, even though
we know that they are decendants of 'Dinosauria'. We don't have to use
the word 'dinosaur'. The REFERENT of 'bird' does not change; what
changes is our understanding of the ancesty of birds.

Thus we
should change the meaning of "dinosaur" to fit our modern conception,
rather than abandoning it.

It never was used to refer to birds.

I'm afraid that my respect for your
comprehension skills has just taken a hit, though your German-English
translation skills seem just fine.

You have it all backwards.

Yes, some dinosaurs were ancestors of birds, just as some
mammals were ancestors of humans. You will note that you are still a
mammal nevertheless; and your parrot is still a dinosaur for the same
reasons. Are you different from a mammal?

See above.

Nothing above. You appeal to the colloquial, but you deny the colloquial
meaning of "bird", which includes Archaeopteryx.

It certainly does not include Archaeopteryx. No way in hell.

You are hoist on your own dictionary.

Proto-avian.

Find that one in the dictionary for me.

http://www.dinoruss.com/jdp/archie/dromey.htm

What would Julius Sachs say
here? Why are you abandoning "bird" for "proto-avian"?

I'm not. The word 'bird' was never intended to apply to protoavians,
because the word predates our knowledge or concept of ancient life
forms. The word 'bird' was intended to apply to what it applies to:
contemporary birds.

Nor do you explain why
it's not a good idea to include birds within dinosaurs.

Am I a fish? I am descended from fish, does that make me a fish? NO!

Yes, you are a fish. Got a problem with that?

Yes. See the quote above. "The role of science is not to clarify or
modify words, but rather the concepts to which they refer."

Exactly. I'm not modifying "fish", just the concept to which "fish"
refers.

No, you are not. The word 'man' conveys concepts quite distinct from
'fish'. Men don't have gills.

You think if it as a paraphyletic group, and I like to think of
it as a monophyletic group, which makes more evolutionary sense, and has
a definite pedagogical value.

No, it does not.

What good does it do to say
that birds are not dinosaurs? In fact, it leads to false conclusions
about anatomy, behavior, and many other features.

It certainly does not.

Back that up with anything? It has led people in the past to claim that
dinosaurs couldn't have had feathers, for example, since feathers are
unique to birds. But of course feathers are widespread in theropods.

Agreed, and perfectly irrelevant.

It's an example of someone being led to a false conclusion about anatomy
because they said that birds aren't dinosaurs. Why irrelevant?

Because they are sufficiently different to warrant separate names, and
they already have those names.

They are only sufficiently different because you are ignoring all the
intermediates.

No, I'm not. The role of language is reference, not history.

Reference is what we're talking about here. I use the words to refer to
one set of things, and you have another set. You have, however, failed
to defend your claim that they are "sufficiently different to warrant
separate names".

they have separate names ALREADY.

Fish
Human

Get it?


[snip]

Actually, scientists do use these terms.

They should stop doing that.

Why? Because you said so?

Because it's unscientific.

Who made you king of science?

It's about language.

Who made you king of language?

See Eco, Kant and the Platypus


Maybe all the scientists who
use them aren't good ones. But if you're doing the grading, I'll reserve
judgment. I'm a scientist, and I use both terms. Does that mean I'm not
a good scientist? Sure, if you want precision, it's best to use a formal
taxonomic term. But usually the referent is clear from context.

I have already answered this, above.

You seem to be saying that there are no good scientists. Because I can't
think of anyone who doesn't use the term "bird" in scientific papers
when there is occasion to.

They should stop doing so.

Why? Don't say "because it's unscientific". Explain what the problem is.

"The role of science is not to clarify or modify words, but rather the
concepts to which they refer."

Once again, this seems to argue exactly the opposite of what you think
it does.

No, see above.

[snip]

By the way, there is little evidence to suggest that most birds died out
in the Cretaceous (which I take to mean that the end-Cretaceous
extinction took a major toll on birds).

Not according to what I am reading.

The SA book, I suppose. What does it say? Who wrote it?

The stupid thing does not have an index! I read more than 200 pages so
far, so I cannot pinpoint where it is.

Sounds like something by Alan Feduccia. Did that help? Feduccia,
unfortunately, is given to making pronouncements without first bothering
to present evidence. You would like him.

I don't have it with me right now.

I'll wait.

Still waiting.

[snip]

You are once again confused about how to name groups within groups.

No, I am not.

Yes you are. You think that birds can't be birds and be dinosaurs too.

Aves can be Dinosauria, but 'birds' cannot be 'dinosaurs'. Their fields
of reference are exclusive.

[snip]
Again with the anachronistic. If you want to do this in a rational way,
then what you want to do is restrict the term "bird" to the avian crown
group, which some call Neornithes and others just Aves. That's the
common ancestor of all living birds and all its descendants. Mind you,
that common ancestor lived at some unknown time in (almost certainly)
the Cretaceous, and there are plenty of Cretaceous "birds" by this
definition. But if you wanted to have your usage be meaningful, that's
what you would do.

OK, fine.

Well, at least that makes sense. It is, however, entirely different from
the way the word "bird" is commonly used, and that was originally your
justification. Why can't you keep your story straight?

I notice that you're still defending your "K/T boundary" definition. So
what did you mean by "OK, fine" above?

You used 'birds' in scare quotes. that's why I said 'fine'.

However, you would then have seriously departed from the common usage of
the term, which was your only expressed justification. Common usage
includes all manner of non-neornithines, from Ichthyornis down through
Archaeopteryx. You would have to give a good reason for this redefinition.

Which you have not.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... Word usage has everything to do with language. ... that the vernacular term "fish" is not generally used to refer to the ... dinosaurs is getting to be that way, ... record of birds by this definition actually predates, by just a bit, the ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... Do you understand that my arrguments are about language, ... So why the hell are you setting out rules for the vernacular use of the ... dinosaurs is accurate? ... you're using the term accurately when you claim that birds aren't ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... Do you understand that my arrguments are about language, ... So why the hell are you setting out rules for the vernacular use of the ... dinosaurs is accurate? ... In the first sense, birds are, unequivolcally, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... Do you understand that my arrguments are about language, ... So why the hell are you setting out rules for the vernacular use of the ... dinosaurs is accurate? ... In the first sense, birds are, unequivolcally, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... The problem is one of the use of the terms 'birds'and 'dinosaurs' as ... Note that according to the dictionary, only some birds are toothless. ... and it does say that dinosaurs are extinct ... But the word 'coelacanth' was not made up to refer to extinct ...
    (talk.origins)