Re: KT boundry event


John Harshman wrote:
uraniumcommittee@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

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.

We're arguing about two words here, "bird" and "dinosaur". Let's
consider them separately.

According to your dictionary definition, the dictionary definition you
yourself presented in an attempt to advance your cause, "bird" is in
fact synonymous with Aves. You may not like that, but I don't see how
you can deny it.

Not perfectly synonymous. Otherwise, why create the new word 'Aves'?

Look at the definition:

----------------------
'Bird'
a member of the class Aves all differing from the ancestral reptiles in
possession of a covering of feathers instead of scales, a completely
four-chambered heart served by a single (the right) aortic arch, fully
separate systemic and pulmonary circulations, a warm-blooded
metabolism, and large eggs with hard calcareous shells, and all recent
forms having the forelimbs modified into wings, the jaws without teeth
and enclosed in horny sheaths, and usually the breastbone enlarged by a
ventral keel for the attachment of the pectoral muscles that control
the action of the wings
-----------------------

The first part is "a member of the class Aves". The rest is amplification.

Note, while we have the definition in front of us, that only "all recent
forms" are said to have the forelimbs modified, the toothless beak, and
the ventral keel. That means of course that there are some non-recent
forms without these features, or the definition makes no sense.

Note, also, that there is no mention of the K/T boundary. That's your
own addition having nothing to do with the dictionary.

It stems from the logic of the thing.

I see that you have since "corrected" this definition into one that you
like better. And you still say it's not your personal definition!

According to your dictionary, "dinosaur" isn't synonymous with what we
now think of as Dinosauria, and it does say that dinosaurs are extinct
too. But let's think about that. When the definition was written, it
wasn't clearly understood that Aves was a part of Dinosauria. Suppose
you had a 1930 dictionary and looked up "coelacanth". It would tell you
that coelacanths are an extinct group of lobe-finned fish. Then in 1938
the first living coelacanth was found. Would you argue, based on the
dictionary, that it wasn't really a coelacanth, because coelacanths are
extinct? I suspect you wouldn't. But that's exactly the position you are
adopting here: birds aren't dinosaurs, because dinosaurs extinct. See?
The dictionary says so. Similarly, dinosaurs were supposed extinct when
that definition was written because nobody understood that Aves was part
of Dinosauria. Now that we know they are, we can clarify that definition
of "dinosaur" to drop the word "extinct", and everyone can be happy.

But the word 'coelacanth' was not made up to refer to extinct
creatures. 'Dinosaur' was. Are you saying that the word 'whale' is
wholly synonymous with Sinonyx?

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.

Look again. Are we now agreed, or is your reading incomprehension total?

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 find it interesting that you appeal to the meanings of words, as given
in the dictionary, to defend your personal definition of "bird", which
contradicts the dictionary on multiple points.

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

NOW you understand.

Always did.

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...

I don't actually know who Sachs is or why I should care what he said,
but he's right. You are just interpreting his words to mean exactly the
opposite of what he said. He said that we should use old words with new
meanings, and not worry about what the old meanings were.

No, we can continue to call 'whales' to refer to whales even though we
know they're related to and decended from Sinonyx.

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.

But apparently you're not here to tell me why.

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

Why? What lesson would it teach me.

It explains what I'm trying to say.

(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.

Still don't.

[snip]

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.

Only because you choose to define them that way.

But I didn't 'choose' to define them that way; I inherited a language
with all its baggage.

But why would you want
to do that? Especially, why should you care so much about doing that?
And I really want to know what you, in 1938, would have used as a term
for living coelacanths, when the dictionary said they were extinct.

Being extinct was not an essential part of the concept of the
coelacanth. It was in the case of dinosaur. It was coiuned in 1841 to
refer to very ancient animals that were clearly extinct.

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.

You mean you recognize your problem? Then why don't you see that it's a
problem?

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.

Only in your personal definition. Not in the dictionary or in common
usage. Are we now agreed that you made that part up?

The word 'dinosaur'
refers to a different group, all of which are extinct.

True in the dictionary, but what about that coelacanth?

Fifferent kind of thing. Are whales Sinonyx?

Whales are not
their land-dwelling predecessors. They're whales. the term 'whale'
exists precisely to refer to whales.

Indeed it does. But whales are also mammals, which was the point. More
and less inclusive terms can be used to refer to nested groups. Whales
are still whales, even though they're mammals too. You don't seem to
understand that birds can still be birds, even if we say they're
dinosaurs too.

No, they cannot. More precisely, they're NO LONGER dinosaurs: they're
birds.

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."

But according to the dictionary definition you quoted, birds are
synonymous with Aves.

No, the terms are not perfectly synonymous.

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.

Again you fail to understand that if you hear a bird, that doesn't mean
it's not a dinosaur too.

Whales? Sinonyx?

We can use multiple words to describe the
members of nested sets, depending on which set we think interesting at
the time. Your friend may have heard an American robin. But he would
also have heard a thrush, whether he knew it or not, and a passerine,
and a bird, and a dinosaur. All the same robin, just different levels of
generality. Are you going to say that robins are robins, and he didn't
hear a vulture, so he couldn't have heard a bird? I bet you aren't.

Dinosaurs are extinct. They died 65 mya. Get over it. Jurassic Park is
fiction.

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.

Again, your personal definition that nobody else, including the
dictionary, uses.

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.

True. But in scientific papers they generally do mean the same thing,
and words do change meaning. In this case the change is an obvious and
useful one, similar (I repeat) to the change from "coelacanth" referring
to an extinct group to referring to group with one, now two, living species.

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

That's right.

It's right that this is the common conception. But the common conception
is wrong. Many extinct dinosaurs were smaller than many living birds, etc.

True, and irrelevant. The problem is the word 'dinosaur' is so vague
that it is useless. Much more useful to refer to birds with the name
'bird'.

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.

Every time I read it, it means the same thing: keep the word but change
the meaning.

No, change the understanding of the referent.

(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.

In scientific terms (at least recently), apes are also members of
Hominidae. Does it make you feel insecure to be referred to as an ape?

Not at all. Just inaccurate. Just like a whale is not a Sinonyx.

Perhaps you should become a creationist.

Fie! Thou speakest evil!

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?

Again you confuse nested groups with disjunct groups.

No.

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.

Of course it does.

What the word 'bird' refers to, as in the case of all words, is a
matter for lexicographers.

There are fossil birds or non-birds, and it has to be
decided which they are.

That's why you need to read Eco's book. That's what it is about.

All your criteria are ambiguous (actual
characters of the animal) or silly (this K/T thing).

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.

I think we understand each other pretty well. As long as the shifts in
meaning are not too radical or unilateral, they work fine. It's now
commonly understood among educated people that birds are dinosaurs, so
there is no problem with understanding. You yourself understand what
that means; you just don't like it.

I don't accpt the distortion of language for asny reason whatsoever. We
can change our understanding of what we're talking about when we use
the words, but what the words mean cannot be arbitrarily changed.

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


No, I don't.

Sure you do. You disagree that toothed birds are birds.

No, I disagree that the word 'bird' can be used to refer to such
entities. My complaint is about language, not classification.

If you recall,
according to the dictionary, only recent birds were said to be
toothless. And you disagree that birds are not defined by the K/T
boundary, which is nowhere in the dictionary definition you yourself
gave. And in fact you have recently "fixed" the dictionary definition.
If you didn't disagree, why fix it?

'Recent' was their way of saying the same thing I did about the KT
boundary.

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.

Ah, so now you say the dictionary is wrong. Only you are right.

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.

Sorry, but no. Baseball didn't come from cricket, and "birds came from
dinosaurs" is a misunderstanding that was common before cladistics
(which you still haven't looked up), but is becoming rarer these days.

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.

You need to look a little closer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_baseball

Baseball, cricket, and rounders all emerged from the same set of early
English games. But baseball is not descended from cricket, any more than
whales are descended from cows.

Thos eearly English games are all obsolete (extinct). Is baseball
identical with them? NO!

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.

All very nice, but that little tirade was about what we want to call a
bird, not what we want to call a dinosaur. Focus here. The question is
whether birds are dinosaurs (in addition to being birds), to which that
was irrelevant. By the way, everyone except you thinks that Ichthyornis
is a bird. It looks like a bird (rather like a tern, actually, except
for the teeth). But you, for some reason, have a personal definition
that excludes it. And for some other reason you won't admit that your
definition is unique to you.

"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?

Perhaps it does, but this is the dictionary you yourself used. If you
would now like a different dictionary, bring that one out and quote its
definition. And if you don't like the one you quoted first, why did you
quote 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?

I don't. He's saying save the word, change the meaning. He says to use
it but strip it of the teleological baggage. We use "root" with a "sense
quite different" from what it once meant. Just as we retain the word
"dinosaur" but change its meaning to include birds. On the other hand,
you want to remove the word "bird" from referring to anything Mesozoic,
preferring your own neologism "proto-avian" instead. You are doing
exactly what Sachs is advising against.

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.

Again, you are confused. Nobody is saying we shouldn't use "bird" and
substitute "dinosaur". We still use it. We just enlarge the meaning of
"dinosaur". You can call a bird either a bird or a dinosaur, depending
on what you want to say about it, just as you can call it a robin, or
thrush, or passerine. This is how language works. The same object can be
called by many names depending on what we want to say about it. Groups
within groups.

And you are the one trying to change the referent of "bird", because you
are limiting it to Cenozoic birds, which nobody before you has ever done.

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.

That's why we have to change the meaning, just as "coelacanth" was never
used to refer to living coelacanths until we found one.

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.

You need to explain why. Notice that I explained why *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

That's not a dictionary. It doesn't even present a definition. Do you
know what Paul's definition is?

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.

Ah, but you have previously used it to apply to all Cenozoic birds.
Which is it? Contemporary or Cenozoic? You really aren't making
consistent sense.

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.

Who says that a fish has to have gills? You really are quite hidebound.
Humans are fish, phylogenetically. Of course I don't use the term that
way most of the time. It's intended as a pedagogical Aha! kind of
moment. You're supposed to think "Yeah, I guess we are sort of weird,
oddly evolved fish if you think of it that way". It's a salutary,
evolutionary view of things.

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.

Well, not with you, because you refuse to learn anything at all. But
with other people, it does. It helps them get into tree-thinking, which
is a buzzword for recognizing the nested structure created by phylogeny.
Just as a whale is a weird mammal (How can it be a mammal? No hair.),
mammals are weird fish (How can they be fish? No gills.).

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?

Once again, you fail to consider nested sets. You can be a human and a
fish at the same time.

[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

Why? Did Eco or Kant, or perhaps the platypus, make you king of language?

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.

I saw above. It argues exactly the opposite of what you think it does.
Saying "no it doesn't" isn't an argument.

[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.

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.

Because you say so? Because the dictionary says dinosaurs are extinct?
So there can't be a living coelacanth, right?

[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'.

Unfortunate, then. You are sticking with the silly definition that
nobody except you uses. There are actually some people who do use "Aves"
to mean just the bird crown group, so if bird = Aves, you have a point.
However, the people who use Aves as the crown group generally don't
equate birds with Aves either. There really is nobody who agrees with you.

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.

And still have not.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... "Birds are dinousars." ... "Therefore, dinosaurs are not extinct." ... Dinosaurs and all other large similar animals became extinct. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... "Birds are dinousars." ... "Therefore, dinosaurs are not extinct." ... Dinosaurs and all other large similar animals became extinct. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... "Birds are dinousars." ... "Therefore, dinosaurs are not extinct." ... That's nothing like the reasoning I have used. ...
    (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)
  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... "Birds are dinousars." ... "Therefore, dinosaurs are not extinct." ... Latin was used for philosophy and science until the late ...
    (talk.origins)