Re: KT boundry event

uraniumcommittee@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

John Harshman wrote:


I don't have to. It doesn't matter. The difference is sufficient.
'Enough' difference to say that it is false to call birds dinosaurs.


Sez you. Support your claim. Unless you do, I'll elect to go with the
people who have spent a lot of time studying the matter.

The people who study the matter don't think that this argument makes
much sense. We don't define groups by degree of difference. We define
them cladistically. One good reason is that it's hard to decide this
"degree of difference" objectively. Who says humans are more different
from the average mammal than birds are from the average dinosaur?


Our language does.

How exactly does it do that?

'Parrot' is to 'bird' as 'man' is to 'mammal'.

No. "Bird" is a bit further down the scale of classifiction than
"mammal".

Parrot is to dinosuar as man is to mammal.

or

Parrot is to bird as man is to primate.

But you get my point?


No. How can I get you point when you analogy if false?

This part especially is silly. All the analogies are identical in any
sensible terms, in which the "is to" relationship refers to nesting.
Parrots are nested within birds/dinosaurs as man is within
mammals/primates. That's about it. No deciding whether "primate" or
"mammal" is the more appropriate equivalent rank to "bird". There's no
standard to judge by.


We can call men mammals
or men, but we cannot call them fish.

By the way, I frequently call men fish. We're all just fish that have
been highly modified for a terrestrial environment.

WERE fish. We've been modified. Does the term 'former' mean anything to
you at all? The whole point of introducing evolution is that
populations CHANGE. They change so much that they are incapable of even
living where they used to (lungs replace gills, etc.). In the case of
water-dwelling mammals or reptiles, they cannot regain that capability.
They have changed so much that they cannot be fish, despite their best
efforts.

So, it is SIMPLY FALSE to say men or any mammal is a fish. It's false
on several levels. The gasoline I bought this morning has been
converted to heat and then to angular momentum. It's now no longer
gasoline.

Once again you are having trouble with the concept of groups within
groups. No matter how much a vertebrate is transformed during evolution,
it's still a vertebrate. Now matter how much a mammal is transformed,
it's still a mammal. Everyone, including you (I think) agrees with that.
Now just extend that idea to dinosaurs: no matter how much a dinosaur is
transformed during evolution, it's still a dinosaur.

Don't know why we
should say it any differently.

Language makes it so.

How?

Land snails are still snails.


Right.


Land
arthropods are still arthropods. How come land fish aren't fish any
more?


For one, because they can't breathe in water.

Neither can land snails or land arthropods. Try again, and this time
please do try not to point out irrelevancies.

But that's just me.


NOW do you understand?

BIRDS are NOT dinosaurs! The ancestors of birds used to be
dinosaurs, but now they have their own class, birds, just like
mammals do.

I do not understand what you mean by "just like mammals do".

Mammals existed before the KT boundry.

I know this.



They did not change names at that
time just because some of them survived.

They had been around much longer that 'earlybirds'.

Have they? Not by the most common definitions, in which Mammalia is
defined as a crown group and Aves includes Archaeopteryx. The fossil
record of birds by this definition actually predates, by just a bit, the
fossil record of mammals. And anyway, wouldn't being around much longer
make things worse for you?

Not necessarily. Anyway, it does not matter. The 'mammals' of this time
were not the same sort of thing as mammals of today. It's a mistake to
call them mammals anyway. We have to use terms like 'mammal-like
reptiles' to get around these problems. There are far fewer names than
the things to be referred to, so we tend to group them for referential
convenience. Read Kant and the Platypus.

So mammals aren't mammals, and birds aren't birds. Is there no end to
your weirdness?

Classes are all mental constructs and do not actually represent true
attributes of the classes. This is proved by the fact that different
cultural groups hav classed animal and natural phenomena differently.

Read Kant and the Platypus.

I would like to point out that at least two people who have read Kant
and the Platypus have said that you are out to lunch.

As I explained above "birds" is a
much more specific level of classification than "mammals".

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Why?

The variety of mammal body types is much greater than that of birds.

I'll agree with that. But so what?

This is clearly because of the limitations imposed on body size by the
requirements of flight, as well as the limitations imposed by
bipedalism. The largest birds have given up flight completely in
exchange for large size. Mammals have much less restriction in size.
One of the characters that we recognize as 'birdness' is relatively
small size. Another is wings. Another is a beak of some sort.

Again, so what? How does that make "bird" more specific than "mammal".

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: KT boundry event
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  • Re: KT boundry event
    ... 'Enough' difference to say that it is false to call birds dinosaurs. ... I frequently call men fish. ... water-dwelling mammals or reptiles, ...
    (talk.origins)
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