Re: Lessons from orangutans: Upright walking may have begun in trees

On Jun 9, 5:19 pm, r norman <r_s_norman@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 09 Jun 2007 20:13:23 GMT, Mark Isaak <eci...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:





On Fri, 08 Jun 2007 20:01:40 +0000, UC wrote:

On Jun 8, 3:14 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 23:25:01 -0700, Glenn wrote:
On Jun 7, 9:49 pm, Cory Albrecht <coryalbre...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
UC wrote, On 2007/06/07 09:29:

On Jun 6, 6:14 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Sorry, but you are dead wrong. "Archaeopteryx" is a common noun like
'grebe' or 'ptarmigan' or 'anhinga' or 'crossbill' or 'dickcissel' or any
of a hundred other bird common names. If you disagree, please explain
how, other than spelling, it differs from those other bird names.
Nope. It is the same as a proper noun.

Assertion does not equal proof. Please provide proof.

Going to tell Mark as well, or do you think he did provide "proof"?

I showed that "Archaeopteryx" is functionally equivalent to other common
names. If you want more proof, look up "proper noun" in Merriam
Webster's 2nd unabridged.

'Archaeopteryx' is functionally equivalent to a proper name.

You haven't learned the meaning of "proper name" yet. Proper names, by
definition, distinguish individuals. "Archaeopteryx" refers not to an
individual but to a general class; there are fossils of nine or so
Archaeopteryx now known, and potentially hundreds more to be discovered.
There are even multiple species.

People use other Linnaean names as common names, such as Acacia,
Eucalyptus, and Iguana. Biologists routinely use less familiar Linnaean
names as common names, too, for example: "Look at the beetle on that
Malva," or "Damn, the fossil is just another Gryphaea." Is Archaeopteryx
an exception just because it is harder to spell?

Archaeopteryx is harder to spell than Gryphaea?

There are so many issues floating around that it is hard to keep
track. Actually, UC seems to change the issue every time he gets
backed into a corner.

Here are a few, to try to summarize:

1) Words are used by different people in different contexts in
different ways. That is essentially what this post is about. There
are words used in a highly technical sense to define species or other
taxonomic groups or clades and I can sort of understand why UC calls
these "Linnean" but he seems to arbitrarily dictate what is "Linnean"
and what is "vernacular" and he has his own rules for how to use them.
The simple fact is that biologists and lay people, even in technical
context, frequently use the name of a group to denote a member of the
group. Again, that is what this post is about. UC may yell and
scream how "wrong" it is, but that is common usage.

2) UC is flat out wrong about certain words like "mammal" and
"insect". These are defined in dictionaries as *members of* a group,
not as synonyms for the "Linnean" group name. A mammal is a *member
of* Mammalia, an insect is a *member of* Insecta. And that is how the
word is used in technical contexts and in common parlance. So humans
are mammals and cockroaches are insects no matter how much UC pouts.

3) UC is flat out correct about the usage of the word "insect". Like
it or not, that word has a long history which continues to the present
to indicate all sorts of terrestrial arthropods. We can complain and
we can educate about how we really should restrict it to members of
the Insecta, but it still is used in ordinary discourse in a wider
sense. It was also used in earlier times to indicate a variety of
animals outside Arthropoda, but that usage is now indicated as
improper in most dictionaries. In time, the use for all non Insecta
will be improper, but that time does not yet seem to have arrived. See
item 1) about different meanings when used by different people in
different contexts.

4) "Ape" and "wolf" and "dinosaur" (in addition to "insect") are
words that have different meanings when used by different people in
different contexts. Technical people and lay people when talking in
semi-technical contexts now use the terms in a cladistic and
monophyletic sense, so that humans are apes, both because humans
belong to the ape group and because an "ape" is a member of the "ape
group", not merely the name of the group. Similarly dogs are wolves
and birds are dinosaurs. However the words also have different
meanings, indicating a paraphyletic group: apes are the "ape group
minus humans", wolves are "those wolves that have not been
domesticated to become dogs" and dinosaurs are "very big creatures
that lived a long time ago and were wiped out by an asteroid". Those
usages are in common use, whether we like it or not. Humans are not
apes according to one usage but humans are apes according to another.
UC seems to deny the monophyletic meaning of these words and yells and
screams about it, but the rest of us seem to deny the paraphyletic
meaning and yell and scream equally shrilly and to the same effect.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Great summation.

.