parsimony/biology

[Kirk Fitzhugh]

At 09:44 PM 2/26/01 -0800, Curtis Clark wrote:

>I haven't been following this thread closely, but this statement lept out.
>Those individual organisms are not things, they are statements of causal
>events of ontogeny, or at a more basic level, of particle physics. And yet
>we are not forced to deal with them that way. Anything can be a pattern, at
>one level of analysis. Whether that sort of analysis is useful is another
>matter, but I don't see any reason to reject it as illogical.

Wow, individual organism cannot be regarded as things? Not even
particulars? So, I guess this means the statement, "Curtis Clark has two
eyes," is entirely false. If one cannot refer to an individual as a
non-universal, spatio-temporally constrained entity, i.e., a thing, then
there is no way to characterize that thing by the properties instantiated
by that "thing." There is no mandate that our reference to things,
individuals, objects, etc., must be in ontological terms, much less as the
compilation of subsidiary particles. True, anything can be a pattern. But
do you really want to reduce cladograms to being nothing more than patterns
of intersecting lines? Is it not more scientifically interesting to go well
beyond mere "pattern" and attempt to causally understand what it is we
actually observe in the world, which by the way, are the properties of
individuals?

Kirk

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"A logic that tends toward answers and
neglects the questions is a false logic."

Collingwood (1939)

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Kirk Fitzhugh, Ph.D.
Associate Curator of Polychaetes
Research & Collections Branch
Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History
900 Exposition Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90007
Phone:   213-763-3233
FAX:     213-746-2999
e-mail:  fitzhugh at bcf.usc.edu
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