Reclassifying Viruses as Living?

[John Grehan]

And I will duck. I have no universal recipe for natural vs non natural.
But systematists don't let that stop them from arguing natural vs
artificial taxa. In biogeography it is popular to draw geographic areas
and call them natural. In once sense they are, since they exist with
respect to whatever criterion one uses, but in another they are
artifacts of current patterns rather than any uniquely shared origin.
Others might argue otherwise I expect.

John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Taxacom Discussion List [mailto:TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU] On
> Behalf Of Richard Jensen
> Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:26 AM
> To: TAXACOM at LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU
> Subject: Re: [TAXACOM] Reclassifying Viruses as Living?
> 
> OK, I'll bite - how do we determine whether a box is natural as
opposed to
> artificial?
> 
> Dick J
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: John Grehan <jgrehan at SCIENCEBUFF.ORG>
> Date: Thursday, March 16, 2006 8:14 am
> Subject: Re: Reclassifying Viruses as Living?
> 
> > > But....if we didn't classify things into boxes to which we apply
> > labels,
> > > what would we talk about?
> > >
> > > Aloha,
> > > Rich
> >
> > Maybe we would talk about non-boxes. Biogeography, for example, is
> > rifewith schemes to put geographic boxes around life. Croizat
> > showed that it
> > was possible to do biogeography without the boxes, and that approach
> > sure generated a lot of talk (or non-talk for those who chose
> > suppression). Perhaps it is a matter of whether the boxes or
> > boundariesare "natural" or artificial.
> >
> > John
> >