Reclassifying Viruses as Living?

[Peter Stevens]

It is simple, really.  If our boxes are the same, they are natural,
and fools seldom differ, do they?

However, if our boxes suggest incompatible groups, then my box is
natural, and yours is not.  This, too, has been known for a very long
time (see Bather, Quart. J. Geol. Soc.83: lxiii-civ. 1927)

It is a lovely, if preocious, spring.

P.


>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
>>