[Taxacom] FW: Tuataras are REAL (the relativity of reality)

[J. Kirk Fitzhugh]

While an individual can be comprised of subsidiary individuals, as 
parts, the whole is not a class. Individuals can be members of a 
class, but no individual could itself be a class. An 'historic 
individual' is an individual if it has properties that would allow 
one to perceive it as an individual at any given moment in time. A 
taxon is just a summary of all past individual organisms that existed 
during some segment of time in the past and were participants in 
those events relevant to the questions to which the taxon serves as 
an answer. The sum of all those organisms cannot then be interpreted 
as a super organism. The indication of a set of causal relations 
refers to individuals, but the set of relations is not itself an individual.

Kirk
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
J. Kirk Fitzhugh, Ph.D.
Curator of Polychaetes
Invertebrate Zoology Section
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:   kfitzhug at nhm.org
http://www.nhm.org/research/annelida/staff.html
http://www.nhm.org/research/annelida/index.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Frederick W. Schueler
Sent: Fri 6/1/2007 9:36 PM
To: TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Tuataras are REAL (the relativity of reality)

Ken Kinman wrote:

 >  Such a clade seems to me to be BOTH a class AND an
 > individual.
 > Why can't it be both, rather than only one or the other?

* of course, the whole point of the "taxa as individuals" is that they
are indeed both. Just as I'm both an individual as a person, and a class
(or cluster) as an aggregate of cells, a monophyletic taxon is an
historic individual made up of individual organisms.

fred.
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