[Taxacom] Why Australians are more real than Americans: implications for taxonomy!

[John Grehan]

I know its always tempting to get a sideways dig in, but its no more
informative than to say that its "up there with Thorpian denial of the
evidence that points to the human-orangutan relationship"

John Grehan 

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Sunday, September 06, 2009 5:53 PM
To: Richard Pyle; TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu; 'Jim Croft'
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Why Australians are more real than Americans:
implications for taxonomy!

>So... if I understand you correctly... you're under the
delusi...err....impression that "real" species boundaries exist in
nature outside of human imagination and convenience -- correct?

It is manifestly self-evidently so! To deny this is up there with
Grehanian denial of the evidence that points to the human-chimp
relationship!
Importantly, though, I am NOT saying that species boundaries are ALWAYS
absolutely precise and clear, and indeed, there isn't an absolutely
precise boundary between Australia and ocean either - the tide goes in
and out and it is a fuzzy boundary. Nevertheless, Australia does have
"real" boundaries in nature outside of human imagination and convenience
-- correct?

To see the "real" species boundaries, you only have to imagine a world
in which there were none. I hope you have the capacity for imagination!
:) In such a world, every morphotype would grade imperceptibly into
every other morphotype. Species boundaries would have to be imposed
completely arbitrarily.

I repeat a previous analogy: there are heavy people and there are light
people, but it is not a very useful classification because of the
continuum between them. But if all people of a certain intermediate
weight class died out, then we could classify people usefully by weight.
It would not be a taxonomic classification, but it could be! Imagine a
world with two extant species of Homo, morphologically identical except
that one species were 30-60kg, and the other species 70-120kg as
adults...

Stephen

________________________________________
From: Richard Pyle [deepreef at bishopmuseum.org]
Sent: Monday, 7 September 2009 9:36 a.m.
To: Stephen Thorpe; TAXACOM at mailman.nhm.ku.edu; 'Jim Croft'
Subject: RE: Why Australians are more real than Americans: implications
for taxonomy!

> Yes, Richard, species ARE real entities in the world! They might not 
> have existed in a world where there was an unbroken continuum between 
> diverse morphologies, but in our world there are "gaps" which break 
> the biotic realm up into species.

Please... for the sake of us all... don't get me started. :-)

So... if I understand you correctly... you're under the
delusi...err....impression that "real" species boundaries exist in
nature outside of human imagination and convenience -- correct?

If so, we are operating under fundamentally different presumptions about
the nature of biodiversity, so we will never arrive at a mutual
understanding of what is meant by a "taxon concept circumscription"*.

No sense cluttering the list again with this debate -- there are enough
iterations of it in the Taxacom archives.

Aloha,
Rich

*Note: My use of the elaborated term "taxon concept circumscription" is
to disguish it from "species concept" (in the sense of "biological
species concept", "phylogenetic species concept", etc.) -- which is an
equally contentious and very-much related debate, but still quite
different from the "species are real" debate.
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