[Taxacom] Read... and believe...

[Stephen Thorpe]

>I go to a holotype to find states for characters the original author didn't mention
I think that is basically what I meant, except that many very early authors in particular didn't actuall mention enough to even have the vaguest clue what they were talking about - such as Linnaeus and Fabricius' descriptions of invertebrates

>My last post was prompted by Richard Pyle's request
Yes, Richard appears to be adapting his species concept to something a machine can understand! An interesting reversal on A.I. !! Don't make machines that think like us - let's all start thinking like machines!!! :)

________________________________________
From: Bob Mesibov [mesibov at southcom.com.au]
Sent: Monday, 7 September 2009 8:33 p.m.
To: Stephen Thorpe
Cc: daniel.lahr at gmail.com; TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Read... and believe...

Hi, Stephen.

Well, yes and no. I go to a holotype to find states for characters the original author didn't mention - and I put those states in a matrix. So holotypes also serve the structured-data folk.

What concerns me in some of the recent threads is the earnestness with which some people are hoping to replace wetware with software. My last post was prompted by Richard Pyle's request for information on automated species ID by image analysis. Um...for exactly what purposes?

It's as worrying as a botanist doing a Roger Hyam and finding a seed whose barcode shows it's a new species, so the botanist erects a Barcode Taxon for the find. Is that really enough? For exactly what purposes is it enough?
--
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
Website: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/mesibov.html