On the thread entitled “Species Kinds”, commenter phoodoo asks:
What’s the definition of a species?
A simple question but hard to answer. Talking of populations of interbreeding individuals immediately creates problems when looking at asexual organisms, especially the prokaryotes: bacteria and archaea. How to delineate a species temporally is also problematic. Allan Miller links to an excellent basic resource on defining a species and the Wikipedia entry does not shy away from the difficulties.
In case phoodoo thought his question was being ignored, I thought I’d open this thread to allow discussion without derailing the thread on “kinds”.
fifthmonarchyman,
Using my skill and judgement, and comparing it to the mental library of Cups I Have Known.
fifthmonarchyman,
I don’t look that closely.
Tracing back from a weird post, I get to this:
That doesn’t actually make sense.
Why do you feel like you are one to do it?
Sorry missed that. This is a bit confusing, you want to substitute your philosophical preferences for the parameters because of your religious beliefs basically, and this change will result in no practical change per your expertise in the field?
That was nonsense from top to bottom. Are you sure you aren’t just playing word games? Most of the masses of molecules we count are not amorphous and do have clear boundaries. Your world must be a strange place indeed.
As for your request to elaborate, you will have to tell me where you are going. Are you claiming that elements are arbitrary divisions of a continuum? I see no reason to go into the details of chemistry which, for all I know, you are well aware of.
That mental library of cups is what I’m talking about.
It does not exist in the physical world yet objects in the physical world are categorized according to their similarity to it.
peace
You look just closely enough in order to feel comfortable in drawing an “arbitrary” line between molecules you deem to be cup and those you deem to be noncup.
That is how categorizing is done except apparently when it comes to species
peace
no I don’t have the credentials. I’m not a biologist but I am a thinker 😉
I’m perfectly fine with pointing out what I see are the shortcomings of the current system and watching as it continues to falter and struggle with the species problem. That is until I see the status quo threatening the future of organisms like the red wolf.
Then I will pipe up and do what I can to promote the cause of the environment and ecological diversity.
No, I want to remove misguided philosophical preferences because it will save the red wolf and the desert elephant and because it will solve the species problem and make biology as a whole a more coherent enterprise.
It pretty amazing IMO that all of that can be done by simply adjusting our philosophy a little with out much affecting the nitty gritty of how field biologists do their job.
peace
How do you count an individual particular molecule?
How do you determine the it’s boundaries?
no I’m pointing out that in nature elements are not as straightforward and well bounded as you imply .
A cloud of hydrogen also might contain protium, deuterium and tritium for example.
and there is this
quote:
All but a few of the most inert elements, such as noble gases and noble metals, are usually found on Earth in chemically combined form, as chemical compounds. While about 32 of the chemical elements occur on Earth in native uncombined forms, most of these occur as mixtures. For example, atmospheric air is primarily a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, and native solid elements occur in alloys, such as that of iron and nickel.
end quote:
from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element
peace
I have never counted an individual particular molecule. We were talking about solid objects. Like cups. Did you forget? Now of course in the quantum world molecules don’t have boundaries; each particle is everywhere with a certain probability. But that doesn’t meaningfully extend to the macro world. Are you trying for a deepity?
How does that make elements ambiguous? They’re all hydrogen. You are once again reaching into silliness in an apparent attempt to be profound.
All very nice, but it seems to have nothing to do with making elements arbitrary or even ambiguous. If you want to make some kind of argument, simply pointing to isotopes and compounds won’t do it for you. You have to explain why that shows something about elements. Because I can’t see anything other than irrelevance so far.
How exactly do you define the boundary between the micro and macro world?
no, Just pointing out that every categorization that we do involves personal (arbitrary) choice. And inquiring as to why biological species should be unique in their empirical objectiveness
I never said elements were ambiguous. Only that their categorization involves personal choice. I would argue that this makes them the opposite of ambiguous.
Perhaps that says more about you than me. The point is that nature is messy and edges are fuzzy.
Elements like species are real and discrete but they don’t exist as pure unattached monads in the physical world.
Things just aren’t that cut and dried in nature they are only that way in the wold of the mind.
Even 24 Karat gold is only 99.95% pure and the purest hydrogen gas we can produce will still contain some impurities.
What we do in reality is draw a line and say we can tolerate so many PPM of other stuff and still call our sample pure. It’s all about personal choice what ever we are comfortable with.
Except when it comes to species.
peace
To you, “pointing out” seems to mean “making an unsupported assertion”. That isn’t what it means. Your little bon mots don’t make any point by themselves. You have to explain what you mean—if anything—and how that makes an argument for something—if anything.
You mean you could argue. You have a habit of not making any argument, just claims. Categorization of elements doesn’t involve any personal choice. Hydrogen is hydrogen. Helium is helium. Why, praseodymium is praseodymium. No choice is involved. We couldn’t separate any of them into two elements, combine two into one, or take half of one and half of another.
Or perhaps it says more about you. Sometimes nature is messy, sometimes it isn’t. The elements, for example, remain discrete despite your attempts to obfuscate.
Well, at least you now admit that elements aren’t fuzzy. What “pure unattached monads” would mean with respect to species is unclear to me, as is what the existence of molecules has to say about elements.
None of that is about personal choice and none of it is relevant to either elements or species.
And elements. And minerals. And organic compounds. Bet I could come up with plenty more in a few minutes, and you could probably obfuscate them all with irrelevant obfuscations. But why bother?
You correctly divine that I am frustrated with your tactics. Why not try making your points explicitly and clearly, making sure that your examples actually support your points, and cutting out the word play and pseudoprofundity? That would do wonders.
So true fifth,working knowledge of a situation should never prevent one from proposing nebulous solutions.
The saddest thing of all is that biologists don’t realize how devasting the species problem is . I expect it is all that biology knowledge clouding their perspective. Advantage ,fifth
Funny thing is ,it seems the red wolf is a protected species legally now. Unfortunately not even the tyrannical overreach of the federal government, can protect the red wolf from the endless mockery by coyotes and gray wolves who are secure in their species identity,that is when the the true cost of the species problem hits home.
The Red Wolf Coalition is awaiting your call.
The best way to save the Red Wolf would be to eliminate as many coyotes as you can. Coyotes are mostly cat eating nihilists, but perhaps you could persuade them to change their misguided philosophical preferences .And thereby make biology as a whole a more coherent enterprise.
Some people are unbelievably unappreciative and shortsighted,fifth. It must be a burden to have so much to give.
Just like Cassandra and her prophecies.
Glen Davidson
fifthmonarchyman,
Objects in the physical world also populated it.
With species, as with much else, one experiences certain real forms and categorises them. With most organisms, at a given moment in time, that is possible. Yet one is not doing so according to an ideal, but according to instances of the real.
Your fundamental error is that the capacity to successfully categorise some – indeed, most – means that all must be held to be discrete, both spatially and temporally. It does not follow.
fifthmonarchyman,
The physical boundary between an object and its surroundings is not usefully analogous to the continuity that exists in a chain of descent or in incompletely separated populations.
fifth:
That put a smile on my face.
fifthmonarchyman,
Oh, give yourself a pat on the back. Because evolutionists are the sworn enemies of ecological diversity and environmentalism, just as they stifle promising lines of medical research with their mutational load arguments. ie, not. They’re probably anti free trade too. And don’t get me started on their morals.
You have a finite amount of funds. Do you utilise it to
a) protect a hybrid A, which is continually diluted by introgression from the parent populations, and can indeed be regenerated at any time, provided the two parent populations continue to exist
b) protect a B that, once gone, is gone forever.
Will no-one think of the B’s?
Allan Miller,
But virtually every extinct animal you could think of since the dinosaurs is just another version of animals that still exist. Like a type of rhinoceros, or a type of bird or a bigger version of a Tiger, etc…
phoodoo,
But they aren’t all capable of regeneration by hybridisation.
Allan Miller,
I am not sure we know this to be true. You could probably breed a sabre toothed tiger or woolly mammoth again if you really wanted.
There is precious little evidence supporting that claim. Based on your behavior here, it is more accurate to describe you as a presupposer.
Patrick,
Its best to describe you as a toxic suppository.
phoodoo,
Prove it.
Well, I saw bacteria growing in a can of tomato sauce once, so that should pretty much nail it, shouldn’t it?
Its about the same amount of proof that evolutionists have for natural selection.
A tad unfair, I think.
All humans are thinkers. It’s a characteristic of our species. Granted, the quality of thinking varies. But we are, nevertheless, all thinkers.
Then why claim to be a thinker? I don’t think anyone doubts FMM is human.
But maybe more to the point, “rationalizer” should be the term that FMM uses for himself. It’s a kind of thinking, to be sure, but not especially praise-worthy.
Glen Davidson
Well, he does live in a world where coffee cups have fuzzy edges and elements are matters of opinion. That suggests that at least he comes from an alternate dimension.
The problem with defining god as the creator of the universe or the ground plane of existence is it is just a label that adds no information.
You still have to work out the history of the universe the old-fashioned way, by slogging through physics and cosmology.
Same problem with morality. defining god as the ground plane of morality doesn’t tell you what is right and what is wrong. You still have to fight that out through a political process.
He’s just thinking outside of the
boxevidence.Glen Davidson
Only if you use something similar to my definition of species. Such a thing would be impossible given the orthodox definition.
The common definition not only dooms species like the red wolf to extinction it prohibits us from ever recreating a species once it dies out
peace
I never said they were I said that the present definition of species is detrimental to these ends. I’m amazed how any little difference of opinion is taken as an attack on your friends and family
peace
” Once again for all practical purposes my system would not change how things are done at the species level. ” it seems in one case it will change how things are done
Would you just define a regular tiger a sabre toothed tiger?
It prohibits us from recreating lost genetic information using evolutionary (i.e. breeding) techniques. Presumably other engineering techniques (currently beyond the state of the art) could be used. Even then, the problem would be in knowing whether we have engineered the (lost and unknown) DNA, or simply confected something that produced organisms plausibly similar to fossils we have.
John Harshman,
Never had much time to study quantum mechanics huh?
Oh well, just more things you don’t know.
fifthmonarchyman,
It isn’t. People can protect what the hell they can get the money for and practically achieve. The species concept does not come into it. Although the status of a lineage as a hybrid is a fact with biological, and practical, significance.
I’m amazed how you don’t get irony.
phoodoo,
Haha. The fuzziness of a coffee cup’s edge has nothing to do with quantum mechanics. It’s not just ‘something about atoms’.
fifthmonarchyman,
I never saw a definition with such legislative and mechanistic power.
No I would just eliminate reproductive compatibility as the bounding criteria for a species
peace
Why should the presence of the same DNA be the deciding factor as to whether we have recreated the species? Is not phenotype more important?
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
It’s not, except in the BSC. Coyotes and wolves are regarded as separate species. They can hybridise.
Of course it does, the fact the red wolf and desert elephant don’t meet the modern criteria for a separate species is the very reason given by governments to remove protection from them.
Don’t get me started with the definitions of marriage and person
😉
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Red wolves were extinct in the wild. They were captive-bred and reintroduced. So it’s hardly like no efforts have been made. The prevalence of huntin’ types in the US is one problem. Their species concept is a bit fuzzy, especially with a night sight.
But one problem is that they readily hybridise. That is a practical difficulty, not a definitional reason for not protecting them. Essentially, you are proving the point, that ‘species’ categories break down at some point. You want to include the red wolf. You suggest that some government agencies wish to exclude it, I dunno if they really do on the grounds you claim. But if species really were discrete categories, there should be no question.
It’s a boundary case. You want there to be no such thing as a boundary case. Because you don’t think there is such a thing as a boundary case.
Sorry do not see how that would allow you to recreate a saber tooth tiger.
Fifth ” No I would just eliminate reproductive compatibility as the bounding criteria ”
good for species ,good for marriage
newton,
Heh heh
Hybrids and conservation
The problem is not the species definition per se. Organisms are generating intermediates. Should we – can we – keep them all?
I wonder what we should call organisms that readily interbreed with each other and rarely interbreed with other organisms. I mean, “species” will be taken by FMM’s essentialist certainties (I suppose he’ll have to be replaced someday, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it), yet we’ll still have these divisions between organisms that can’t be called species.
Well, it’s a problem, but we’ll just have to tackle it, since we now know that “species” is whatever FMM thinks it is. The mere fact that reproductive isolation actually fits with (and explains) most instances of what FMM thinks is a species will have to be understood as mere coincidence. Sort of like the rest of taxonomic order is a mere coincidence to ID/creationism.
Gee, that’s yet another coincidence.
Glen Davidson
Of course it does Allan, what the heck are you talking about.
At the very microscopic level, there is no coffee cup and not coffee cup. You really don’t know this? How bizarre.
Or maybe you just don’t believe in science?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adrwP7m4gIY