Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA29783 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 20 Nov 2001 02:06:59 GMT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: "Philip A.E. Jonkers" <phae@uclink.berkeley.edu> Organization: UC Berkeley To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Taxonomy and speciation Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 17:06:20 -0800 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] References: <004201c16ece$df984060$1adab3d1@teddace> <002201c16fab$a1862b60$3f01bed4@default> In-Reply-To: <002201c16fab$a1862b60$3f01bed4@default> Message-Id: <01111917062001.01049@storm.berkeley.edu> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear all,
Since we are so fond of biological evolution too, I thought it might be
worth-while to inform you on the next matter.
As I'm reading Darwin's Dangerous Idea, I've come with the following
interpretation on speciation, i.e. the birth of a new species. I sent
an email to Dennett himself in which I layed out my ideas. Here is the
part of that email that captures the essentials.
Please read and see what you make of it, if you are interested I can
give you Dennett's reply too. But I don't want to bias you so I'll do
that after your responses.
Philip.
.....
Before elaborating on speciation let's consider taxonomy in general first.
We humans have derived great practical use in attributing names to whatever
phenomenon we have encountered over history. These name-tags function as
short-hand syntactic pointers to the semantics of the items they are
meant to signify. For example, when someone talks about a "dog" to me,
I automatically imagine a small carnivorous lively mammal making excellent
companions and warning systems by their serving nature and their
innately present high degree of vigilance, etc...
These tags, once accepted by the masses, facilitate rapid and easier
communication by making superfluous the use of elaborate and time-consuming
descriptions. Small wonder we humans became quite adapt in universally
applying this necessary rather than merely convenient tool of labeling.
This process of tagging we indiscriminately applied also to the living
nature. If we would be at ease with the faulty preconception
that, for religious reasons, species are to be considered being immutable,
no problems emerge: attributing fixed names to presumed fixed species
goes without problems. However, as Darwin competently made plausible in his
`Origin' this is of course not how nature really works. Every living being in
nature evolves, organisms incessantly change.
Thus our tradition of taxonomy, though being well-designed for labeling
fixed entities, falls somewhat short when trying to label dynamically
evolving entities. To put it boldly, species do not exist anywhere but
in our own heads. They actually are memes which were created through
our eagerness to conveniently label everything we encounter.
Speciation does not occur in nature in an intrinsic manner (that is,
independent of observers). Being no real part of nature it comes as no
surprise
that it is quite impossible to determine when exactly a case of speciation
occurred. We have decided to tag creatures with such and such names,
based on the historical and religious assumption that they were fixed.
When found that they were evolving instead we ran into trouble because
it is practically impossible to determinable when exactly a case of
speciation occurred. The notion of speciation as actually occurring in nature
is a fallacious artifact due to a forced attempt to mend our view of nature
by incorporating evolution-theory into the traditional worldview of
taxonomy that is based on the idea of fixed species. If the concept of
speciation is to bear any sense in the contemporary evolutionary
conception of nature it can do so only if it were to be used
with a very casual and loose definition.
In short, I contend that speciation occurs nowhere in nature but in our heads
and actually is an artifact of a somewhat misplaced application
of our deeply ingrained tradition of taxonomy to organize the presumed
non-evolving realm of organisms.
Philip.
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