Re: Taxonomy and speciation

From: Douglas Brooker (dbrooker@clara.co.uk)
Date: Tue Nov 20 2001 - 02:52:21 GMT

  • Next message: John Wilkins: "Re: Taxonomy and speciation"

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    Subject: Re: Taxonomy and speciation
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    From: Douglas Brooker <dbrooker@clara.co.uk>
    Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 02:52:21 +0000
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    Perhaps not completely on topic, but there was an interesting op-ed in
    the New York Times about 7 years ago on hermaphrodites.

    The author stated that approximately 3% of babies are born with
    significant enough characteristics of each sex to be considered
    hermaphrodites. The last available American statistics, cited by the
    author were from the 30's.

    Since the war doctors have routinely made the sex of the infant either
    male or female.

    I'd agree - this should be self-evident; I guess the above story is
    just meant to say it can be much more than descriptive classification.

    D

    >
    > 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.

    -- 
    

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