Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA11852 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 26 Nov 2001 02:33:47 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: Re: Taxonomy and speciation Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2001 17:33:14 -0800 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] References: <F132vpFVjCRGryWtIIZ0000e1a1@hotmail.com> In-Reply-To: <F132vpFVjCRGryWtIIZ0000e1a1@hotmail.com> Message-Id: <0111251733140L.06012@storm.berkeley.edu> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Friday 23 November 2001 01:31 am, you wrote:
> From: "Philip A.E. Jonkers" <phae@uclink.berkeley.edu>
>
> >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >Subject: Taxonomy and speciation
> >Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 17:06:20 -0800
> >
> >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.
>
> So...maybe Darwin should have titled his book _Origin of Name-Tags_?
LOL. On a serious not however: mind you it is only a new category
of name-tags, the concept of name-tags of course existed long before.
The title might be: "On the origin of yet another category of name-tags".
But that would be too long and non-specific. No, on second thought,
"On the origin of species" has the most appealing ring to it. Let's stick to
that after all.
>
> >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.
>
> Or _Origin of Name Tags Existing Solely in Our Heads_?
Name-tags do of course (they are memes, after all, (sorry Derek....)),
I don't think that the concept of origin of name-tags is present
in most of our heads.
> >They actually are memes which were created through
> >our eagerness to conveniently label everything we encounter.
>
> Ironically isn't the "meme" concept just a convenient label for a notion
> you are applying to the problematic concept of species in biology? You seem
> to have no qualms using the term "meme", assuming that memes exist yet
> species are fictitious.
I contend species to exist as much as memes since I consider the former
to be a subset of the latter. If memes exist in heads than species may do so
too just as easily. The emergence of a new species happens in the heads
of those authorities deciding to christen a new group of organisms
sufficiently wandered off from neighboring branches of the tree of life to.
> >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.
>
> There may be tremendous difficulties in application of the concepts of
> species and speciation (and I humbly defer to Wilkins for his expertise in
> this matter), but your pragmatic hypernominalism may be misguided. Though
> essentialism may be equally misguided, there could realistically species
> out there, just very difficult to capture in our heads due to limitations.
"Pragmatic hypernominalism", I like that... thanks! Within the paradigm I'm
proposing you just gave a "contradictio in terminis" (pretty one too, huh?).
Could you specify your assertion with stone cold facts, i.e. examples from
mother Nature?
> >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.
>
> There are many fuzzy edges in biology. Get used to it. Try looking at the
> evolution of individuality for instance. In some cases how would you
> ascribe individuality to loosely organized aggregates such as with slime
> molds? Are the cellular units themselves individuals or the collection when
> they form a slug?
How can individuals evolve other than kloning asexual organisms waiting
for the occasional mutation to occur? I mean, sexual reproduction meant
a quantum boost in one the 3 essentials of evolution: variation. This
entailed however that each individual perished after exactly only one
generation already. I take it that you are referring to amoebes and
creatures like that. It seems that amoebes and such are either
extremely social one-celled organisms or one or a few
of extremely plastic size.
> You're not always gonna get the exacting clarity one strives for in
> physics.
Don't worry, Physics is no ball-game either all the time, go ask any
solid-state physicist... Not to mention the `beauty' of the Standard Model
with `only' 32 parameters to be determined by experiment. Now how's that
for a clean theory-from-scratch? Or the hectic period in the 1940-1970 when
it was fashionable to surgically remove infinities during the renormalization
craze in quantum-electrodynamics. We all have our past, you know...
Philip.
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