> > He says that if creationists - "they do not make me laugh, they
> > make me weep"- really wanted to embarrass evolutionary scientists
> > they would put up their hands and simply ask what a species is.
> > "Every evolutionist would hum and ha and splutter, and I do quite
> > a bit of spluttering on that one in the book, " Jones says.
>
> Chris
> Not *every* evolutionist.
I was expecting someone to dissent!
> The problem only arises in those cases where a person is taking some
> kind of metaphysical essentialist view of species and speciation
> (for example, implicit Platonism). A species is simply whatever
> categorization we find convenient for a certain level of thought and
> discourse....
Is that the only reason for a problem? Perhaps you would care to
clarify the situation by giving a definition that will stand up to
scientific scrutiny.
> The "problem" is the result of Really Bad Epistemology, not a
> *biological* problem. It is a problem about the nature and use of
> concepts. "Species" is a word like "large." It is contextual. Just
> as "large" in one context might mean as big as a proton, it might
> mean as big as a trillion times our apparent Universe in another
> context. We designate what is and is not a species on the basis of
> cognitive usefulness, not on the basis of some magical actual
> difference between species.
You are making a case here for "species" being a non-scientific term -
just a term of popular convenience.
> If Jones is "humming and ha-ing and spluttering," it's not because
> the concept is difficult, but because he is thinking about it
> wrongly. In fact, evolutionary theory suggests that speciation would
> be about what it is, that the only cases where "adjoining" species
> would really be kept apart would be cases where genetics or
> environment *keep* them apart, like the arctic terns. Speciation
> simply proceeds until it reaches a locally-viable maximum for the
> organisms involved. If there is enough of the certain kinds of
> culling, we will get species that differ from each other in "larger"
> ways. If there is usefulness in a more finely-grained speciation,
> then, speciation will continue up to the limits of
> distinguishability, causing biologists with Platonic epistemological
> theories some discomfort, but not bothering the more reality-oriented
> ones a bit.
This does not explain why there are the "lumpers" and the "splitters"
in taxonomy. If the term is non-scientific, you are closer to Steve
Jones than you think. If it is a scientific term, a definition is
needed. This is where the problem starts.
Best regards,
David J. Tyler.