20 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Taxonomies are Not Arbitrary, but Factual
Mayr lived exactly 100 years, producing a stream of books and papers
up to the day of his death. Among these was his 1963 classic, Animal
Species and Evolution, the very book that made me want to study evolution.
In it Mayr recounted a striking fact. When he totaled up the names
that the natives of New Guinea’s Arfak Mountains applied to local birds,
he found that they recognized 136 different types. Western zoologists,
using traditional methods of taxonomy, recognized 137 species. In other... 1 
notes
notesExample of the natives of an island having nearly the same number of classifications of birds as the taxonomists who studies the species.
19 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Difficulty of Defining Species
The Platonist regards any change in rabbits
as a messy departure from the essential rabbit, and there will always be resistance to change - as if
all real rabbits were tethered by an invisible elastic cord to the Essential Rabbit in the Sky. The
evolutionary view of life is radically opposite. Descendants can depart indefinitely from the
ancestral form, and each departure becomes a potential ancestor to future variants. Indeed, Alfred
Russel Wallace, independent co-discoverer with Darwin of e... 1 notes
notesThe Platonist view of species defines all members as imperfect examples of a perfect example of the species, when in reality, there is a bell curve of examples that blend into other species.
