Re: a rose is a rose (Philidor's questions)

["Ken Kinman" <kinman@hotmail.com>]

Philidor,
    I'll address the Archaeopteryx question first, which is easier to 
answer (assuming I'm interpreting your question correctly) than is the 
scientific-popular split.  I will use your genealogy analogy, but to make it 
fit the species examples in biology, we should assume that your Greataunt 
Katherine has one parent only (and of course, we are talking about millions 
of generations ago).
    The unknown parent (common ancestor) has two children, Greataunt 
Katharine (Archaeopteryx) and an unknown sibling (ancestor to the rest of 
the birds).  We assume Katharine is very very similar to the unknown parent 
and sibling.  We probably will never have fossils of the direct ancestors 
(unknown sibling and common ancestor), but Katharine gives us very good idea 
what they were like (even if Katharine is really just a distant cousin 
further out on that branch).
    In fact, fossil gaps are so large that Katharine may be the only 
example we have to work with for hundreds of generations before and after 
the unknown sibling and parent.  Thousands of generations later, we find 
Confuciornis (an aunt or cousin of our ancestor at that time).  We see the 
bird lineage has evolved some new synapomorphies along the way, and so on.
    Having drawn a solid bird-"dinosaur" boundary line just before the 
Archaeopteryx branching, this gives us a framework in which to fit other 
forms.  Did Mononykus and other Alvarezsaurids branch off the line between 
the Archaeopteryx and Confuciornis branches as Chiappe originally proposed 
(and thus considering them birds)?  Or did the Alvarezsaurids split off 
before Archaeopteryx, which by our definition would make them non-birds.  
That is the kind of controversy that is really scientifically interesting.
    ****But the MAIN POINT (and I hope this answers your question) is that 
we cannot safely assume that any known fossil species gave rise to 
descendants.  In cladistics we treat all fossils as though they are 
collateral relatives like aunts and cousins (and usually rather distant 
cousins).  Archaeopteryx is no exception.  The trick is getting all the 
branches in the right order, and inserting newly-discovered branches in the 
correct place.
     By longheld convention (both popular and cladistic),  the branch with 
Archaeopteryx on it is the basalmost branch of birds (Aves).  Unfortunately 
mammals and many other groups do not have "an Archaeopteryx" upon which a 
widely agreed-upon convention can be based.  That is one reason I think the 
PhyloCode is not a good idea.
     As for your phrases "lazy social biases" and "pettifogging elitism", 
these are two extremes (on opposite ends of a continuum) representing very 
few people and with most people on a sort of bell curve in between.  And 
although there will always be a sort of split between popular names and 
scientific names, I think the problems can be minimized by recognizing fewer 
formal scientific names (and use coding to store much of the phylogenetic 
information instead)---strict cladistics are going the other way (rapidly 
increasing formal names with no end in sight).
   And what is really, really scarey is that we may soon have a enormous 
split among just the scientific names when a parallel PhyloCode becomes a 
reality.  Michael Benton's recent paper clearly points out the kind of havoc 
this will undoubtedly cause, exacerbated when some of the more elitist 
cladists start butting heads.  Hostility and confusion will probably 
increase in all quarters, which REALLY irks me to no end, because I think it 
is avoidable.
    And the trouble is that the bickering will give all of systematics a 
black eye in the minds of the public.  Not that I think cladists are going 
to be "pettifogging" on purpose (their intentions are good), but I fear we 
will end up with a similar result.  To be quite frank, I could care less if 
cladistic "classification" gets a black eye, but worry that it will also 
cast a shadow over cladistic "analysis" (which I think is a very important 
tool).
              ----So it goes, Ken Kinman
P.S.  Hang onto your hats, it's going to get worse before it gets better 
(unless by chance PhyloCode gets scrapped; well I can dream can't I?).
******************************************************
> From: "philidor11":
    The alternative to 'lazy social biases', as has been observed in other 
posts, is pettifogging elitism.....   Can there be a split between the 
scientific and popular conventions, which is one compromise, or will 
hostility result from the mutual recognition of different ways of thinking?  
I'm learning about that too.
> By the way (again), I would appreciate clarification on why Archaeopteryx 
> is included in the bird definition.  If I say I am descended from my 
> grandaunt Katherine (who did not have children) and the 4 family names of 
> my grandparents, my lineage among people, this seems an inconsistency.  
> Assuming Archie has no living descendants, why include Archaeopteryx and 
> not any other specific species?
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