Re: Hopefully some resolution (was RE: Feathers are not magical things...)

["philidor11" <philidor11@snet.net>]

First, my apologies for the long delay in responding.  I appreciate your
thoroughness and patience, qualities I misused when I reacted to the 130 new
posts pouring down the coal chute each time I returned.

Anyway, just one observation of yours I'd like to consider:
<Which actually gets me to a related point, and one which might provide some
resolution: one learns better by doing than by just talking about it!!!  How
about trying to do your own phylogenetic analysis yourself?>

Mind if I quote Stephen Leacock at you?

Many years ago when I was on the staff of a great public school, we engaged
a new swimming master.
He was the most successful man in that capacity that we had had for years.
Then one day it was discovered that he couldn't swim.
[After he fell in the water and nearly drowned, the school dismissed him.
Some of his former pupils] taught him how to swim, and he got a job as a
swimming master at another place.
But this time he was an utter failure.  He swam well, but they said he
couldn't _teach_.
[The story has a happy ending:  he] is now in an aviation school teaching
people to fly.  They say he is one of the best aviators that ever walked.
Stephen Leacock, Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life

What made him a good teacher?
He understood the basics of the topic and could make his students confident
without being worried by the details that come with practical experience.
I suspect that you're a good teacher in part because of what you choose not
to say.

Another apposite old observation is that people who teach a theory long
enough come to believe in it.
Details not only obscure principles, they persuade because of the human need
to believe in what we're doing.

So, to understand something at its simplest level and to question its
underpinnings thoroughly enough to understand, some of us find ignorance a
useful tactic.
This is a very comfortable principle to generalist, someone who doesn't know
enough about a lot of subjects.

You have evolved a set of definitions and a methodology which is elaborated
and self-consistent.  I'm glad I had the chance to understand better without
too many expectations.  What you describe is not, for example, the classic
scientific method, nor is its goal continuous advance toward something
knowable...

Anyway, thanks again.  Useful and very worth thinking about.