Re: dinosaurs as failures?

["Demetrios M. Vital" <vita0015@umn.edu>]

On 12 Jul 2001, Ken Kinman wrote:
>     Of course, failure is a rather subjective term, but there are some
> groups that could be viewed as failures, at least in terms of being very
> diverse and abundant for a long period of time, and then not being able
to
> compete under adverse conditions.

I think that being a "failure" is much more subjective than that.

Just as evolutionary biology has done away with the idea that evolution
requires progress, so does the "failure" idea need to be done away with.
"Failure" is a human abstract, and evolution, random and largely
unpredictable, is not restricted by it.

The most reasonable definition of "failure" I can think of is an evaluation
of an organism's fecundity, and this is waaaay too tenuous for me.  If an
organism is having fewer and fewer offspring, then it is "failing."  This
doesn't directly correlate to extinction, though, or "failure," in an
unscientific sense.  The trend in the USA is for fewer kids per family.  Is
that self-restricted fecundity a behavioral "failure?"  Again, we hit the
subjective.

Which is why I think that "failure," just like "progress," should be
eliminated from an evolutionary vocabulary altogether.

Just my two cents.

Thanks for listening, Demetrios Vital

P.S. As far as the search for failure images goes, I think the
"Dinosauroid" sculpture is a good one.  It shows that, when that idea was
passed around, success correlated to human.  And, since non-avian dinos
both died-out and weren't human, they must achieve the human to not be
failures.