Re: bats & battalions (was Benton and Kinman)

["João S. Lopes Filho" <jodan99@uol.com.br>]

But the ranking is sometimes arbitrary. Marsupials are very diversified
(compare a Diprotodon and a pigmy possum), but until recently they were
considered just an order, while placentals were divided into dozens of
orders.
This must reflect some kind of "corporativism", because we humans are
placentals, not marsupials, or because placentals are the fauna of Europe.
If Linneus was an Australian perhaps they divided Mammals in Marsupials and
non-Marsupials, including all Placentals in only one order.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ken Kinman <kinman@hotmail.com>
To: <tijawi@hotmail.com>
Cc: <dinosaur@usc.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 9:06 PM
Subject: bats & battalions (was Benton and Kinman)


>       Tim doesn't seem to get my military analogy, so I'll try to explain
it
> a little more vividly.  But first, we again see the old argument that if
> birds get their own Class, then bats should as well.  For one thing, bats
do
> not match birds in species diversity, or in geological range, and
certainly
> not in morphological diversity (bats cannot match bird diversity exemplied
> by forms as diverse as hummingbirds, penguins, cranes, kiwis, and
owls---not
> to mention all those extinct toothed forms in the Mesozoic).  Bats have
been
> assigned their own Order, but not a separate Class.  And this was
certainly
> NOT my arbitrary idea---- it is part of a long tradition which continues
to
> this day because it works well (except for those of you who automatically
> reject all formal paraphyletic groups).  Furthermore, it goes with the
grain
> (not against the grain) of how the human brain organizes and classifies
> information.
>       Which brings me back to the military analogy.  If our government was
> organized strictly cladistically, the Air Force would still be one
gigantic
> company (or platoon?) that was never allowed to separate from the Army.
So
> the cladists would have had to invent new intermediate ranks to divide the
> Air Force hierarchy:  gigaCorporal, magnaCorporal, superCorporal,
Corporal,
> subCorporal, infraCorporal, subinfraCorporal, ad nauseum.
>      Then when the hierarchy is a confusing mess, the cladists will
declare:
>   No More Ranks.  If you want to know the organization and chain of
command,
> you will just have to memorize it all or check one of the many different
> command charts ("cladograms") to see how it all fits together.  And
> splintered chains of command would become very very long, and the whole
> military would be in chaos.
>       And all of this mess simply because strict cladists can't abide the
> thought of a paraphyletic Army, from which the Air Force should have been
> removed due to its expansion in size and diversity.   What if our whole
> federal government was organized in cladistically nested sets with chains
of
> command that just got longer and longer. Think about it.
>                --------Ken Kinman
>
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