RE: bats & battalions (was Benton and Kinman)

["Tracy L. Ford" <dino.hunter@home.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-dinosaur@usc.edu [mailto:owner-dinosaur@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
Jaime A. Headden
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 8:43 PM
To: dinosaur@usc.edu
Cc: philidor11@snet.net
Subject: Re: bats & battalions (was Benton and Kinman)


 >> Imagine only the edifice, built with asbestos and lead-based paint and
pipes. The edifice is
causing risks to the inhabitants, health-issues, problems. Making life hard.
The building, as we
know, is causing more problems than it is allowing to be solved. It was
traditional to build them,
as we know, but eventually, the risks built up until the hazards caused such
problems that the
board of helth decided the building was no longer habitable. It was torn
down, and a new building
was erected in its place. The new building, athwart the traditional
structure, was modular and
allowed more more flexibility of use. The parts no longer contributed to the
degradation of the
health of it's inhabitants.<
Or, the building was built with sturdy structures, but looks old and run
down, but still stands tall. The new architect don't like the look of the
building and say 'hey its ugly and we need to tare it down and build a new
building, don't anyone use the old building, we have a better one'. See,
using metaphors works both ways.

 >> I'd like to think of myself as an architect. Even Lloyd Wright made
mistakes, and one of his
greatest works is crumbling as we speak. But architecture improves over time
by learning from his
mistakes, not by building on top of previous failiures. Okay, Linné was a
good man, had a vision,
was a genius. In the time and age, it was a break through. Time moves on. We
see life as anagenic,
not static. Classification schema and methods must change as a result,
because the old ways, the
traditional ways, are only preserving the asbestos and lead buildings of the
past. They are
condemned. Let them die.<<
I say, let him LIVE!!! Use his works, change them if need be, but don't let
him die because the 'new architects' think his was are old and out dated.
Look at the Roman architecture, look at the 'arch' (whoops, must have just
seen the new VW commercial).
Basically, either way you look at it, either Linnaean or Cladistics. They
still use a hierarchy; have an ancestor and descendant, just because the
author of the works didn't believe in evolution, doesn't mean that his work
doesn't work. There is a lot of egotism  (in both camps) that needs to be
let go and meld the two systems into one.

Tracy L. Ford
P. O. Box 1171
Poway Ca  92074