Re: Dinosaur Genera List update #192

[John Conway <john_conway@mac.com>]

Attempt No. 2, sorry if it comes through twice:

On Sunday, September 8, 2002, at 02:30  AM, Ronald Orenstein wrote:

> At 11:41 PM 07/09/02 +1000, John Conway wrote:
> > My point was that whether birds are dinosaurs can be a question of 
> > classification, as much as phylogeny. Classification isn't science, 
> > because it can neither be verified or falsified (but that does not 
> > necessarily make it a pseudoscience either).
>
> Well, not really.  If you accept that birds are part of the dinosaur 
> clade then birds are dinosaurs, in the same way that we are primates, 
> placentals, mammals, synapsids, tetrapods, sauropterygian fishes, 
> chordates and animals (to cover just some of the nested ranks).  
> "Bird" is a perfectly valid term even in the cladistic sense.  
> "Dinosaurian bird" is useless because all birds are dinosaurs.  
> "Non-dinosaurian bird" is meaningless for the same reason.  "Non-avian 
> therapod" is useful because there are therapods that are not birds and 
> therapods that are.  But for the modern maniraptorian descendants, 
> "bird", without any qualifier, does the trick quite nicely.

Sorry, I didn't make myself clear: the classification system itself can 
neither be verified of falsified. We can neither verify or falsify the 
Phylogenetic System or the Linnean System. That is what I meant, I just 
phrased it very badly.

What I should have said is: classification systems are not a matter of 
science, but philosophy.


John Conway, Palaeoartist

"All art is quite useless." - Oscar Wilde

Systematic ramblings: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/
Palaeoart: http://homepage.mac.com/john_conway/_palaeoart.html