Re: Hanson 2006, Mortimer, Baeker response

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

No Way wrote:

> While on the subject of the negative impact of cladism,

We were?

> it was very sad to see what influence enthrallment with cladistics had on 
> the design of the rennovated fossil halls at the High Temple of Cladistics, 
> the AMNH in NYC.

I think the AMNH fossil halls are great.  I hope to visit them again at the 
end of the year.

> I fondly remeber my visits to the Halls of Saurischian & Ornithischian 
> Dinosaurs before the renovations.  What you saw there made sense. The 
> present cladism-driven displays only confuse
> & distract from the central message

Perhaps the problem was not with AMNH, but that perhaps you are too easily 
confused and distracted.

BTW, a lot of critics of cladistics come across much like Waldorf and 
Stattler on The Muppet Show: lots of barbed criticism, but not much of it 
actually constructive.  If you don't like cladistics, you might like to 
invest some time in improving it, or coming up with a better method.  For 
me, the cladistic method is a vast improvement on the way things used to be 
done.  I can still remember those personality-driven scenarios of evolution 
in which different scientists would put forward their own lists of "key" 
characters, and then argue over which characters better reflected the true 
evolutionary pathway.  But at the end of the day, it was all in the eye of 
the beholder.  It was like two guys arguing over who had the sexiest prom 
date.

Cheers

Tim