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Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 00:46:53 -0500
From: [unknown]
To: phylocode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu
Subject: PhyloCode
Ok my rule can be dropped in such cases such as in this case in which= note must be taken that if you tell people they have eaten dinosaur or rep= tile when they eat bird they will take it that you lied to them as the usa= ge was not meant for that context. This more general usage then can take its= place with other definitions of words which while more general are not what= people are thinking you're saying unless you say it in context. A good examp= le is fish. If you order plain old fish in a restaurant you aren't asking f= or tuna or salmon even. All well and fine but for other cases my principle should be applied.= No word can even in theory be strictly speaking defined 100% because you= can't as Quantum Mechanics teaches give a perfect measurement to anything w= ithout the act of measurement altering what is being measured. What's a meas= urement hasn't even been defined according to everyone. We can define things = even without knowing much at all about it. What is a human being? We still haven't completed figuring out every last piece of genetic informatio= n on that question. You can also define things in terms of how they work. = We don't know how everything works in our bodies. If we did we would hav= e no more groundbreaking research into how our bodies work. So even withou= t full definitions we have definitions. The fact is right or wrong even a scientific pronouncement can only go so far in changing how people ta= lk. You can say that a spider scientifically is not an insect. You cannot say= a dog is an insect. We are trying to talk to people so that they will under= stand not think that if we say we are going to hit an insect with a swatter= we may also mean a dog. If you coin new words you run into no trouble and ju= st await its fate at the hands of the public. If you redefine words you = may run up against a public that just won't budge as they want to be understo= od. Words have to be viable. PhyloCode cannot fully win in science if all= it has conquered are the scientists. Yisrael ----- Original Message ----- =46rom: "Kevin de Queiroz" <Dequeiroz.Kevin@NMNH.SI.EDU> To: <yisraelasper@comcast.net>; <phylocode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu> Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2005 4:50 PM Subject: RE:PhyloCode An ordinary person probably also would not call a bird an amniote, or= a chordate, or a deuterostome, or a bilaterian, yet it belongs to all o= f those groups. So for us to say that birds are reptiles and dinosaurs doesn= =B4t mean that ordinary people would ever have to say, for example, that the Thanksgiving dinosaur was roasted perfectly this year. They could sti= ll call it a bird or a turkey.Kevin>>> Yisrael Asper <yisraelasper@comcast.ne= t> 12/03/05 21:03 >>>Hello Michel and allMy concern is for the ordinary = person more than for the scientists sincelanguage is the way we communicate scientist and nonscientist alike. Anordinary person for example would= not call a bird a dinosaur for instance. Iam not saying PhyloCode should = not use old names only that it should notredifine words but rather instead co= in in such cases a new ones so that theold words would not be for PhyloCode= and would be left to their fate indictionaries. People may still use them= but if PhyloCode succeeds then theywould not be a scientific names.Sincerely,Yisrael----- Original Message -----From: "Michel Laur= in" <laurin@ccr.jussieu.fr>To: "Yisrael Asper" <yisraelasper@comcast.net>= Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2005 12:54 PMSubject: Re: PhyloCodeHello,>I read = about the PhyloCode in Discover Magazine. The only thing that seems>frighte= ning about it would be if names are redefined in it.They cannot be redefin= ed because theyhave not really been defined under the old codes;only a t= ype is included, and that is the extentof the definition (not much).>People = would not>like to have to call birds Reptilia for instance.Actually, many scientists who are againstthe PhyloCode do place birds within Reptili= a.>So Ithink there should be>a rule>for PhyloCode set that whenever a would= be PhyloCode definition for a word>would otherwise differ from a definit= ion already accepted even from>PhyloCode, that a new term be made instead= , with the otherwise old name>being>declared from the point of view of Phylo= Code as describing a nonexistent>category.We have discussed this extensively = andthe consensus is that we want to be able to reuseold names, such as Repti= lia, Dinosauria andOsteichthys, even though they traditionallyreferred to paraphyletic taxa.Sincerely,Michel>Yisrael Asper--Michel LaurinFRE 26= 96, CNRSUniversit=E9 Paris 7 - Denis Diderot2, place Jussieucase 70777500= 5 ParisFRANCEtel. (33 1) 44 27 36 92http://tolweb.org/tree/laurin/Laurin_Home_page.htmlSecretary of the International Society for Phylogenetic Nomenclature