Comment on Chicken vs Egg

• flora_explora@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We are so zoomed in evolution at this point that the arbitrary distinction between what is a chicken and what not doesn’t make any sense anymore. Evolution does some jumps, but it is still hard to actually draw the line where a nearly-chicken has not been a chicken yet. Maybe someone could fill in my mental gap in here for me, but hasn’t Richard Dawkins given the example of some animal (possibly a rabbit?) that is traced back in evolution and since you cannot draw the line when it hasn’t been that animal it is rabbits all the way down?

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  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah, the fossil record and dna analysis is such a gradient, any lines we draw are arbitrary. To be fair, those lines were always for our own convenience, in much the same way it’s useful for print designers to specify Pantone 032, but if most people look at the full colour chart they couldn’t even tell you where ‘red’ becomes ‘orange’.

    It’s definitely rabbits (or turtles) all the way down.

    We’re prokaryotes, and vertebrates, and mammals, and from there some people get bent. Are we apes? Genus homo? Where must we draw the line to ensure we’re not actually animals like other living things and were divinely inspired special creations?

    I like simplicity. Life is a beautiful prismatic projection and it doesn’t matter that much what our Pantone swatch turns out to be.

    (Sorry, /mini rant)

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    • flora_explora@beehaw.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Well, I actually completely agree with you and thought your initial comment to be quite interesting. I’ve never viewed this thought experiment as to be science vs religion.

      My point in my previous comment was exactly that, all our lines and categories are arbitrary. They’re really useful to us, but in the end still arbitrary. I enjoy categorizing stuff and so I like taxonomy a lot. But I always have to keep in mind that the categories I choose are ultimately human made and can never represent the full spectrum of nature.

      Pantone 032 feels to aggressive to me, can I have another color? :P

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