Joe G
Posts: 12011
Joined: July 2007
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| Quote (Joe G @ Feb. 10 2015,07:33) | | Quote | | The goals of scientists like Linnaeus and Cuvier- to organize the chaos of life’s diversity- are much easier to achieve if each species has a Platonic essence that distinguishes it from all others, in the same way that the absence of legs and eyelids is essential to snakes and distinguishes it from other reptiles. In this Platonic worldview, the task of naturalists is to find the essence of each species. Actually, that understates the case: In an essentialist world, the essence really is the species. Contrast this with an ever-changing evolving world, where species incessantly spew forth new species that can blend with each other. The snake Eupodophis from the late Cretaceous period, which had rudimentary legs, and the glass lizard, which is alive today and lacks legs, are just two of many witnesses to the blurry boundaries of species. Evolution’s messy world is anathema to the clear, pristine order essentialism craves. It is thus no accident that Plato and his essentialism became the “great antihero of evolutionism,” as the twentieth century zoologist Ernst Mayr called it.- Andreas Wagner, “Arrival of the Fittest”, pages 9-10 |
That should end the objective nested hierarchy debate (in my favor, no less) but I am sue the evoTARDs will find some nonsensical objection. |
Hey Kevin, that bit from the "Arrival of the Fittest" gores your heroes Jonny-boy Pearce and his butty Andy Schueler.
Sweet
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"Facts are Stupid"- Timothy Horton aka Occam's Afterbirth
"Genetic mutations aren't mistakes"-ID and Timothy Horton
Whales do not have tails. Water turns to ice via a molecular code- Acartia bogart, TARD
YEC is more coherent than materialism and it's bastard child, evolutionism
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