On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost >> >> all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other? "
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost >> >> all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to >> me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other? "
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron
almost
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked
quite well.all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture
seems to
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It
paleontologist uses the following definition?me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a
any other? "
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent.
For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals.
But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials wereeutherians are.
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to >> >> me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other? "
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >> >> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his >long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are >arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent.
For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals.
But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials were
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of eutherians are.
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the >"cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
On 8/8/23 6:02 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron
Dean's "evolutionary path."
quite well.
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange: >>>
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>> On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these. >>>>>>
seems to
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you >>>> mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It
paleontologist uses the following definition?me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a
any other? "
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >>>> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ >>> Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent. For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals.
But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
My name has been taken in vain.
Did Romer present any sort of analysis
to support his claim,
or was it just his intuitive impression? If the
latter, what are such judgments worth?
Of course, the families, not to mention the orders, of both birds and mammals have changed a whole lot since Romer wrote that.
Even if you use
the 1966 edition.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials wereeutherians are.
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of
Again, can you back that up with any sort of analysis?
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the "cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
The well-deserved victory* of cladistics had zero effect on the research into morphospace.
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
A dual system would be completely unworkable and pointlessly
complicated. You have to get used to the fact that science has changed
in the last 60 years.
*I can do argument by adjective too.
On Wednesday, August 9, 2023 at 9:06:08?AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 18:02:35 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange: >> >> >
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >> >> >> On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you >> >> >> mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other? "
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ >> >> >Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his >> >long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Alas, this fear is stronger than ever; see below.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
You're confused. R.Dean has posted on average several times a day
since May 31.
He hasn't posted in the thread where he was most active,
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?,
since Aug 3, 2023, 2:01:01?AM.
That was quite early on last Thursday. Have you
seen him on another thread since then? If so,
please tell me which thread it was.
But either way, that doesn't explain why you insist
Harshman needs to define these words.
It's because he was being unfair to Ron Dean,
as I explained near the end of the quoted text.
You didn't disagree with that; care to do so now?
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
ISTM you make above a reasonable distinction. However, R.Dean uses
"intermediate" and "transitional" as if they're synonymous.
Are you sure about that? After all, he hasn't defined those words.
Once
again, I invite you to encourage R.Dean to clarify his use.
I'll do so as soon as I can catch him.
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 18:02:35 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08?PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >> >> On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you >> >> mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other? "
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >> >> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his >long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
You're confused. R.Dean has posted on average several times a day
since May 31.
But either way, that doesn't explain why you insist
Harshman needs to define these words.
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
ISTM you make above a reasonable distinction. However, R.Dean uses "intermediate" and "transitional" as if they're synonymous.
Once
again, I invite you to encourage R.Dean to clarify his use.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are >arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent. >For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals.
But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials were
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of eutherians are.
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the >"cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how--
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 9:46:08 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/8/23 6:02 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron
Dean's "evolutionary path."
almost
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange: >>>>>
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked
quite well.all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these. >>>>>>>>This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture
seems to
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you >>>>>> mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It
reference:me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that >>>>> you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a
paleontologist uses the following definition?
"Could you please point us to a published source where a
any other? "
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses
"transitional".
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >>>>>> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ >>>>> Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his >>> long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Funny, you don't make any comment about my uses above. Are you still
looking for an article by a research paleontologist that supports
your idea of "transitional"? Are you still searching your mind for
a way to express your idea of "intermediate"?
Note how my personal definition of "intermediate" is more restrictive
than that of "transitional," while the reverse is the case with you.
My impression is that you think of intermediate *grades,*
such as the "grade" of "subholostean fishes, that makes the "grade"
of "holostean" fishes polyphyletic. Romer talks about this in the
section on "Ray-finned fishes" in the chapter, "Bony fishes" in my 1945 edition.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are
arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent. >>> For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals.
But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
My name has been taken in vain.
"It's all about you, isn't it?"
Did Romer present any sort of analysis
to support his claim,
He gave two examples, just before the section on Palaeognathus birds,
in the chapter on birds, and he ended with the following comment on birds: "anatomically, generic differences are so slight that fossils are very hard to place."
or was it just his intuitive impression? If the
latter, what are such judgments worth?
They are worth a lot more than your caviling here. You have a copy of his 1966 edition; see if you can find it there.
Of course, the families, not to mention the orders, of both birds and
mammals have changed a whole lot since Romer wrote that.
"changed" is an equivocation, evading the issue of how much disparity
there is within the rearranged orders.
Even if you use
the 1966 edition.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials wereeutherians are.
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of
Again, can you back that up with any sort of analysis?
It isn't about me, it's about what systematists have done.
The following book lists four orders of Australian marsupials alone.
_Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Hand, University of South Wales Press
and John Hopkins University Press, 2002.
They are: Daysuromorophia, Notoryctemorphia, Peramelemorpha, and Diprodontia. Unfortunately, they don't talk about mammals outside Australasia, but the long-obsolete
taxonomy at the back of Carroll's 1988 text lists a traditional "suborder" of Marsupilia,
Caenolestoidea, and the "family" Didelphidae. These are at least as disparate as the
first three Australian orders, and at least as far disparity-wise from each other
and the Australian marsupial orders as they are from each other.
To top it all off, it lists two subfamilies of "Suborder Didelphioidea" that are
now believed to be metatherians outside the crown, Marsupilia:
Borhyaenidae and Thylacosmilidae.
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the
"cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
The well-deserved victory* of cladistics had zero effect on the research
into morphospace.
You are talking off the top of your incorrigibly biased head. Can you point to anything
more deserving than the undeserved victory in the "cow - salmon -lungfish" debate, where "salmon" would have been replaced by "Elpistostege" by
a Romer-savvy paleontologist?
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
Next, you illustrate very well my last clause, except that in this case it
is "my way or the highway" where "my" refers to
"I, the illustrious John Harshman, whose unsupported word
is enough for everyone except you."
A dual system would be completely unworkable and pointlessly
complicated. You have to get used to the fact that science has changed
in the last 60 years.
*I can do argument by adjective too.
I'm not *arguing* by adjective, I'm *summarizing* by adjective.
Let's see you back up your wild assertions with reasoning.
I don't think you can. But I can go a lot further with my reasoning about "undeserved" than I did just now with "cow -salmon -lungfish."
And I can provide plenty of reasoning against your benighted "zero effect" comment.
That's your cue to say "Then do so," without providing a smidgen of reasoning* yourself.
*not to be confused with propaganda, or misdirection.
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2nyikos@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/>The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:Transitional features - Understanding Evolution
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do youby using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well. >>
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost >>>>> all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to >>> me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference: >>
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other?"
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
On 8/8/23 4:17 PM, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2nyikos@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron
Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron
Dean's "evolutionary path."
***********************************************************************8 I've used the two terms interchangeably. In my view they are describing
the existence of the same entitiesys or the absence of.
As in a series of transitional forms
fossil links as intermediates between species "A" and to "Z"
Fossil links between the species "A & "C"
The Evolutionary Use of the Terms, Primitive, Intermediate & Lineag
A partially assembled adaptation. Complex adaptations evolve in a series
of smaller steps and these steps along the history of an adaptation’s evolution are called intermediate forms.
intermediate form - Understanding Evolution
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/intermediate-form/>
A fossil that shows an intermediate state between an ancestral trait and that of its later descendants is said to bear a transitional feature.
The fossil record includes many examples of transitional features,
providing an abundance of evidence for evolutionary change over time <https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/intermediate-form/>
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/
**********************************************************
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/>The matter started moving towards a climax in the following
exchange:Transitional features - Understanding Evolution
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked
almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
well.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It
seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a
reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a
paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses
any other?"
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word
"transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
On Friday, August 11, 2023 at 11:16:11 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/23 7:00 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 9:46:08 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/8/23 6:02 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron
Dean's "evolutionary path."
almost
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange: >>>>>>>
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>>>> On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked
quite well.all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these. >>>>>>>>>>This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture
seems to
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you >>>>>>>> mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It
reference:me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word. >>>>>>>
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that >>>>>>> you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a
paleontologist uses the following definition?
"Could you please point us to a published source where a
"transitional".
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses >>>> any other? "
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and >>>>>> others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in >>>>>> vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >>>>>>>> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ >>>>>>> Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his >>>>> long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then >>>>> taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C. >>>>> Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Funny, you don't make any comment about my uses above. Are you still
looking for an article by a research paleontologist that supports
your idea of "transitional"? Are you still searching your mind for
a way to express your idea of "intermediate"?
Note how my personal definition of "intermediate" is more restrictive
than that of "transitional," while the reverse is the case with you.
My impression is that you think of intermediate *grades,*
such as the "grade" of "subholostean fishes, that makes the "grade"
of "holostean" fishes polyphyletic. Romer talks about this in the
section on "Ray-finned fishes" in the chapter, "Bony fishes" in my 1945 edition.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are >>>>> arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent. >>>>> For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals. >>>>> But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
My name has been taken in vain.
"It's all about you, isn't it?"
Did Romer present any sort of analysis
to support his claim,
He gave two examples, just before the section on Palaeognathus birds,
in the chapter on birds, and he ended with the following comment on birds: >>> "anatomically, generic differences are so slight that fossils are very hard to place."
or was it just his intuitive impression? If the
latter, what are such judgments worth?
They are worth a lot more than your caviling here. You have a copy of his >>> 1966 edition; see if you can find it there.
Of course, the families, not to mention the orders, of both birds and
mammals have changed a whole lot since Romer wrote that.
"changed" is an equivocation, evading the issue of how much disparity
there is within the rearranged orders.
Even if you use
the 1966 edition.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials wereeutherians are.
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of
Again, can you back that up with any sort of analysis?
It isn't about me, it's about what systematists have done.
The following book lists four orders of Australian marsupials alone.
_Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Hand, University of South Wales Press
and John Hopkins University Press, 2002.
They are: Daysuromorophia, Notoryctemorphia, Peramelemorpha, and Diprodontia.
Unfortunately, they don't talk about mammals outside Australasia, but the long-obsolete
taxonomy at the back of Carroll's 1988 text lists a traditional "suborder" of Marsupilia,
Caenolestoidea, and the "family" Didelphidae. These are at least as disparate as the
first three Australian orders, and at least as far disparity-wise from each other
and the Australian marsupial orders as they are from each other.
To top it all off, it lists two subfamilies of "Suborder Didelphioidea" that are
now believed to be metatherians outside the crown, Marsupilia:
Borhyaenidae and Thylacosmilidae.
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the >>>>> "cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
The well-deserved victory* of cladistics had zero effect on the research >>>> into morphospace.
You are talking off the top of your incorrigibly biased head. Can you point to anything
more deserving than the undeserved victory in the "cow - salmon -lungfish" >>> debate, where "salmon" would have been replaced by "Elpistostege" by
a Romer-savvy paleontologist?
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
Next, you illustrate very well my last clause, except that in this case it >>> is "my way or the highway" where "my" refers to
"I, the illustrious John Harshman, whose unsupported word
is enough for everyone except you."
A dual system would be completely unworkable and pointlessly
complicated. You have to get used to the fact that science has changed >>>> in the last 60 years.
*I can do argument by adjective too.
I'm not *arguing* by adjective, I'm *summarizing* by adjective.
Let's see you back up your wild assertions with reasoning.
I don't think you can. But I can go a lot further with my reasoning about >>> "undeserved" than I did just now with "cow -salmon -lungfish."
And I can provide plenty of reasoning against your benighted "zero effect" comment.
That's your cue to say "Then do so," without providing a smidgen of reasoning* yourself.
*not to be confused with propaganda, or misdirection.
It's very difficult to try to have any sort of reasoned conversation
with you.
For you, it is: you are a very poor reasoner. I've lost track of how many times
I've told you that you are "a polemicist first, a propagandist second, and a reasoner
a distant third."
You may comfort yourself, though, that two or three people in a mutual "see no evil, hear no evil,
speak no evil" relationship with you are even worse reasoners than yourself.
Then there is jillery, who found a way to duck questions in a way that SIMULATES
being a worse reasoner than you are. Her last reply to me on this very thread exemplifies it.
ON THE OTHER HAND, there is someone to whom I have been replying on the thread
"Taking the Possibility of an Afterlife Seriously" with whom it is FAR easier to have a reasoned conversation than with you. In my next post to that thread,
I will try to have one with another participant.
I'm disinclined to try at the moment. Maybe later.
Feel free to take as long as you need -- a month or more, if necessary.
On 8/11/23 7:00 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 9:46:08 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/8/23 6:02 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron
Dean's "evolutionary path."
almost
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange: >>>>>
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>> On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked
quite well.all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these. >>>>>>>>This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture
seems to
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you >>>>>> mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It
reference:me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word. >>>>>
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that >>>>> you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a
paleontologist uses the following definition?
"Could you please point us to a published source where a
any other? "
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses
"transitional".
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates,
which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ >>>>> Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in >>>> vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his
long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C. >>> Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Funny, you don't make any comment about my uses above. Are you still looking for an article by a research paleontologist that supports
your idea of "transitional"? Are you still searching your mind for
a way to express your idea of "intermediate"?
Note how my personal definition of "intermediate" is more restrictive
than that of "transitional," while the reverse is the case with you.
My impression is that you think of intermediate *grades,*
such as the "grade" of "subholostean fishes, that makes the "grade"
of "holostean" fishes polyphyletic. Romer talks about this in the
section on "Ray-finned fishes" in the chapter, "Bony fishes" in my 1945 edition.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are
arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent. >>> For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals. >>> But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
My name has been taken in vain.
"It's all about you, isn't it?"
Did Romer present any sort of analysis
to support his claim,
He gave two examples, just before the section on Palaeognathus birds,
in the chapter on birds, and he ended with the following comment on birds: "anatomically, generic differences are so slight that fossils are very hard to place."
or was it just his intuitive impression? If the
latter, what are such judgments worth?
They are worth a lot more than your caviling here. You have a copy of his 1966 edition; see if you can find it there.
Of course, the families, not to mention the orders, of both birds and
mammals have changed a whole lot since Romer wrote that.
"changed" is an equivocation, evading the issue of how much disparity there is within the rearranged orders.
Even if you use
the 1966 edition.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials wereeutherians are.
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of
Again, can you back that up with any sort of analysis?
It isn't about me, it's about what systematists have done.
The following book lists four orders of Australian marsupials alone.
_Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Hand, University of South Wales Press
and John Hopkins University Press, 2002.
They are: Daysuromorophia, Notoryctemorphia, Peramelemorpha, and Diprodontia.
Unfortunately, they don't talk about mammals outside Australasia, but the long-obsolete
taxonomy at the back of Carroll's 1988 text lists a traditional "suborder" of Marsupilia,
Caenolestoidea, and the "family" Didelphidae. These are at least as disparate as the
first three Australian orders, and at least as far disparity-wise from each other
and the Australian marsupial orders as they are from each other.
To top it all off, it lists two subfamilies of "Suborder Didelphioidea" that are
now believed to be metatherians outside the crown, Marsupilia: Borhyaenidae and Thylacosmilidae.
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the
"cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
The well-deserved victory* of cladistics had zero effect on the research >> into morphospace.
You are talking off the top of your incorrigibly biased head. Can you point to anything
more deserving than the undeserved victory in the "cow - salmon -lungfish" debate, where "salmon" would have been replaced by "Elpistostege" by
a Romer-savvy paleontologist?
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
Next, you illustrate very well my last clause, except that in this case it is "my way or the highway" where "my" refers to
"I, the illustrious John Harshman, whose unsupported word
is enough for everyone except you."
A dual system would be completely unworkable and pointlessly
complicated. You have to get used to the fact that science has changed
in the last 60 years.
*I can do argument by adjective too.
I'm not *arguing* by adjective, I'm *summarizing* by adjective.
Let's see you back up your wild assertions with reasoning.
I don't think you can. But I can go a lot further with my reasoning about "undeserved" than I did just now with "cow -salmon -lungfish."
And I can provide plenty of reasoning against your benighted "zero effect" comment.
That's your cue to say "Then do so," without providing a smidgen of reasoning* yourself.
*not to be confused with propaganda, or misdirection.
It's very difficult to try to have any sort of reasoned conversation
with you.
I'm disinclined to try at the moment. Maybe later.
On 8/8/23 4:17 PM, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
***********************************************************************8 I've used the two terms interchangeably. In my view they are describingThere has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."
the existence of the same entitiesys or the absence of.
As in a series of transitional forms
fossil links as intermediates between species "A" and to "Z"
Fossil links between the species "A & "C"
The Evolutionary Use of the Terms, Primitive, Intermediate & Lineag
A partially assembled adaptation. Complex adaptations evolve in a series
of smaller steps and these steps along the history of an adaptation’s evolution are called intermediate forms.
intermediate form - Understanding Evolution
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/intermediate-form/>
A fossil that shows an intermediate state between an ancestral trait and that of its later descendants is said to bear a transitional feature.
The fossil record includes many examples of transitional features,
providing an abundance of evidence for evolutionary change over time <https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/intermediate-form/>
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/
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<file:///Users/rdhallman224/Desktop/The%20Evolutionary%20Use%20of%20the%20Terms,%20Primitive,%20Intermediate%20&%20Lineage.html>
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/>>> >> The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:Transitional features - Understanding Evolution
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/>
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost >>>>> all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to >>> me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other?"
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >>> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
Then there is jillery, who found a way to duck questions in a way that SIMULATES
being a worse reasoner than you are. Her last reply to me on this very thread exemplifies it.
On Fri, 11 Aug 2023 12:25:57 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2nyikos@gmail.com> wrote:
Then there is jillery, who found a way to duck questions in a way that SIMULATES
being a worse reasoner than you are. Her last reply to me on this very thread exemplifies it.
Cite and explain, or once again demonstrate your reliance on baseless allusions.
On 8/11/23 9:22 PM, jillery wrote:
On Fri, 11 Aug 2023 12:25:57 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com" <peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
Then there is jillery, who found a way to duck questions in a way that SIMULATES
being a worse reasoner than you are. Her last reply to me on this very thread exemplifies it.
I'm sure it's unintentional.Cite and explain, or once again demonstrate your reliance on baseless allusions.
Rejoice! You only simulate being a worse reasoner. That means you're
really a better reasoner. It's a compliment!
On Friday, August 11, 2023 at 11:16:11 AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/11/23 7:00 AM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 9:46:08 PM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote:
On 8/8/23 6:02 PM, peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
On Tuesday, August 8, 2023 at 4:21:08 PM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron
Dean's "evolutionary path."
almost
The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange: >>>>>>>
On Thursday, August 3, 2023 at 10:16:01?AM UTC-4, John Harshman wrote: >>>>>>>> On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
by using the word "intermediates" rather
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked
quite well.all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these. >>>>>>>>>>This is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture
seems to
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you >>>>>>>> mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It
reference:me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word. >>>>>>>
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that >>>>>>> you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a
paleontologist uses the following definition?
"Could you please point us to a published source where a
"transitional".
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses >>>> any other? "
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and >>>>>> others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in >>>>>> vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >>>>>>>> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ >>>>>>> Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
I will, just as soon as I catch him. I'm afraid he has gone on one of his >>>>> long posting breaks, which can last for a year or more.
Have you seen a post from him since last Thursday?
[That is not a rhetorical question, the obvious stimulus to
"Last Thursdayism" notwithstanding.]
The best I can do is to tell you how I use these terms, and
then recommend that he adopt my criteria when he shows up again.
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then >>>>> taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C. >>>>> Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Funny, you don't make any comment about my uses above. Are you still
looking for an article by a research paleontologist that supports
your idea of "transitional"? Are you still searching your mind for
a way to express your idea of "intermediate"?
Note how my personal definition of "intermediate" is more restrictive
than that of "transitional," while the reverse is the case with you.
My impression is that you think of intermediate *grades,*
such as the "grade" of "subholostean fishes, that makes the "grade"
of "holostean" fishes polyphyletic. Romer talks about this in the
section on "Ray-finned fishes" in the chapter, "Bony fishes" in my 1945 edition.
Harshman may loudly protest that ranks like "family" and "order" are >>>>> arbitrary. But in any one branch of biology, they are fairly consistent. >>>>> For example, Romer wrote in his classic _Vertebrate Paleontology_
that an order of birds is barely as disparate as a family of mammals. >>>>> But within each of these two classes, there is a lot of consistency.
My name has been taken in vain.
"It's all about you, isn't it?"
Did Romer present any sort of analysis
to support his claim,
He gave two examples, just before the section on Palaeognathus birds,
in the chapter on birds, and he ended with the following comment on birds: >>> "anatomically, generic differences are so slight that fossils are very hard to place."
or was it just his intuitive impression? If the
latter, what are such judgments worth?
They are worth a lot more than your caviling here. You have a copy of his >>> 1966 edition; see if you can find it there.
Of course, the families, not to mention the orders, of both birds and
mammals have changed a whole lot since Romer wrote that.
"changed" is an equivocation, evading the issue of how much disparity
there is within the rearranged orders.
Even if you use
the 1966 edition.
Back in Romer's time there was an exception: marsupials wereeutherians are.
squeezed into a single order. Now there are at least four orders
for marsupials. This is much closer to how disparate the orders of
Again, can you back that up with any sort of analysis?
It isn't about me, it's about what systematists have done.
The following book lists four orders of Australian marsupials alone.
_Prehistoric Mammals of Australia and New Guinea_, by John Long, Michael Archer,
Timothy Flannery, and Suzanne Hand, University of South Wales Press
and John Hopkins University Press, 2002.
They are: Daysuromorophia, Notoryctemorphia, Peramelemorpha, and Diprodontia.
Unfortunately, they don't talk about mammals outside Australasia, but the long-obsolete
taxonomy at the back of Carroll's 1988 text lists a traditional "suborder" of Marsupilia,
Caenolestoidea, and the "family" Didelphidae. These are at least as disparate as the
first three Australian orders, and at least as far disparity-wise from each other
and the Australian marsupial orders as they are from each other.
To top it all off, it lists two subfamilies of "Suborder Didelphioidea" that are
now believed to be metatherians outside the crown, Marsupilia:
Borhyaenidae and Thylacosmilidae.
If it hadn't been for the undeserved total victory of cladism in the >>>>> "cladist wars," the Linnean system might have been allowed
to coexist with the cladistic, and by now there might have been
enough research into the concept of morphospace for all this
to have been put on a solid quantitative footing.
The well-deserved victory* of cladistics had zero effect on the research >>>> into morphospace.
You are talking off the top of your incorrigibly biased head. Can you point to anything
more deserving than the undeserved victory in the "cow - salmon -lungfish" >>> debate, where "salmon" would have been replaced by "Elpistostege" by
a Romer-savvy paleontologist?
I've often wanted for there to be a dual system, just like how
the Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system
have peacefully coexisted all these years. But the dominance
of cladists is so complete that it's their way or the highway,.
Next, you illustrate very well my last clause, except that in this case it >>> is "my way or the highway" where "my" refers to
"I, the illustrious John Harshman, whose unsupported word
is enough for everyone except you."
A dual system would be completely unworkable and pointlessly
complicated. You have to get used to the fact that science has changed >>>> in the last 60 years.
*I can do argument by adjective too.
I'm not *arguing* by adjective, I'm *summarizing* by adjective.
Let's see you back up your wild assertions with reasoning.
I don't think you can. But I can go a lot further with my reasoning about >>> "undeserved" than I did just now with "cow -salmon -lungfish."
And I can provide plenty of reasoning against your benighted "zero effect" comment.
That's your cue to say "Then do so," without providing a smidgen of reasoning* yourself.
*not to be confused with propaganda, or misdirection.
It's very difficult to try to have any sort of reasoned conversation
with you.
For you, it is: you are a very poor reasoner. I've lost track of how many times
I've told you that you are "a polemicist first, a propagandist second, and a reasoner
a distant third."
You may comfort yourself, though, that two or three people in a mutual "see no evil, hear no evil,
speak no evil" relationship with you are even worse reasoners than yourself.
Then there is jillery, who found a way to duck questions in a way that SIMULATES
being a worse reasoner than you are. Her last reply to me on this very thread exemplifies it.
ON THE OTHER HAND, there is someone to whom I have been replying on the thread
"Taking the Possibility of an Afterlife Seriously" with whom it is FAR easier to have a reasoned conversation than with you. In my next post to that thread,
I will try to have one with another participant.
I'm disinclined to try at the moment. Maybe later.
Feel free to take as long as you need -- a month or more, if necessary.
Peter Nyikos
I sure am glad you've joined this thread, Ron. As I told jillery,
I was beginning to fear that you were gone until at least several months from now.
On Friday, August 11, 2023 at 1:56:11?PM UTC-4, Ron.Dean wrote:
On 8/8/23 4:17 PM, jillery wrote:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2023 09:08:23 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a great deal of loose talk, some of it aimed at Ron Dean, involving the words "transitional" and "intermediate" and Ron Dean's "evolutionary path."
***********************************************************************8
I've used the two terms interchangeably. In my view they are describing
the existence of the same entitiesys or the absence of.
Then there is the third term, "evolutionary path." I don't see how it relates >to either of the other two terms. I know how I would use it, in a way
that harmonizes with my separate uses of the two terms in a post that
I told jillery about. I've repeated them at the end.
If you can't stay beyond tomorrow, I will even break my
near-sacrosanct policy of not posting on weekends.
Giving you a hand is that important to me.
As in a series of transitional forms
fossil links as intermediates between species "A" and to "Z"
Fossil links between the species "A & "C"
"links" creates the impression of an unbroken ancestor - descendant >relationship between A and C, then C and ... ending in Y ancestral to Z.
[Of course, some or most letters of the alphabet could be skipped.]
For some good examples of what the two articles you link are NOT
talking about, take a look at the tree in Kathleen Hunt's FAQ on the
horse superfamily.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html
Every line segment between any two genera is meant to represent
a direct ancestor -descendant relationship between them.
The Evolutionary Use of the Terms, Primitive, Intermediate & Lineag
A partially assembled adaptation. Complex adaptations evolve in a series
of smaller steps and these steps along the history of an adaptation’s
evolution are called intermediate forms.
intermediate form - Understanding Evolution
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/intermediate-form/>
This talks about adaptations, not species of actual organisms.
"Glossaries" like these are ill equipped to convey unambiguous
information, without concrete examples like in Hunt's FAQ:
actual fossil animals, starting in *Hyracotherium*(*Eohippus*) and ending in *Equus*,
the modern horses, asses and zebras.
A fossil that shows an intermediate state between an ancestral trait and
that of its later descendants is said to bear a transitional feature.
Individual features are of very little help when trying to find evolutionary >paths, except in families like the horse family [and VERY few other families!] >What you were asking for is evolutionary paths linking whole PHYLA to
each other. It is the lack of these that make the Cambrian Explosion
such a big mystery.
The fossil record includes many examples of transitional features,
providing an abundance of evidence for evolutionary change over time
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/intermediate-form/>
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/
Here, at least, it gives a few examples from the horse family and
on feature from the whale suborder. But note: there is not a
single direct line descent depicted. There is no real hint that
the other features that separate Eohippus from Equus are also
in harmony with the single feature, "Number of toes" or the sizes
of individual toes.
No wonder some creationists still deny that there is
anything convincing about horse evolution!
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<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/>>> >> >> The matter started moving towards a climax in the following exchange:Transitional features - Understanding Evolution
<https://evolution.berkeley.edu/lines-of-evidence/transitional-features/>
On 8/2/23 10:59 PM, Ron Dean wrote:
peter2...@gmail.com wrote:
[I wrote the following to you:]
by using the word "intermediates" ratherThis is not an uncommon word, and I think it fits the picture quite well.
than the much more ambiguous "transitionals," you've outflanked almost
all the criticism that has been leveled at comments like these.
[Harshman responded to you thus:]
I don't see the difference. When you say "intermediates" what do you
mean, and how does that meaning differ from "transitionals"? It seems to
me that the former is a weaker claim,
This "seems to" is null and void without you defining either word.
In that Szostak thread, you gave a definition of "transitional" that
you alleged to be the one paleontologists use. I asked you for a reference:
"Could you please point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses the following definition?
You ducked the question with:
"Can you point us to a published source where a paleontologist uses any other?"
I have never seen ANY paleontologist give a definition of the word "transitional".
HAVE YOU?
and thus the claim that there are
none is easier to refute. There are in fact a number of intermediates, >> >>> which you have consistently ignored.
This put-down is unfair and unjust until you give your idea of
what "intermediates" means to you.
[end of excerpt]
from
https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/0XgjzJpuiMA/m/tODWAgNrAAAJ
Re: EVIDENCE OF DESIGN IN NATURE?
The next steps will be documented in later posts to this thread.
It was R.Dean who introduced both terms into various topics. I and
others have repeatedly asked him to explain what he means by them, in
vain. Why don't you encourage him to do so?
Well, now you've made a stab at it, Ron, but I highly recommend that you start talking
about "transitional species" and "intermediate species", and I further recommend that you
look at what I wrote to jillery:
When I say taxon B is intermediate between taxon A and taxon C,
I mean that some species in taxon A is directly ancestral
to some species in taxon B, which in turn is directly ancestral
to all of taxon C.
When I say taxon B is transitional between taxon A and taxon C,
I no longer mean to imply direct descent. What I do mean depends
on the ranks of the taxa. For instance, if taxon C is a family, then
taxon B should be in the same family as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
Or if taxon C is an order, then taxon B should be in the same order
as a direct ancestor of taxon C.
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