just-shower-thoughts
Mammals both produce milk and have hair. Ergo, a coconut is a mammal.
maliwanhellfires
I know you’re being facetious, but this is an actual issue with morphology-based phylogeny.
castiel-for-king
*leans over and whispers to person beside me* what are they talking about
sonneillonv
*leans over and whispers back* Human ability to quantify and categorize natural phenomena is sketchy at best and wildly misleading at worst
nonlinear-nonsubjective
consider the coconut
bemusedlybespectacled
this reminds me of that time Plato defined humans as “featherless bipeds” and Diogenes ran in with a plucked chicken screaming “BEHOLD A MAN!”
erotic-yoddeling
i love how you say “it reminds me of that time” like you were there.
heartgemsona
listen if an immortal feels brave and supported enough to come out we should respect them
baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
This post is a journey
virtuous-thing
1 Reblog = 1 Respect
dovewithscales
I maintain that humans started attempting classify animals, and some god or another made the platypus, and is still laughing.
messy-scandinoodle
Zeus: *hits joint* okay so like. It’s gonna have a duck bill right. But an otter body okay? And then a beaver tail. It’s a mammal. But. It lays eggs!
Hades: wait wait dude. Give it. Give it poison. Make it poisonous
Athena: You mean venomous, and make sure the eggs have both reptile and bird traits.
Hermes: *takes the joint* Give it extra senses.
Poseidon: It should be aquatic.
hyratel
I MEAN where’s the lie
Demeter: … And where exactly do you expect me to put this?
Everyone: Australia.
alex51324
*leans over and whispers back* Human ability to quantify and categorize natural phenomena is sketchy at best and wildly misleading at worst
Yes, but see, the thing is, all attempts at taxonomy, from Aristotle on down, are aimed at “carving nature at the joints,” or separating organisms into categories that really exist, independently of our describing them. Which, in turn, is predicated on the assumption that nature has joints, which, spoiler alert, it fucking doesn’t.
The reason why the platypus is so shitty at being a mammal is that mammals don’t exist, at least not in the way platypuses do. A platypus is a thing that can be observed, and–even more importantly– exists whether any human being has ever observed it or not*. A mammal, on the other hand, is a tool of thought–a thing that we invented in order to help us understand why some organisms are more alike than others, and to help us make predictions about organisms that are new to us.
And it’s a pretty good tool of thought–the whole mammal/bird/reptile/fish system is a good set of tools for understanding “animals that have backbones” (another tool of thought!). The way you can tell it’s a good tool is that most animals with backbones fit into exactly one of the categories, and because the divisions it creates usually align with clusters of characteristics that we consider important**.
But it does break down a bit at the margins–when we’re discussing our friend the platypus, for instance, or when we’re trying to decide whether dinosaurs were “really” birds or “really” reptiles–and the reason that happens is not because we don’t understand enough about platypuses (or dinosaurs) to determine where they “really” belong, but because we’re attempting to impose sharp distinctions on a thing that doesn’t actually have them. We’re trying to carve nature up at the joints, like we’re parting out a whole chicken, but nature isn’t a chicken, and it doesn’t have joints.
(*Well, sort of. A specific, individual platypus is a thing that exists. “Platypus,” as a species, is also a tool of thought (as is “dog,” or “cat” or “human,” and so on), but it’s a much more specific tool of thought. But all it would take to make that tool of thought break down at the edges is for us to discover something that has all the features of a platypus except one. (Any one.) You can watch this happen in the scientific journals, with smaller/more obscure/less charismatic species, when scientists debate whether a recently-described beetle, brine shrimp, or slime mold is “really” a new species, or just a variation on one we already knew about. But “which is it really” is the wrong question; the right question is “what can we understand if we think about it as a new type of thing? What can we understand if we think about it as a variation on a type of thing we already know?”)
(**Which characteristics are important is, of course, highly context-dependent. What other tools for thinking about animals are you familiar with? What characteristics are important in those systems?)
