From cowan@ccil.org Mon Jul 16 18:55:41 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@mercury.ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 17 Jul 2001 01:55:41 -0000 Received: (qmail 73036 invoked from network); 17 Jul 2001 01:55:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 17 Jul 2001 01:55:41 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta3 with SMTP; 17 Jul 2001 01:55:41 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.12 #1 (Debian)) id 15MK5G-0006kK-00; Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:55:34 -0400 Subject: Re: [lojban] Taxonomy In-Reply-To: <20010716174037.P27920@digitalkingdom.org> from Robin Lee Powell at "Jul 16, 2001 05:40:37 pm" To: Robin Lee Powell Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 21:55:34 -0400 (EDT) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL66 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: X-eGroups-From: John Cowan From: John Cowan Robin Lee Powell scripsit: > Pardon my ignorance, but what's a cladist? A person who, given the set {cow, lungfish, salmon}, groups it {{cow, lungfish}, salmon}. Cladists group species solely on the presence of shared characteristics present solely in a particular group of organisms and not in their ancestors or sibling species. In this case, cows have lungs and so do lungfish, so they are more closely related to each other than to the salmon, which has a swim bladder. (If salmon lack swim bladders, substitute some other ordinary fish.) Traditionalists say that a lungfish is a fish and so is a salmon, so they group more closely with each other than with the cow. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore --Douglas Hofstadter