(The Hebrew word "dag" meaning "sea creature" is translated as "fish" but doesn't *mean* "fish" the way English-speaking biologists today mean "fish" because none of those biologists were born yet Hell "fish" doesn't really mean that either, hence "shellfish")
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @6502_ftw
Even the conventional modern definition of fish is polyphyletic and therefore not particularly useful to biologists, isn't it?
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes -
Replying to @Random832 @6502_ftw
The word "fish" is *paraphyletic*, which isn't as bad as being polyphyletic It's an otherwise monophyletic group that excludes a subset within it - "fish" is all vertebrates excluding tetrapods
5 replies 1 retweet 16 likes -
There's a lot of such groups - "monkeys" is all primates excluding apes, "dinosaurs", in the classic sense, is all saurians with erect limbs that aren't birds, the way most people say "animals" means all animals that aren't humans
2 replies 1 retweet 10 likes -
The whole "progress" model of evolution is ALL ABOUT this concept - the idea that plants and animals "emerged from" primordial life, that land animals "emerged from" fish, that true apes "emerged from" monkeys and we "emerged from" them
1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes -
And so the coining of the term "paraphyletic group" was a self-conscious attack on this POV, which people now consider misleading and damaging in its triumphalism There is no objective reason to say one branch did the "emerging" and left all the others "behind"
2 replies 1 retweet 17 likes -
Which leads to the idea of being "more evolved" or "less evolved", like it's a contest, like everything isn't evolving all the time Like humans "emerging from" apes means we're the only ones who figured out what we were meant to be and gorillas just haven't graduated
3 replies 1 retweet 22 likes -
Which is why people will insist on redefining the terms to be monophyletic, to make the point, even though it sounds weird to some people Humans *are* apes and apes *are* monkeys
1 reply 1 retweet 15 likes -
Birds *are* dinosaurs (rather than this misleading idea "dinosaurs became birds to avoid extinction, like they held a meeting) And hence "land animals" (tetrapods) *are* fish, it's not like "moving to the land" has any objective meaning in evolutionary terms
4 replies 1 retweet 18 likes -
After all the whales and dolphins and shit did in fact move back so then by the rules do they get to be fish again Who decides
1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
So Stephen Fry is actually wrong here The "official definition" of "fish" is not the "polyphyletic" one - polyphyletic is a big word that just means "not cladistically based at all" "Anything that lives in the water" would be a "polyphyletic" definition of "fish"
-
-
And the whole thing is that biologists really try to avoid those because from an evolutionary standpoint they don't tell you anything Bees, bats, and birds all have wings they use to fly but they don't have anything in particular in common besides that so why make it a category
3 replies 1 retweet 9 likes - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.