I think that you’re not even grasping the concept of nested hierarchy.
No, Linnean classifications with paraphyletic or polyphyletic groups are still nested hierarchy. What he doesn’t grasp is cladistic classification.
I know that. I am hypothesizing that Eddie doesn’t.
Ah, here’s another: Cracraft J, Donoghue MJ (eds.). Assembling the Tree of Life. Oxford, 2004. (Appears in a few cladogram labels, e.g. Figs. 23.1, 24.1.) These are just books I happen to own that I thought of looking in. There are of course plenty that I don’t own, plus journal articles that I haven’t bothered to look up. I imagine that most biology textbooks, at least at the college level and published in the present century, use modern classifications too, but I don’t have any to look at.
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Comedy gold.
You should be aware that, based on recent history, “Eddie” will only consider his question answered if you provide a specific quote from one of Shubin’s where Shubin says, verbatim, “Whales belong to the Osteichthyes”. Anything else, such as what you have provided above, will be consider dodging his question and he will declare victory.
And, of course, simply doing a quick Google search is beyond him.
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That’s a nice one. Janvier was the world’s leading expert on Paleozoic fish at the time.
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Just to pile on, this is from the popular textbook Vertebrate Life by Pough, Janis and Heiser, 8th edition, 2009. Anyone reading this who is unfamiliar with cladistics should take particular note of the helpful caption, to prevent any ambiguity about or confusion over what falls within Osteichthyes.
I will add that I have left very specific instructions with my family that if I ever believe myself to be in possession of a serious and worthwhile critique of an entire scientific discipline but fail to know basic terminology and facts (“All metallurgy is wrong! Stephen Meyer says so! What? You say copper is a metal? Are you sure that other metallurgists think so, or is that your own perversity speaking?”) I am to be euthanized.
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As is usually the case here when Mercer disagrees with Harshman, Harshman is correct and Mercer incorrect.
I do understand the concept of nested hierarchy, but have never mastered cladistic classification, the older method of classification being the one that I learned.
I have since found the specific source of my difficulty: the ambiguity of the term Osteichthyes. I found the answer in The Encyclopedia of Evolution, vol. 1, p. 157, in a nice framed quotation from Harold N. Bryant, who (among other things) writes:
“Clade Osteichthyes has a much increased membership because, unlike class Osteichthyes, it includes not only the bony fishes, but also their descendants, the tetrapods.” (emphasis added)
As soon as I read this, I realized the cause in the communications blockage. When I heard the word Osteichthyes, I immediately thought of class Osteichthyes (because I was in the habit of using the older scheme), whereas John Harshman was referring to the clade Osteichthyes. Given the meaning of the word that I was employing, my confusion and my question were understandable.
Two further points:
First, dialogical. Had John Harshman said at the outset, a few days ago when I first questioned his statement, “Your question shows that you are thinking of the class, whereas I am talking about the clade,” I could have then sorted out his position; but he chose to respond with belittlement instead of friendly instruction.
Second, let’s suppose for the sake of argument that I, repenting in sackcloth and ashes for adhering to an older system, vow always to use cladistic classification in the future. I would still object to John Harshman’s original statement. His original statement was that he counted whales as “fish”, because they belonged to Osteichthyes. That choice of words was confusing. “Fish” is not a scientific term, and its meaning in everyday English is such that calling whales “fish” is bound to produced confusion. If he had said, “I would not call whales ‘fish’, but I would call them “osteichthyians”, because they belong to the clade Osteichthyes,” and thus they are at least the descendants of ancient bony fish," he could have averted any misunderstanding.
Addendum to the second point: If every creature in the clade Osteichthyes is to be called a “fish”, merely because it belongs to that clade, then, since all mammals belong to that clade, it follows that antelopes, elephants, and bats should also all be called “fish”. For that matter, we could say that every time a detective found a dead body with a bullet in the back of its skull, he should be on the lookout for the “fish” that committed the murder. Obviously, this sweeping usage makes the term “fish” pretty useless.
Speaking of comedy gold, don’t forget that @Eddie just learned that Pubmed is free (it has been for decades) in 2020:
I’ve just been told bmeone I know that the PubMed index is free and open to the public. I didn’t know that before. I assumed it would be accessible only through university libraries…
So it seems reasonable to infer that Eddie, during all of his decades of Culture Warrioring, has never bothered to click on any of the many Pubmed links that have been provided to him.
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Actually, since I learned it was free, courtesy of the “kindness” of certain people here, I have looked up links often.
But not before. Your precious and false assumption protected you from the horrible evidence, like the fact that ribozymes are RNAs and that the center of protein synthesis is a ribozyme.
So, what do you think you have learned since your alleged epiphany?
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Well, Eddie didn’t quite stop digging, but at least he substituted a trowel for his shovel. Eddie, you have agreed that you don’t understand cladistic classification, but you have demonstrated that your lack of understanding goes deeper than you suppose. I would explain further but my patience has quite worn away.
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The only things you need to “explain further” are:
1-- why you called whales “fish” rather than Osteichthyes, when “fish” is materially misleading to laymen and even to most scientists (other than the tiny number who specialize in your area – and you can’t produce even one of those who call whales “fish”);
2-- why, if you insist that whales are “fish”, you don’t equally insist that bats and elephants and people are “fish.”
If you were merely speaking playfully, to make a point about the evolutionary relationship of all mammals to bony fish, and if you had said that right away, then I would have had no problem and would have dropped the topic. But when asked, you doubled down in seriousness of tone, and that’s why you got the set of questions that you got. And of course, “I know more than you about phylogeny” does not deal at all with the two points raised above, but if you enjoy saying that over and over again, don’t let me stop you.
I’m sure Neil Shubin would agree with me that bananas are yellow. But I can’t provide a page number where he says this in Your Inner Fish.
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Though it’s hard to judge phenotype from a forum post, I think we can safely say that your eyes are brown.
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Sure, “Eddie”, sure. Even though I cannot recall you ever using the term “Osteichthyes” in any sense on this forum, it is very likely that you are “in the habit” of using it on a daily basis in your conversations with friends, family and acquaintances.
Riiight…
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He did say that right away - it’s implicit in his original comment.
That you failed to notice is understandable. That you then insisted he was at variance with all other biologists, rather than asking for clarification, was not.
Who says he doesn’t?
Since catsandratsandelephants also belong to Sarcopterygii, Osteichthyes, and Craniata, I’d be very surprised if he didn’t equally say that they are ‘fish’ in the same way that whales are.
Even after having (supposedly) worked out where you went wrong, you have immediately made exactly the same mistake.
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Let’s remember that the book from which “Eddie” was requesting a quote is entitled Your Inner Fish (bold added).
Does “Eddie” think Shubin wrote that book for salmon and sardines to read?
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Such is the joy of living in a world where millennia old colloquial paraphyletic terms are used alongside scientific monophyletic terms.
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Heck, I can, and from only searching this forum. In a bit of discussion concerning whether we are monkeys/primates/mammals/amniotes/tetrapods/fish, here’s Joe Felsenstein responding to John Harshman:
But while that’s the only example that comes to mind, and I am vastly too lazy to go digging through ancient threads I’ve been involved in elsewhere to find and cite them all, I am sure I have seen the same tack taken by multiple others.
To me, the notion that this is in any way strange to anyone who has taken the trouble to engage, and make favorable comment upon, the IDC literature is completely bizarre. Surely it is important, before taking on board a wholesale critique of an entire scientific discipline, to have at least a passing familiarity with current views and concepts within that discipline.
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