Did you say Evolution doesn't teach man evolved from ape?

[Aron-Ra]

Since I don't agree that paraphyly is unacceptable, I'm not in a position to speculate as to why it would be. Paraphyly isn't meant to reflect polyphyletic characteristics though. It is meant to reflect the presence of characteristics (either ancestral or derived) that aren't present in the rest of the clade. Cladistics ignores such characters, so cladistics ignores biological information (and in the case of speciation, biological relationships) to make classification easier.

Whoa whoa whoa! No no no!
Far from ignoring anything, I’ve been demanding from the beginning that you cough up even one generic character common to all monkeys that isn’t found in any ape. SLP finally admitted he couldn’t do it, but you’re still trying to pretend you can. I demand you reveal whatever characters in whatever classes you think I’m ignoring. I have a laundry list of characters you’re ignoring though. Things like what constitutes an stegocephalian, tetrapod, or anthracosaur, and how these are largely retained even by descendant groups (like horses, snakes, and cetaceans) who’ve reduced or lost only the most obvious of that collection, but retain all the rest identifying their positions still within each of those clades. Linnaean classification ignores biological information, and does so deliberately. In fact, at the PhyloCode symposium, Richard Brummitt actually shouldn’t reflect evolutionary relationships at all. Instead, he said we needed two systems; he promoted his beloved Linnaean system for classification, but he insisted that it is incompatible with the evolutionary phylogenetic scheme, and shouldn’t be used to indicate evolutionary relationships.

Assuming apes evolved from monkeys,

That’s funny. You say that as if there was still some other option, as if you didn’t already know that every single proposed ancestor of Hominoids wasn’t described as a monkey by scientists in this field.

the apes did indeed become so derived that they formed another group (which is monophyletic), thereby making monkeys paraphyletic.

No sir. That would be no different than claiming “mammal” was paraphyletic just because we’re so derived. It doesn’t make any sense and there’s no justification for it in either case. Monkeys (anthropoidea) is no less monophyletic than Theria.

I'm not aware offhand of any common characteristics of greater monkeys (by which I assume you mean Simiiformes) that evolved independently, except possibly for tricolor vision. I don't agree that means they are better classified as a monophyletic group, and even if I did agree it wouldn't matter, since they are not so classified.

Yes they are. Have we not clarified this enough by now? The Simiiformes taxon is the exact same thing as the anthropoid clade. Both of them monophyletic.

You hadn’t “explained” that you always make clear to others that you are speaking non-paraphyletically.

Yes I did -frequently.

Such as?

What do you mean, "such as"? This question doesn't make any sense. Don't you bother to even read what you're replying to?
Oh yeah, I forgot. You already told me you don't. So I suppose I should answer this comment the way I've answser most of your comments in this thread: Go back and read the whole post this time.

You want me to show you again what I’ve already shown you before.
Why should I show you again, what I know you’ll only ignore?

I’m concerned that you are damaging the general acceptance of evolution by suggesting there is a scientific consensus that humans are monkeys, when in fact there isn’t.

I have never made that argument. I've never argued for a consensus of any kind.

Then why did you claim in post 327 that “paraphyly is not acceptible in taxonomy anymore”? Are you trying to claim it’s unacceptable even though many or most taxonomists accept it?

No, I’m claiming its unacceptible because many or most taxonomists say its unacceptible. Honestly, if I hadn’t happened across those comments from Richard Brummitt, I wouldn’t have guessed that there were still people like you out there. And you're fortunate that I found his treatise, alleging all the absurd things that he does, otherwise I would have accused you of trolling, and of being intentionally absurd. I don't know. Maybe that's what he was doing too. But even in Brummitt's address to the PhyloCode symposium, he pleaded for his fellow taxonomists to reverse their current stance by making paraphyletic taxa acceptible, where at present, he said, they are not acceptible, and particularly not in such strict scientific literature as a doctoral thesis. You’ll love his reasoning too. He wants paraphyletic groups because “people like them”, “its tradition”, and “old habits die hard”. Real scientific there. He also described paraphyletic taxa as evolutionary leftovers. If that ain’t gradistic thinking, what is?

I don't mean humans are monkeys according to ..anyone. I mean humans are demonstrably monkeys whether anyone wants to admit that or not. It appears to be, regardless whether you're referring to the Linnaean or phylogenetic systems, that humans are monkeys by definition. But more importantly, they are monkeys by derivation -regardless what system you use or what the "accepted standard" is, or what the 'authority consensus" happens to be.

Your argument above relies on the existence of commonly held definitions of atheism, religion, faith, etc. You’re saying they may not claim to be a religion, but they meet the accepted definition so that means they are one anyway. The claim only carries weight for people who agree with you regarding those definitions.

The only reason the Buddhists were frustrated with me was they had no choice but to accept those definitions. What choice did they have?

Your argument about monkeys relies on the same kind of thing: in this case the idea that a taxonomic group must be monophyletic to be valid. But there’s no support for that – it’s a matter of opinion – and one that most taxonomists probably do not share.

yes, they do. Robert DeFilipps of the SmithsonianMuseum wrote that this symposium was meant to determine whether the Linnaean system still works, and what had to be done salvage it. The consensus he reported was that the Linnaean system required “a serious overhaul that takes into consideration modern concepts of evolution and phylogeny" which it currently does not, and if Brummitt has his way, it never will.

Mine is the opinion of most taxonomists. But as I said, it doesn’t matter what anyone’s opinion is; there is objective criteria to examine here, criteria you persistently dismiss –always pleading for an argument from authority instead.

 

[Aron-Ra]

There are places in Idaho where you can go due west and lose an hour (see here) (so you’d go from 3:00 to 4:00 for instance). This despite the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Shall I call up the authorities and let them know their system is objectively wrong, since at any one time the sun will always be closer to setting as viewed from the east than it is as viewed from the west? I suspect they’d tell me they don’t care. Shall I instead just start telling everyone I meet in the area that it’s really 3:00 and not 4:00? Let’s hope no one is foolish enough to believe me if I do.

You are tenaceous. I’ll give you that. I thought that once we had established what a monkey is, the total tally of characters which define them all collectively, -it would be easy enough to show you that every one of those characters we possess as well, -that you can’t describe all of them without describing humans and other apes at the same time. All the same reasons humans were first and finally classified as apes are the same reasons that define us as monkeys too. That should have settled things right there. But your definitions are a double-standard, ignoring everything that a monkey is. Or rather, once you’ve identified something as a monkey, and then try to determine what kind of monkey it is, you think you can still select “not a monkey” as one of those options.

I thought it would be a simple thing to show that apes are a subset of monkeys rather than a sister group, especially since you're incapable of separating their lineage into a separate group from ours either morphologically or genetically. But with no basis at all to defend your actions, you acted as though that didn’t matter, as if you could still pretend they were all part of a sister clade, which you initially claimed, and then tried to say you didn’t. So there’s no accountability with you so far, which makes it impossible to reason with you.

I thought that once we had proved that apes evolved from monkeys, contrary to the claims of those whom you follow, then the issue would be settled again, especially when your only ally conceded that point. You didn’t notice that because you considered his concession to have countered my argument somehow. But where he initially claimed that “apes were no more descended from monkeys than ostriches were descended from sparrows”, he finally did admit (to his credit) that it is cladistically correct to classify all anthropoids, including each of the specific hominoid ancestors yet named, and indeed even ourselves -as monkeys. Without flinching, you then cited another of your authorities in primatology as distancing non-hominoid monkeys on their lack of self awareness -until I showed how miserably mistaken your authority was, an inexcuseable error for someone in his position. Yet even without the authority opinions you keep pleading for, you still hold out that there must be some way to deny your monkeyhood somehow.

You claim to support evolution, going on and on about properly representing that. But you object to phylogeny having any determinant value, and instead restrict everything to characters only, at least those remaining characters that you haven’t already subjectively dismissed as meaningless to your perspective. The problem with that of course is that it permits a human with a birth defect not to be considered a human anymore. Logically, all of that should have settled the dispute, but you rejected it too without concession and without consideration.

You asked for scientists using the word “monkey” to describe Hominoid ancestors. I gave you that for every single instance. But that didn’t matter. You asked me for scientists describing people as monkeys, and even though colloquial terms wouldn’t be proper scientific terminology even from my perspective, I still gave you at least a few examples of that –albeit from public media addressing a colloquial audience. But satisfying that request wasn’t good enough either. Why propose challenges if meeting those challenges only prompts your goal posts to be moved? And why do you still refuse to address any of the questions, challenges or evidence I show you?

Your only motive in this appears to be to stand your ground and show that I cannot change your mind no matter what. Because you’ve been shown to be nothing but wrong on most of your arguments, but that doesn't seem to concern you. In fact, you even brag about how well you think you're doing! Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve managed to hold out for so long with nothing or no one to support your position. It reminds me of a heroic battle I saw in a movie once.

But alas, I'm afraid I must concede. You win. I've failed to pursuade you on any point no matter how solidly supported, nor however clearly you were in error. Your stoic desire to ignore all that I say far exceeds my desire to keep repeating it. And I really have no more time to beat my head against your wall. До свидания.

 

[Lilandra]

You asked for scientists using the word “monkey” to describe Hominoid ancestors. I gave you that for every single instance. But that didn’t matter. You asked me for scientists describing people as monkeys, and even though colloquial terms wouldn’t be proper scientific terminology even from my perspective, I still gave you at least a few examples of that –albeit from public media addressing a colloquial audience. But satisfying that request wasn’t good enough either. Why propose challenges if meeting those challenges only prompts your goal posts to be moved? And why do you still refuse to address any of the questions, challenges or evidence I show you?

I agree Cibryn. Ra, Ra, Ra, Sis, Boom Ba!
(Just playin' my assigned role)

In seriousness, I thank you for an enriching discussion. It was certainly more profitable than the ones I have been having here lately.

They go kinda like this:
me: Detailed response

them:You are a pawn of atheists promoting their theory.

or​

them: What did Jesus say about evolution?​

There was that one SLP response:​

SLP: You agree with me but you are still supporting him. Why?​

At least, you put some thought into your posts. Although I don't agree with you.​

So even if you aren't persuaded by monophyly or cladistics, it isn't a total wash.​

Coincidentally, I am skinning out (just visited Lincoln, NM, hangout of Billy the Kid) as well. My internet will be down next week. If the discussion is still going on when I get back, I may rejoin it.​

​

 

[Cirbryn]

You'll have to forgive me if at times I seem dense. I have only taken in interest in learning more about Biology in the past year and a half after getting whupped (sp.)as an OEC here. Whatever new thing I learn about I am grateful for.

No problem at all, particularly since you haven’t seemed dense. I hope you’ll likewise forgive me if I miscalculate how much you already know and end up providing too much or too little info, like I’m possibly about to do here as a follow up to your question about independently evolved characteristics in monkeys. (This helps me to get things straight in my head as well):

A paraphyletic group is a group that doesn’t include all the descendants of all the members. The excluded descendants might either be monophyletic (if they were put in their own independent group), or else they could be part of a polyphyletic group (if they were placed into an unrelated group). Both cladistic and Linnaean systems try to avoid polyphyly, but sometimes groups get placed with unrelated groups anyway because they independently evolve characteristics that make them look as if they’d evolved as part of the unrelated group.

Speciation always makes the ancestral species paraphyletic because, after the speciation event, the ancestral species becomes a group that doesn’t include all the desendants of all the members. The Linnaean system allows paraphyly, so this isn’t a problem for it, but purely cladistic systems such as the PhyloCode do not allow paraphyly, so species have to be redefined under such systems to allow descendant species to be grouped with ancestral species. This completely does away with the idea that a species is defined by the amount of interbreeding among its members.

I am not certain from what I understand of the Phylocode that daughter groups are lost to monophyly.

This is Wiki's description...

PhyloCode is a draft for a formal set of rules governing phylogeneticnomenclature. Its current version is specifically designed to regulate the naming of clades, which do not have set ranks, unlike conventional Linnaean taxonomy.
In PhyloCode, a clade name may be defined in one of the following manners (not exhaustive):

1. Node-based: "the least inclusive clade containing the species or organisms A, B, ..."
2. Branch-based: "the clade consisting of A and all organisms or species that share a more recent common ancestor with A than with Z"
3. Apomorphy-based: "the clade stemming from the first organism or species to possess the apomorphy (unique character) M as inherited by A"

From what I see it looks as though there are different groupings or clusters to choose in constructing a cladogram. Node based looks to be comprised of species.

Those are the three points at which one can define the base of a particular clade. But regardless of where the base is, a clade has to include all the descendants because all clades are monophyletic. If species A evolves from species B, then A is a descendant of B and must still be considered a part of B from a cladistic point of view, depite the fact that A and B are no longer interbreeding and are evolving separately.

But this cladogram names the species of Brown bear. The info is still there.

The cladogram does name both the polar bear and the various subclades of brown bear (not species – there’s only one species of brown bear). But there’s nothing in the cladogram to indicate the polar bear is a separate species (other than the name, which comes from the Linnaean system). Cladograms show clades, and clades are monophyletic. So if we didn’t know there was anything special about the name, we’d conclude from the cladogram that polar bears were a type of brown bear - just a minor subgroup of one of the six intraspecific brown bear clades. Every new species starts out that way – a descendant of a particular subgroup of another species.

This is interesting because it would seem that polar bears are not that distantly related from brown bears to be considered paraphyletic.
Check this story out...

This is a grizzly/polar hybrid shot in Canada in May. There had been rumored sightings of strange looking hybrids but this is the first confirmed hybrid in the wild. They had been paired in zoos before with fertile offspring. I think people were not certain whether the 2 would still mate in the wild because of speciation and they occupy different ecological niches.

But there you are the cladogram is reflecting brown bear relationships.

The cladogram reflects an important part of brown bear relationships, and that’s why such cladograms are useful. But using them and basing your entire taxonomic system on them are two different things. An important part of the relationship between polar bears and brown bears is that they are separate species. The fact that they very occasionally interbreed in the wild doesn’t change that. Many species occasionally interbreed, particularly as their life histories get more and more disrupted by humans. They remain separate species despite the rare instances of interbreeding because the actual amount of gene flow between them remains extremely low. A change in the genome of one of the six brown bear clades has a decent chance of getting communicated to another brown bear clade, but would be extemely unlikely to be communicated to polar bears. A purely cladistic system wouldn’t reflect this, but the Linnaean system does.

But why it an either/or situation? Don't most organisms still share a percentage of nuclear DNA similarity even if mtDNA traceability disapears?

They do, and some portions of the nuclear DNA change more slowly than others, so genetic comparisons are an excellent means of establishing the ancestry of even very distantly related groups, if you know what part of the genome to look at. But again, that’s just some of the information that is out there. Additional information might involve the fact that a particular group constitutes a species and another doesn’t, or that an ancestral group of related species shared a particular set of characteristics that weren’t passed on to their descendants. By avoiding polyphyly but allowing for the possibility of paraphyly, the Linnaean system can reflect both the majority of the cladistic information about ancestry, and the additional information about common characteristics as well.

 

[Lilandra]

My internet is down tomorrow, so if I don't respond to something, it ain't because I'm yellar.

I briefly want to clarify what the position is we are going on about,

Human ancestry with monkey conversations often proceed in a downhill manner like this...

YEC declares: Did you say that Evolution teaches man evolved from an ape?

Cladist: Yes in fact humans are still apes by the defining characteristics of all apes.

YEC: Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?

Cladist: No, but you are a monkey as well as an ape. I mean that as a compliment. Monkeys Rawk!!!( maybe not the last part)

Cladist clarifies: The reason why humans share characteristics with other monkeys is because they inherited these characteristics from our common ancestor, a monkey.

I don't think that misrepresents evolutionary relationships to nonscientists at all.

No problem at all, particularly since you haven’t seemed dense. I hope you’ll likewise forgive me if I miscalculate how much you already know and end up providing too much or too little info, like I’m possibly about to do here as a follow up to your question about independently evolved characteristics in monkeys. (This helps me to get things straight in my head as well)

Thank you for not being snobby about it. I think Aron gets a little frustrated when he is in a discussion where someone will not concede a point. Especially when he is right about something. He is the take your medicine type. Only he means well and he is honestly trying to help. Also, people kinda get that way here with the lack of accountability of some of the Creationists.

I know that I didn't want to admit common ancestry at first. So this approach worked with me.

Anyhow back to the discussion.

A paraphyletic group is a group that doesn’t include all the descendants of all the members. The excluded descendants might either be monophyletic (if they were put in their own independent group), or else they could be part of a polyphyletic group (if they were placed into an unrelated group). Both cladistic and Linnaean systems try to avoid polyphyly, but sometimes groups get placed with unrelated groups anyway because they independently evolve characteristics that make them look as if they’d evolved as part of the unrelated group.

But, polyphyletic groups are often corrected. I think this is the best approach to improve our understanding.

Speciation always makes the ancestral species paraphyletic because, after the speciation event, the ancestral species becomes a group that doesn’t include all the desendants of all the members. The Linnaean system allows paraphyly, so this isn’t a problem for it, but purely cladistic systems such as the PhyloCode do not allow paraphyly, so species have to be redefined under such systems to allow descendant species to be grouped with ancestral species. This completely does away with the idea that a species is defined by the amount of interbreeding among its members.

I don't see it that way. I see Cladistics as the big picture. Speciation is the picture within the picture or the system. A lot of nature's systems are like that. Small systems within a larger system. Does Earth disapear when you talk about parallel universes? You can zoom in and out within a system. In fact, understanding the pattern helps you to better understand its parts.

The cladogram reflects an important part of brown bear relationships, and that’s why such cladograms are useful. But using them and basing your entire taxonomic system on them are two different things. An important part of the relationship between polar bears and brown bears is that they are separate species. The fact that they very occasionally interbreed in the wild doesn’t change that. Many species occasionally interbreed, particularly as their life histories get more and more disrupted by humans. They remain separate species despite the rare instances of interbreeding because the actual amount of gene flow between them remains extremely low. A change in the genome of one of the six brown bear clades has a decent chance of getting communicated to another brown bear clade, but would be extemely unlikely to be communicated to polar bears. A purely cladistic system wouldn’t reflect this, but the Linnaean system does.

An important part in understanding the polar bear as a species is understanding its relationship with other bears. If a YEC says...

YEC: But it is still a bear.
Cladist: Of course it is a bear it is related to other bears. Of course it is a carnivore(miacis?) it is related to other mammalian carnivores. Of course it is a mammal...etc.

They do, and some portions of the nuclear DNA change more slowly than others, so genetic comparisons are an excellent means of establishing the ancestry of even very distantly related groups, if you know what part of the genome to look at. But again, that’s just some of the information that is out there. Additional information might involve the fact that a particular group constitutes a species and another doesn’t, or that an ancestral group of related species shared a particular set of characteristics that weren’t passed on to their descendants. By avoiding polyphyly but allowing for the possibility of paraphyly, the Linnaean system can reflect both the majority of the cladistic information about ancestry, and the additional information about common characteristics as well.

Most people understand from the context whether you are talking about a common ancestor or the species itself.

 

[Lilandra]

But again, that’s just some of the information that is out there. Additional information might involve the fact that a particular group constitutes a species and another doesn’t, or that an ancestral group of related species shared a particular set of characteristics that weren’t passed on to their descendants. By avoiding polyphyly but allowing for the possibility of paraphyly, the Linnaean system can reflect both the majority of the cladistic information about ancestry, and the additional information about common characteristics as well.

Speaking of misindentification in regards to traditional taxonomy and cladistics. I would think that a list of a species parent clades is more specific than creating a paraphyletic group that includes them.

Coincidentally, I happened to take a picture of a great example of convergent evolution this morning. I've attached a picture of a Texas Horned Toad Lizard hatchling (threatened species). He is a little early as they hatch in August. You were saying that convergent evolution can cause groupings that are polyphyletic.

You are interested in species preservation. This little guy is morphologically similar to a distantly-related lizard found in Austraiia, the Australian thorny devil (Moloch horridus).

How would identifying this lizard binomially be any more specific than cladistically? I think the clade would be more helpful in this regard as you would avoid identifying it with morphologically similar species.

Interestingly, this animal was commonly mistakened for a toad. But I don't think people are similarly mistaken about any monkey.
The picture is taken with a camera phone so it is a little blurry. The shadow is from my thumb.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Speciation always makes the ancestral species paraphyletic because, after the speciation event, the ancestral species becomes a group that doesn't include all the desendants of all the members. The Linnaean system allows paraphyly, so this isn't a problem for it, but purely cladistic systems such as the PhyloCode do not allow paraphyly, so species have to be redefined under such systems to allow descendant species to be grouped with ancestral species. This completely does away with the idea that a species is defined by the amount of interbreeding among its members.

Once again, no it doesn’t. My hero, Carl Sagan once said; “In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.” (1987 CSICOP Keynote Address)

But Carl Sagan never met you. You keep repeating the same errors no matter how clearly or how many times you’re corrected. Your first error here is that, even in the Linnaean system, speciation rarely results in a parapheletic parent taxon, and in the few occasions where that does happen, it is only because the taxonomist has arbitrarily decided to represent it that way. You’ve still never provided any defense for this practice despite numerous challenges to do so.

When Canus lupus familiaris dachshund (hypothetically) becomes a new species, some will call it Canus dachshund, and the common colloquial term will simply be “dachshund”, which it already is, even though its still the same species as other dogs and can be correctly referred to as a dog. Becoming a new species of dog doesn’t change. Becoming a new species of dachshund wouldn’t change that either. Referring to the species-level alone –by any name you choose- doesn’t generate any paraphyletic implication. The issue of whether relationships are paraphyletic or monophyletic is a matter of how one interprets the parent taxons/clades which encompass species groups. There’s a big difference between describing specific species and the clades to which they belong. Whether humans are monkeys or not, for example, doesn’t involve any amount of free gene flow under either interpretation.

Your second error here is your constant repetition that phylogenetics redefines species as a necessary requirement to allow daughter groups to be grouped with their ancestors. No. Some things do have to be redefined, just Hominidae and Pongidae were, and for the same reason, but not for the reason you suggest. Clades have only been redefined when the original construct was revealed to be inaccurate.

In paleontology, there is only one case where the exact parent species is known beyond any reasonable doubt or possibility of more-likely contenders turning up in the future; Homo erectus, father of Homo sapiens, Homo floresiensis, and Homo neanderthalensis (as they are still most commonly known). How do you interpret that? Did sapiens, hobbits or neandertals stop being erect humans anymore? Did we lose any of the characters which define that group? The problem with any system of biological classification is that it has to be tailored to nature, -which doesn’t always adhere to our notions of it. Biology has managed to prop up some exception to nearly every rule. Remember that leading proponents of traditional taxonomy have reached a consensus agreement that the Linnaean system needs a “serious overhaul” before it can begin to accurately depict evolutionary relationships, (if it can even then) and this is largely because so much of it is rooted in erroneous nomenclature and antiquated concepts. Some paleoanthropologists today say that our 19th and even 20th century interpretations of early humans are wrong because we’ve chosen to label many new finds as though they were distinctly different species -when it is much more probable that most of these were just different variants of the same species. In which case, Homo erectus, H. ergaster, H. heidelbergensis, H. georgecus, etc. are all subspecies that were mislabeled in according to an out-moded tradition. Pithecanthropus is little different than Australopithecus in that respect. The “robust” australopiths, (also known as Paranthropines) aren’t all that much more “robust”, and probably shouldn’t count as three or four different species than the “gracil” australopiths, which probably weren’t really three or four distinct species either. That, and it doesn’t make sense that Homo habilis is a transitional between australopiths and Homoines because we can’t really distinguish them from “non-human” homoines. We can’t even distinguish the non-human homoines as non-human. SLP made this clear when he proposed that chimpanzees should be considered genetically human even if they lack the single most definitive character of our taxon, bipedality. How would that force us to redefine Australopithecus, Ardipithecus, Paranthropithecus, and Kenyanthropus?

So no part of your claim is true. I see no need to be polite about this anymore. It is enormously hypocritical of you to feign concern for how I represent evolution to the layman when you seem determined to confuse them with claims you’ve already repeatedly been shown to be false.

For the benefit of those without much background in biology who are consequently confused by your gross misstatements above, I am going to offer another attempt at clarification for you to ignore.

By permitting paraphyly, you reserve the opportunity to subjectively misrepresent evolutionary relationships, choosing by your whim one descendant out of a particular brood which you can then falsely claim to be something other than it is based on criteria that has no objective defense or which rests entirely on authority opinion. Permitting paraphyly is a problem because it conceals the majority of cladistic information about ancestry and hides, dismisses or ignores additional information about common characteristics as well, and was the only excuse you could cite to deny your true simianship, by your own admission. So it is an unnecessarily deceptive practice which only generates confusion and is without practical application, verifiable accuracy, or scientific merit.

Let me explain how cladistic taxonomy really deals with speciation:

Over the last century, there have been several reports from remote areas of the African Congo of gorilla-sized apes who weren’t gorillas. Cryptozoologists, blurry photos, and conflicting eyewitness reports painted quite an exciting picture of these giant apes. Some even took them to be “living fossil” paranthopines. These elusive and secretive forest dwellers were said to be bipedal, but taller than a man, and capable of bludgeoning lions to death with just their bare fists. The difference between the legend of “the Bondo mystery ape”, and that of the Sasquatch or the yeti, is that in this case there was physical evidence, including some skulls which were mis-classified as a subspecies of gorilla. But that was decades before the phylogenetic system was ever conceived. Then somebody finally shot one of these apes and brought in the whole body.

It looked like a chimp, but it was bigger than many of the local people. It nested on the ground like a gorilla, and it did seem capable of defending itself even against lions. Some speculated that it came from a tribe of half-human hybrids. Others said they were a hybrid between gorillas and chimps. For some reason, people without much background in evolution only seem to imagine new species emerging via hybridization, probably as a result of the categories Linnaean taxonomy embraces so dearly. But there were a very few who understood evolution well enough to propose a new variant emerging from within one parent population.

Confirmation of that finally came with a series of genetic tests performed on gathered hair samples, and one living captive weighing in at 270 pounds! That is huge for a chimpanzee. But that’s what it was.

http://www.karlammann.com/images/bondo/phylogenetic-500.jpg
Contrary to all your claims, here’s how cladistics really works: In this case, we were able to objectively verify that the mystery ape was no gorilla, and it wasn’t a hybrid either. It was a chimp. But what kind of chimp? When your Linnaean genus, Pan diverged to produce Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes, neither group stopped being chimpanzees anymore, so that speciation event did not produce any paraphyletic groups, even though you said it always would. And even if it did, no genetic test would be able to detect where we chose to erect our illusion of paraphyly. Why? Because it wouldn’t be real; its arbitrarily made-up as a matter of preferential convention and for no other reason. There is another, less polite way to phrase it, and that is to realize that taking what we know to be an ancestral relationship -and claiming that is not one- should count as a lie. It damned sure doesn’t provide any benefit to science!

Notice how each lineage in the tree above diverges, all of them monophyletically, from a single common ancestor, each branching out as a shrub, something I think is more accurately described as the ‘tumbleweed’ of life. Paraphyletic illusions simply don’t apply here, and cannot be implied without a prior bias to do so.

Notice also that Pan troglodytes diverged again into a series of genetically-identifiable and objectively-traceable subspecies, something you said cladistic classification could neither address nor illustrate, and yet it does, as you can see. As I said before, the subspecies can be named just like species can be, except that we’re not restricted to only the binomial strategy Linnaeus used, so a monophyletic system reveals much more information about evolutionary relationships than Linnaean taxonomy could ever pretend to do.

And in this case, we’re dealing with an even deeper dimension of evolution since these apes are distinct from all other troglodytes by way of both their enormous size and their uncharacteristically gorilla-like behavior, in addition to a skull crest that is also similar to that of a gorilla. The Linnaean system falsely classified the Bondo apes as Gorilla gorilla uellensis based on a misinterpretation of a convergent trait. And the Linnaean system could rationalize that by noting that these chimps lost the character of the reduced chimp-crest, and that having a gorilla character instead makes them into gorillas -since you say characters can trump phylogeny in that system. But the phylogenetic system was able to see past the deceptive character, and identify the subject’s true lineage as Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, and perhaps more appropriately now, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii bondo.

And you know, we can just keep on further defining all these subsets, -and their subsets- whether they emerge as new species or not; the classification evolving right along with the subjects themselves, without ever losing track of either the definition of speciation, or its significance; without overlooking any detail on any of these relationships or any of their characteristics, and without ever redefining any of the parents just to recognize their daughters. So pretty much everything you just said is wrong.

 

[Cirbryn]

You asked for scientists using the word “monkey” to describe Hominoid ancestors. I gave you that for every single instance. But that didn’t matter. You asked me for scientists describing people as monkeys, and even though colloquial terms wouldn’t be proper scientific terminology even from my perspective, I still gave you at least a few examples of that –albeit from public media addressing a colloquial audience. But satisfying that request wasn’t good enough either. Why propose challenges if meeting those challenges only prompts your goal posts to be moved? And why do you still refuse to address any of the questions, challenges or evidence I show you?

I agree Cibryn. Ra, Ra, Ra, Sis, Boom Ba!
(Just playin' my assigned role)

As far as I recall I never asked for scientists using the word “monkey” to describe Hominoid ancestors. If you remember where I might have done that please let me know, because if I ask Aron (and if he’s still around to respond), I expect he’ll just rave awhile about how dumb I am for asking such a question and then not tell me - just as he did in post 361. What I did ask for in post 243 was “evidence that humans are a subset of a Linnaean taxon considered by scientists to be equivalent in its entirety to the term “monkeys” (or to a subset of that term, such as “old-world monkeys”).” Aron hasn’t done this. He’s claimed the Linnaean infraorder of Simiiformes meets the requirement, despite Wikipedia’s characterization of the taxon as “monkeys and the apes” but all his arguments in support of that have fallen through. His most repeated such argument has been that since the first simiiformes were monkeys, they must all be monkeys to avoid paraphyly. Why he seems to think this is important, given the fact that Linnaean system allows paraphyly, I do not know. He’s also argued that simiiformes is based on the word “simian”, meaning monkey. Simian actually means “Relating to, characteristic of, or resembling an ape or monkey.” He’s also pointed out a couple websites that he claims support him, but one such site was semi-translated from the German (which doesn’t differentiate apes and monkeys), and another (as SLP pointed out) used example subcategories in the heading, despite showing other subcategories lower in the page. (For instance the heading for Hominidae mentions humans, as if that were all Hominidae included, but lower down the four subfamilies of Hominidae are listed).

Regarding my asking for “scientists describing people as monkeys”, what I actually asked for in post 203 was for him him to show “that biologists commonly use the term “monkey” to include humans (preferably when discussing other things than how the standard ought to be changed so that “monkey” would include humans).” What he gave me was a major runaround, a bunch of insults, and finally a quote and two book titles from 3 biologists. One of the book titles (“The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey”) isn’t even about humans. This is supposed to show that biologists in general commonly refer to humans as monkeys. I never got around to responding to that because I was working my way up through his posts and had about got to post 257 when he let that whopper drop in post 291 about Harshman being condescending and rude, but not him; and I didn’t feel I could let that one go.

Shall I relate the goose chase tracking all this down involved so we’re clear?

Post 231 You asked for citations from scientists in this field, authorities who describe humans as “monkeys” in a literal matter-of-fact sense, and I have given you that repeatedly.

Post 244 You did? Where?

Post 257In post #202 I listed ornithological systematist John Harshman, vertebrate paleontologist Chris Beard, and renowned paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall. You already knew that of course, and are now trying to find some way to ignore them.

Post 202 goes on at length about several off-topic subjects, but never mentions Harshman. It also does not list any of the three men as examples of scientists who commonly refer to humans as monkeys. What it does do is introduce Tattersall as an example of of scientists who have supposedly adopted the cladistic perspective, and then show a picture of the cover of Tattersall’s book The Monkey in the Mirror. There is nothing there about Tattersall’s actual argument. We don’t know whether he’s arguing that humans ought to be considered monkeys even though they aren’t, or whether he’s merely pointing to behavioral similarities, or whether he actually wrote an entire book about how humans are monkeys under the currently accepted system. If the latter, you’d think Aron would have provided a little more from it though. Similarly, post 202 shows a picture of Beard’s book The Hunt for the Dawn Monkey and describes it as support for the idea that humans descended from monkeys. There is nothing there to indicate Beard commonly refers to humans as monkeys, and Aron makes no argument in the post that he does.

To get support for the idea that Harshman commonly describes humans as monkeys, you actually have to go back to post 66, where a link to a Talk.Origins discussion provides enough on Harshman’s views to make such an inference (though it’s still far from clear that he’d suggest, when speaking with people that don’t know much biology, that humans are considered monkeys under the current system).

The reason I’m relating all that to you and not him (other than the fact that Aron has said he’s done) is because it takes quite a while to go back through all this and find where everything is. I’ve downloaded the printable version of the thread and converted to Word to do searches, but you don’t get post numbers that way, and the Word file is 577 pages long now, with massive table formatting that makes scrolling difficult. It’s easy for Aron to make claims about how he’s repeatedly told me this or that, but somehow I’m the guy who’s expected to go hunt for it. I did that once already in post 165 (when the thread was much shorter) and all I got for my troubles was insults.

In seriousness, I thank you for an enriching discussion. It was certainly more profitable than the ones I have been having here lately.

They go kinda like this:
me: Detailed response

them:You are a pawn of atheists promoting their theory.

or​

them: What did Jesus say about evolution?

There was that one SLP response:

SLP: You agree with me but you are still supporting him. Why?

At least, you put some thought into your posts. Although I don't agree with you.

So even if you aren't persuaded by monophyly or cladistics, it isn't a total wash.

Thanks likewise. I think probably the people you’re relating talking with above wouldn’t be influenced one way or the other by Aron’s claims of humans being monkeys, but if you look back in the thread around post 12 or 28 or so you can see the unnecessary confusion generated by making that claim without explaining its cladistic basis. If you like cladistics more than Linnaean taxonomy that’s fine with me. It does have much to recommend it. The one and only thing I’ve been hoping to accomplish through this thread is to encourage people to avoid suggesting that acceptance of evolution requires people to use cladistic definitions and cladistic taxonomy. It does not. Scientific classification of living organisms is almost exclusively Linnaean. Any field guide to plants or birds or mammals or anything else you are ever likely to see is Linnaean. Anything the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service or any state fish and game agency or National Heritage Foundation organization you’d care to mention has published regarding any species, has related the taxonomy of that species in Linnaean terms. Any survey done by any biological consulting firm in the US has listed what they’ve found in Linnaean terms. If you had to describe things cladistically in order to be an evolutionist, then there are a whole lot fewer evolutionists than we’ve been letting on.

And with that I’m going to be away a bit myself for awhile. I’m off to Monterey until next Wednesday. Hope your New Mexico trip was a good one.

 

[Cirbryn]

Well, being the wacky and tenacious guy I am, I thought I’d go through these last bunch of posts and respond while I can. Now that Aron's left the thread I just might have a chance to catch up.

If you require that all groups be monophyletic (and thus include all descendants), how are you going to represent the relationship of a parent species to a daughter?

Just the way I've explained to you nearly a dozen times now; mark the emergence of the new characteristic without pretending that some of the old family trees you subjectively choose stop where the new family trait begins.

See, these condescending references to previous posts in which you’ve “explained” all this, but which you can’t be bothered to cite, is something I’m really not going to miss. You “explained” in post 262 that “If dachshunds ever became a new species, they would be a new species of dogs, Canus lupus familiaris dachshund.” That is incorrect, as I’d already pointed out in post 166 (which you ignored). You claimed in post 328 that cladists can tell whether they’re talking about the progenators of a clade vs the entire clade based on context. I’d expect that’s generally true, but it still leaves the daughter species as a member of the parent species even though the two no longer interbreed. You also talked in post 328 about snakes meeting the description of tetrapods “in addition to the loss of limbs”, and when I pointed out in post 346 that was nonsensical you agreed in post 357 that snakes don’t retain traits involving limbs, but added that the clade isn’t defined by the traits.

All of which is well and good, but a species is defined by a trait, and that trait is gene flow. The emergence of a daughter species doesn’t simply mean the emergence of a new characteristic. It means the loss of the defining characteristic of the parent species.Every species is (normally) genetically isolated from every other. Every member of a species is a potential interbreeder with every other member of that species. But except in rare instances, members of daughter species are not potential interbreeders with members of parent species. Fail to define the parent species in a manner that excludes the daughter (as a purely cladistic system would have us do), and you leave out that crucial information.

And no one is pretending that the family tree stops with the new species. Nothing in Linnaean taxonomy suggests that cladistic information is incorrect, or that a daughter wouldn’t be in the clade of the parent. The Linnaean system merely provides information about the genetic isolation of the species that a purely cladistic system does not.

No no no. As I've told you several times before, with monophyly, you retain all the information of the parent clade, and all the information for each divergence in it, including the addition of the trait you're trying to point out here. Don't limit all your conversations to species only. We're talking about whole family trees here.

I have no idea what you mean by all the information being retained, and I don’t think you do either. If snakes lose their limbs, then the “information” provided by the morphology of limbs is not retained. If daughter species lose the ability to interbreed with the parent, then that ability and any information associated with it, is lost. The loss of such defining characteristics is important to note, particularly with species.

I might as well just write one response to you and cut-and-paste it into this thread every day because I keep telling you the same things overand over again only to see you show no knowledge of it tomorrow.

Or here’s a thought: why not try getting over yourself enough to realize you are expressing an opinion, not imparting knowledge to be memorized. It’s not that I haven’t read what you’ve written. It’s that I don’t agree with it. And I wasn’t even talking to you in the first place; I was talking to consideringlily.

Linnaean taxonomy fails to log speciation events. But with clades, it is possible to trace a lineage both on paper and in real life.

No, Linnaean taxonomy takes particular note of speciation events by putting the daughter species in a separate category from the parent and naming them both. You may first have had species X, then species X and Y. Or possibly, first you had species Y, then X and Y. Or else maybe you first had species X, then you had daughter species Y and Z which replaced X. Cladograms can’t distinguish between those options. Or possibly: first you had species X, then it evolved into species Y by anagenesis without any speciation “event” at all. Cladograms can’t show that. Or possibly species X and Y hybridized to form species Z (such as with the California wild radish and maybe even humans). Cladograms could show that graphically, but such polyphyletic species directly violate the cladistic assumption of monophyly. Clades aren’t used to trace lineages (as you claim), because they are lineages. But if you base your entire taxonomy on the lineage alone you will leave out very important information, particularly if you also assume that lineage to be monophyletic when it isn’t.

Common ancestry, by definition, demands a monophyletic -such as you have illustrated here:

​

And here:

​

Common ancestry demands a monophyletic what? Taxonomy? I disagree. Nor do the illustrations show any such thing. The first illustration above shows polar bears descending from a particular lineage of brown bears, thereby demonstrating that brown bears are paraphyletic. The second illustration shows that new species can (and typically do) inherit paraphyletic or polyphyletic allelic lineages from parent species.

​

Its only paraphyletic or polyphyletic depending on what names you choose to give each group. If you say that snakes aren't lizards anymore, then they're paraphyletic. If you say they're still Squamates but without legs, then they're monophyletic. But neither you or I have changed their genetic structure in our disagreement. So either paraphyly means something as yet undiscussed in this thread, or its determination depends on an assumption of convention.

No, the paraphyly and polyphyly shown above is in the allelic (DNA) lineages as they are grouped into species, not in the species lineages themselves. The point is that the two types of lineages are different, but allelic lineages are often used to ascertain species lineages.

Hybridization can't cause children to not be part of their parent's families anymore. Nor has there ever been any fundamental difference between ancestors and thier descendants at any point in evolutionary history that I am aware of. Nor can the same taxon emerge independantly from two different ancestors unrelated to each other. Care to explain how this similation implies otherwise?

I never said the figure does imply otherwise. I included it to show that the discrepancy between allelic lineages and species lineages discussed above eventually disappears, but only after many generations of isolation. Regarding your above statements, hybridization does result in the same (hybrid) taxon emerging from two unrelated ancestors, and if you’d care to specify what you mean by “fundamental” I’d be happy to show you such a fundamental difference between ancestors and their descendants.

So even your similation reveals a single common ancestor. This is my instructors taught me that evolution actually promotes, including one who was a geneticist with the human genome project:

"The evidence of taxonomic relationships is overwhelming when you look at the comparisons between the genomic (DNA) sequences of both closely-related and even distantly-related species. The DNA of yeast and humans shares over 30% homology with regard to gene sequences. Comparison of the human and mouse genome shows that only 1% of the genes in either genome fails to have an orthologue ithe other genome. Comparison of non-gene sequences, on the other hand, shows a huge amount of divergence. This type of homology can be explained only from descent from a common ancestor."
--Jill Buettner, professor of Genetics at Richland College, Dallas, TX

And I showed you the Shape of Life project, another remarkable and nationally publicized genetic research endeavor where they traced all of 'Animalia' to a single monophyletic source. But you just sort of skipped over that without mention.

None of this is even remotely related to what I’ve been saying. I never claimed we don’t all share common ancestry. And I don’t know what you mean by a “single monophyletic source”. If the source is defined so as not to include some of the descendants, then it is paraphyletic. If the source is defined so as to include every single descendant, then you and I would be members, so it shouldn’t have been particularly difficult to find.

Since you bring up the Shape of Life project though, let me ask you this: suppose they found the exact species of sponge from which all animal life descended. And suppose that, against all odds, that species had survived relatively intact to this day. Would you claim that we are members of that species? If so, how would that square with the common definition of species as populations of actually or potentially interbreeding individuals? (And yes I know you’ve left the discussion so you won’t be answering this, but I’m hoping any remaining readers – long suffering though they be - will think about it).

 

[Aron-Ra]

*Edited for numerous typos and blurbs resulting from posting at too late hours, and/or amid too many distractions.

Well, being the wacky and tenacious guy I am, I thought I’d go through these last bunch of posts and respond while I can. Now that Aron's left the thread I just might have a chance to catch up.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

If you require that all groups be monophyletic (and thus include all descendants), how are you going to represent the relationship of a parent species to a daughter?

Just the way I've explained to you nearly a dozen times now; mark the emergence of the new characteristic without pretending that some of the old family trees you subjectively choose stop where the new family trait begins.

See, these condescending references to previous posts in which you’ve “explained” all this, but which you can’t be bothered to cite, is something I’m really not going to miss.

You mean; 'can't be bothered to cite it again'. After doing it so many times already, I've given up showing you where I said everything I've already told you before.

You “explained” in post 262 that “If dachshunds ever became a new species, they would be a new species of dogs, Canus lupus familiaris dachshund.” That is incorrect, as I’d already pointed out in post 166 (which you ignored).

I didn't ignore it. I never ignore anything the way you admitted you do. You were, -and are- wrong. Dachshunds as a new species would still be dogs, and you still can't defend your assertion that they would not be.

You claimed in post 328 that cladists can tell whether they’re talking about the progenators of a clade vs the entire clade based on context. I’d expect that’s generally true, but it still leaves the daughter species as a member of the parent species even though the two no longer interbreed.

Not so. As I said before, referring to the question I just answered for you, we represent the relationship of a parent species to a daughter by marking the emergence of the new trait, which can be recognized as a new species. Its not the same species it was before, but its still a member of every clade that species belonged to, and that has been my main point throughout this entire thread from the beginning.

You also talked in post 328 about snakes meeting the description of tetrapods “in addition to the loss of limbs”, and when I pointed out in post 346 that was nonsensical you agreed in post 357 that snakes don’t retain traits involving limbs, but added that the clade isn’t defined by the traits.

Are you deliberately misunderstanding this? Are you trying to confuse me? I can't understand where you're coming from on anything. None of your arguments have made any sense since the onset of this discussion, and this doesn't either. If we pretend for a moment that paraphyletic groups have any point or purpose, you must still admit -surely- that there is a phylogeny for snakes that is marked (in small part) by these labels; Squamata, Anthracosauria, Tetrapoda, Stegocephalii, etc. Each of these is characterized by a single most common or obvious trait. Squamata = having three eyes, Stegocephalii = having fingers, Anthracosauria = having five fingers, tetrapoda = having four limbs, almost none of which apply to snakes anymore. Somewhere back there, there is probably a single ancestor for everything with blinking eyelids, and that wouldn't apply to snakes anymore either. But even without any number of toes on any number of legs, we can still tell by the rest of the form exactly which lineage snakes belong to. None of that information was lost, and not just because the first snakes were already definitely snakes in every respect even when they still had legs. That's what I meant all those times I kept repeating that even the biggest leaps of macroevolution are still just a matter of incremental, superficial changes slowly compiled atop various tiers of fundamental similarities, and that this is why those successive levels of similarity represent taxonomic clades which encompass all the descendants of that clade.

All of which is well and good, but a species is defined by a trait, and that trait is gene flow. The emergence of a daughter species doesn’t simply mean the emergence of a new characteristic. It means the loss of the defining characteristic of the parent species.

No, you're still wrong, and you're ignoring the reason why.

Every species is (normally) genetically isolated from every other. Every member of a species is a potential interbreeder with every other member of that species. But except in rare instances, members of daughter species are not potential interbreeders with members of parent species.

If all other intermediate dog breeds between mastiffs and dachshunds were killed off tomorrow, mastiffs and dachshunds wouldn't breed under normal conditions, and that is the defining characteristic of species. But nothing has changed in either breed, and it wouldn't be that dachshunds wouldn't be dogs anymore and mastiffs would be. And it wouldn't be that mastiffs wouldn't be dogs anymore if dachshunds were. Both of them would still be dogs even if one or both breeds were deliberately isolated from all other dogs until they were no longer genetically compatible.

Fail to define the parent species in a manner that excludes the daughter (as a purely cladistic system would have us do), and you leave out that crucial information.

Once again, (and I can’t be bothered to cite where I’ve told you this before, but) as I've already explained so many times, we represent the relationship of a parent species to a daughter by marking the emergence of the new trait, which can be recognized as a new species. But we don’t pretend that any of the old family trees end where the ones begin because it simply does not work that way in real life.

And no one is pretending that the family tree stops with the new species.

Then the dog family tree doesn’t end where dachshunds begin? Does the monkey family tree end where apes begin? Or would you now like to contradict what you've just said?

Nothing in Linnaean taxonomy suggests that cladistic information is incorrect, or that a daughter wouldn’t be in the clade of the parent.

Hallelujah! We’re in agreement at last! Thank you! And despite all your self-conflicting whining below. Is this your second admission that humans, like all other apes, are highly-derived monkeys after all? Or would you like to contradict yourself again so you can continue trying to deny that?

The Linnaean system merely provides information about the genetic isolation of the species that a purely cladistic system does not.

No. Instead, the Linnaean system conceals information that is only available in clades. For example, you and SLP have both finally agreed that our ancestors were in fact monkeys, but the Linnaean system would have us say “monkey-like” if we refer to extinct monkeys considered ancestral to apes, and only use the word, “monkey” when describing a lineage that didn’t lead to our own. Did you forget about the concensus reached by those hundreds of taxonomists at the PhyloCode symposium? Why do you keep ignoring the fact that even those few scientists still arguing from your perspective have publicly and loudly admitted that Linnaean taxonomy cannot currently reflect evolutionary relationships, and that your system will need a "serious overhaul" before it even can?

No no no. As I've told you several times before, with monophyly, you retain all the information of the parent clade, and all the information for each divergence in it, including the addition of the trait you're trying to point out here. Don't limit all your conversations to species only. We're talking about whole family trees here.

I have no idea what you mean by all the information being retained, and I don’t think you do either.

Then I have overestimated you again. I have already explained this above, so I obviously understand it. But as I’ve had to repeat all my explanations to you so far, why wait until tomorrow?

If snakes lose their limbs, then the “information” provided by the morphology of limbs is not retained.

Imagine for a moment, that we never knew anything about any true snakes which still had their legs. Does the absence of those limbs imply that snakes might belong to any other group besides Stegocephalli, Tetrapoda, Anthracosauria? Or was there still ample information retained that we could easily identify them as members of Lepidosauria, and more specifically, Squamata? In fact we did so decades before we ever discovered Haasiophis terrasanctus or Pachyrhachis problematicus. How could we have done that if that information was lost along with the limbs? Obviously, it wasn’t.

If daughter species lose the ability to interbreed with the parent, then that ability and any information associated with it, is lost. The loss of such defining characteristics is important to note, particularly with species.

Once again, there is no loss of defining characteristics. Even the loss of limbs is a gained trait in taxonomy. And I can’t be bothered to cite where I’ve told you this before either; But don't limit all your conversations to species only because we're talking about whole family trees here. The term, 'paraphyletic' doesn’t apply to the species level. Whether humans are apes, or whether apes are monkeys, or whether birds are dinosaurs or reptiles, or whether snakes are lizards, (or tetrapods) etc., etc., -none of that has anything whatsoever to do with the division between species, and I’m arguing against its use at any “taxonomic level” (parent clade) “above” that.

I might as well just write one response to you and cut-and-paste it into this thread every day because I keep telling you the same things over and over again only to see you show no knowledge of it tomorrow.

Or here’s a thought: why not try getting over yourself enough to realize you are expressing an opinion, not imparting knowledge to be memorized.

Because (and I’ve already told you this several times too) I’m not talking about opinions here. I am imparting knowledge because I’m only talking about what can be objectively demonstrated. Humans are monkeys for all the exact same reasons we are apes; We descended from apes / we descended from monkeys. There is a definite genetic link too, since our genes are 93% identical to that of rhesus monkeys for example. SLP has already admitted that it is technically correct, -cladistically- to classify humans as monkeys, and the Linnaean taxon, “Simia” translates as “monkeys” literally. Common definitions of monkeys include apes, and technical definitions of monkeys still include humans too because every character trait descriptive of all apes inclusively (and exclusively) applies to us, just as every character trait descriptive of all non-hominoid monkeys also applies to humans as well. There are no characters common to every known species recognized by scientists as “monkeys” that is not also shared by humans and/or other apes, and there is no definition that sets them apart from us except a colloquial one which actually says “all of ‘them’ –except us”, and that is just a Freudian admission that “we” are one of “them” after all. All of this is objectively verifiable and undeniable and not one bit of it is opinion. But your whole and sole contention to all of this is limited to opinion by your own admission, and by the admission of others pleading for your same position. Don’t try to project your own faults onto me for I will not have them.

 

[Aron-Ra]

*Edited for numerous typos and missing words. That's what I get for rushing.

It’s not that I haven’t read what you’ve written. It’s that I don’t agree with it. And I wasn’t even talking to you in the first place; I was talking to consideringlily.

But you've offered no defensible reason for your disagreement, and in fact have conceded the whole argument (unwittingly) at least three times so far. Besides, I doubt consideringlily remembers where you admitted to deliberately skipping several critical points in this discussion, (post # 204) refusing to properly address them, (post # 165) and ignoring them as if they didn’t really matter, (post #206) You shifted your goalposts again, and shifted them again when I still made the goal. (post # 363) All of that indicates that you don’t read everything you reply to, or may as well not for all the difference it makes.

Linnaean taxonomy fails to log speciation events. But with clades, it is possible to trace a lineage both on paper and in real life.

No, Linnaean taxonomy takes particular note of speciation events by putting the daughter species in a separate category from the parent and naming them both.

Thus failing to log them, since they appear as their mother’s sister rather the daughter, which is how systematic clades would name them both. Your nomenclature fails because we need to adapt our perception to fit reality. It doesn’t work the other way ‘round regardless what the creationists think.

You may first have had species X, then species X and Y. Or possibly, first you had species Y, then X and Y. Or else maybe you first had species X, then you had daughter species Y and Z which replaced X. Cladograms can’t distinguish between those options.

Yes they do. Canus lupus familiaris dachshund does exactly that where denying that a species of dachshund is even a dog deliberately sabotages your own efforts to do so.

Or possibly: first you had species X, then it evolved into species Y by anagenesis without any speciation “event” at all. Cladograms can’t show that.

Have I not already (in post # 367) discussed the anagenesis of the Homo “genus”?

“Traditionalists declare that the cladistic systematics is too poor because it reflects only cladogenesis but does not reflect anagenesis (which is named also "phyletic evolution", "degree of divergention" or "temps of evolution"). However, we can know out about existence of the cladogenesis (i.e. of tree furcation) only in the case if it is supplied with anagenesis (i.e. with getting apomorphies), because only the cladistic analysis (i.e. analysis of apomorphies) allows to clarify furcations of the phylogenetic tree. Thus, the statement that the cladistic systematics does not reflect anagenesis, is wrong; in the cladistic systematics the anagenesis is reflected in the same degree as in the traditionalistic systematics.”
--Professor Nikita Julievich Kluge Ph.D.; “The Systematics of Insects”

My perspective of chronologically-gapped "ring species" boundaries differs little from those resulting from geographical boundaries, and when one clade emerges from within another, the parent clade doesn't just die off right then. So there is still a branching point.

“Or possibly species X and Y hybridized to form species Z (such as with the California wild radish and maybe even humans). Cladograms could show that graphically, but such polyphyletic species directly violate the cladistic assumption of monophyly.

Hybridization does admittedly run counter to monophyly. But it isn’t polyphyletic either –because you don’t end up with the same group emerging twice from two or more different sources.

Clades aren’t used to trace lineages (as you claim), because they are lineages.

The fact that they are the tracing of lineage is why they don’t trace lineages?! What? Do you proofread your posts?

But if you base your entire taxonomy on the lineage alone you will leave out very important information, particularly if you also assume that lineage to be monophyletic when it isn’t.

Alternately, I would say that’s not true in the least, and I would say that if you base your entire taxonomy on character traits, (as if the lineage wasn’t profoundly more important) you will leave out much more important information, particularly if you also assume that lineage to be paraphyletic when it never is.

Common ancestry demands a monophyletic what? Taxonomy? I disagree.

Well then, allow me to correct you again. Monophyletic taxonomy shows all descendants sharing a single source, exactly what common ancestry demands also.

Nor do the illustrations show any such thing. The first illustration above shows polar bears descending from a particular lineage of brown bears, thereby demonstrating that brown bears are paraphyletic.

You mean monophyletic, since regardless of the quaint and hardly technical name, “brown” they still all emerge from one source. I have no problem accepting that we now have brown bears that are white, or that polar bears are brown bears. Why should I? Since I know we also have black bears that are brown?

Is this a black bear? Or a brown bear?

I imagine that must be quite a tough question for someone like you, since being a brown black bear means it isn’t the same thing as its ancestors were, and yet you can still easily recognize this as a black bear, even though it was never black. Boy, I’m glad my system isn’t dependant on criteria as flimsy and silly as yours is!

The second illustration shows that new species can (and typically do) inherit paraphyletic or polyphyletic allelic lineages from parent species.

​

Its only paraphyletic or polyphyletic depending on what names you choose to give each group. If you say that snakes aren't lizards anymore, then they're paraphyletic. If you say they're still Squamates but without legs, then they're monophyletic. But neither you or I have changed their genetic structure in our disagreement. So either paraphyly means something as yet undiscussed in this thread, or its determination depends on an assumption of convention.

No, the paraphyly and polyphyly shown above is in the allelic (DNA) lineages as they are grouped into species, not in the species lineages themselves. The point is that the two types of lineages are different, but allelic lineages are often used to ascertain species lineages.

I fail to see how that addresses or counters the point I just made. If paraphyly and polyphyly aren’t in the lineages, then they aren’t anywhere at all. What am I missing here? Are you still only able to argue paraphyly from the species level?

Hybridization can't cause children to not be part of their parent's families anymore. Nor has there ever been any fundamental difference between ancestors and thier descendants at any point in evolutionary history that I am aware of. Nor can the same taxon emerge independently from two different ancestors unrelated to each other. Care to explain how this simulation implies otherwise?

I never said the figure does imply otherwise. I included it to show that the discrepancy between allelic lineages and species lineages discussed above eventually disappears, but only after many generations of isolation.

So then, your assumptions are limited only to speciation and not to any of the parent clades critical to determining whether we are in fact still monkeys or if birds are still dinosaurs and snakes are still lizards.

Regarding your above statements, hybridization does result in the same (hybrid) taxon emerging from two unrelated ancestors,

You mean, closely-related. For an example of "unrelated" (distantly-related) hybrids, you might check out the Jackalope conspiracy website.

and if you’d care to specify what you mean by “fundamental” I’d be happy to show you such a fundamental difference between ancestors and their descendants.

You can't. So far, you've demonstrated a near-perfect failure rate, and if you think you can pull this off, then I overestimated you a whole lot more than I thought. I have already clarified exactly what I mean by superficial differences being compiled atop teirs of fundamental similarities, also known as the derived synapomorphies by which we can trace phylogenies without even needing to see any fossil forms. Look to my earlier discussion of snakes as an example of that. Also refer to the list of clades applicable to humans which I've listed on my site. That should be all the clarification you need. The seven Linnaean taxons are an example of some of the tiers of fundamental similarity which imply evolutionary phylogeny. If you could produce anything in the biosphere which actually did reveal fundamental differences between ancestors and their descendants, then you will be rewarded both by science and by creationism -since even one such thing would refute evolution. So, whatcha got?

Here are a couple potential examples you might propose:

Here's another good one.

Or maybe you were thinking of something like this?

Thylacosmilus atrox

Smilodon fatalis

Seriously, I challenge you to produce any evolutionary parent - daughter relationship in which one thing ever begat another, fundamentally different thing.

None of this is even remotely related to what I’ve been saying. I never claimed we don’t all share common ancestry. And I don’t know what you mean by a “single monophyletic source”. If the source is defined so as not to include some of the descendants, then it is paraphyletic. If the source is defined so as to include every single descendant, then you and I would be members, so it shouldn’t have been particularly difficult to find.

It wasn't.

Monkey:
Any of several members of the infraorder Simiiformes of primates, generally smaller than the apes, and distinguished from them by having a tail.
--Wiktionary

So according to this, barbary apes really are apes, even though primatologists insist they're not.

Ape:
MONKEY; especially : one of the larger tailless or short-tailed Old World forms b : any of two families (Pongidae and Hylobatidae) of large tailless semierect primates (as the chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, or gibbon) -- called also anthropoid
--Merriam Webster

And according to this, apes are really monkeys, and anything we call "anthropoid" is really an ape -including monkeys.

Should I both citing where I've already shown you this?

And of course we've already established all through this thread that "Simiiformes" means "monkey" too, and always has even when humans were finally categorized in that group.

Since you bring up the Shape of Life project though, let me ask you this: suppose they found the exact species of sponge from which all animal life descended. And suppose that, against all odds, that species had survived relatively intact to this day. Would you claim that we are members of that species?

Of course no. Way to miss a point!

If so, how would that square with the common definition of species as populations of actually or potentially interbreeding individuals? (And yes I know you’ve left the discussion so you won’t be answering this, but I’m hoping any remaining readers – long suffering though they be - will think about it).

You're the first one needing to do some thinking here.

There is a whole dimension to this concept that you’re missing, and this will effect your grasp of evolutionary theory. For example, the relatively new topic of ‘evo devo’, which notes (as Darwin did also) the fact the young of two closely-related groups (at any taxonomic level) resemble each other more than the adults of those groups do. If you had seen the documentary they aired, or read much into the site, you would see that they never implied that eumetazoa descended from within Porifera as such, but from something akin to the nymph of Porifera, the perspective being that the adult form of the common ancestor of both lines was something very like the nymph of both sponges and thier closest eumetazoan cousins, something similar to a hydra. If that species still existed today, I still wouldn't say were still the same species, but (as I've repeated in so many posts already) we're not talking about species-level taxonomy here. Paraphyletic groups only apply to one's treatment of collective species -like monkeys -including apes like us.

Now it you don't mind, I'm still taking classes, and really really don't have time anymore to continue arguing with someone who ignores every point and refuses to admit when he's wrong -about anything- even when he's been wrong about everything so far.

 

[Cirbryn]

Well, being the wacky and tenacious guy I am, I thought I’d go through these last bunch of posts and respond while I can. Now that Aron's left the thread I just might have a chance to catch up.

Just when you thought it was safe to back in the water...

Aron! How, um ... nice ... to see you back. I have time for about one response a day on this thread. [Edit: actually, better make that one every couple days. They've been taking me 2 or 3 hours each.] Would you prefer that I keep working my way up through your previous batch of posts, or that I skip ahead to these more recent responses of yours? Keep in mind I also owe consideringlily another response as well.

 

[SLP]

I agree Cibryn. Ra, Ra, Ra, Sis, Boom Ba!
(Just playin' my assigned role)

In seriousness, I thank you for an enriching discussion. It was certainly more profitable than the ones I have been having here lately.

They go kinda like this:
me: Detailed response

them:You are a pawn of atheists promoting their theory.

or​

them: What did Jesus say about evolution?​

There was that one SLP response:​

SLP: You agree with me but you are still supporting him. Why?​

At least, you put some thought into your posts. Although I don't agree with you.​

So even if you aren't persuaded by monophyly or cladistics, it isn't a total wash.​

Coincidentally, I am skinning out (just visited Lincoln, NM, hangout of Billy the Kid) as well. My internet will be down next week. If the discussion is still going on when I get back, I may rejoin it.​

​

I will thank you to keep me out of your little fantasy world from now on.

 

[Aron-Ra]

Aron! How, um ... nice ... to see you back. I have time for about one response a day on this thread. [Edit: actually, better make that one every couple days. They've been taking me 2 or 3 hours each.] Would you prefer that I keep working my way up through your previous batch of posts, or that I skip ahead to these more recent responses of yours?

I don't care what you do. But if you're never going to produce anything substantive, then don't post anything at all. Because I'll tell you my honest opinion; I think in the beginning you were sincere enough, and I did respect you then, and really wasn't being rude. (I've never been as rude as every post from SLP was, including his most recent charmer [above] when he mouthed off to someone being nice to him!) But the rug was pulled out from under you over 150 posts ago, and I think the only reason you're still arguing (and ignoring critical points, shifting goal posts, contradicting yourself, and making up excuses) is that you simply will not admit your errors. Your contention is a sieve. Humans can be accurately described as a highly-derived subset of monkeys, and are recognized as such by more and more taxonomists all the time, and the Linneaen system is (at present) still dominant "because old habits die hard". But it is also known by [virtually] all to be less capable than cladistics of representing evolutionary relationships specifically because paraphyly is a ridiculous notion inapplicable to phylogenies and which does deliberately conceal or misrepresent information about those relationships.

 

[Cirbryn]

I don't care what you do. But if you're never going to produce anything substantive, then don't post anything at all. Because I'll tell you my honest opinion; I think in the beginning you were sincere enough, and I did respect you then, and really wasn't being rude. (I've never been as rude as every post from SLP was, including his most recent charmer [above] when he mouthed off to someone being nice to him!) But the rug was pulled out from under you over 150 posts ago, and I think the only reason you're still arguing (and ignoring critical points, shifting goal posts, contradicting yourself, and making up excuses) is that you simply will not admit your errors. Your contention is a sieve. Humans can be accurately described as a highly-derived subset of monkeys, and are recognized as such by more and more taxonomists all the time, and the Linneaen system is (at present) still dominant "because old habits die hard". But it is also known by [virtually] all to be less capable than cladistics of representing evolutionary relationships specifically because paraphyly is a ridiculous notion inapplicable to phylogenies and which does deliberately conceal or misrepresent information about those relationships.

I don't care if humans can be described as monkeys, and you should know that by now. I care that you are suggesting to people that evolution requires we be described that way. It does not, and were you not such a fundamentalist about cladistics you would have admitted that obvious fact a long time ago and we could have had a much more interesting discussion.

I'll take the rest of your string of silly little insults to mean you're bowing out again, so I'll start in from where I left off and plow through to the end.

Buh bye now.

 

[Aron-Ra]

I don't care if humans can be described as monkeys, and you should know that by now. I care that you are suggesting to people that evolution requires we be described that way. It does not, and were you not such a fundamentalist about cladistics you would have admitted that obvious fact a long time ago and we could have had a much more interesting discussion.

If its not even apparent, then it can't be obvious, and if its not true, then it can't be a fact. But it is quite telling that you don't care what is accurate, as long as you're not required to admit it.

Edit: My part of this conversation began when the whole topic of this thread changed in post # 43.

We are Old World Monkeys, theres nothing wrong with saying that unless you are using the common mans definition of monkey which is a small little tree climbing animal with a tail and that traditionally likes bananas.

Or unless you are using the universally accepted Linnaean taxonomic system, according to which old world monkeys are in family Cercopithicidae and humans are in family Hominidae.

As it turned out, hundreds of posts later, Edx was was right, at least partially. Humans are Old World monkeys, and there's nothing wrong with saying that. However, the common man's definition of 'monkey' usually doesn't exclude apes, and he corrected his error almost immediately. You on the other hand, did not, though you turned out to be wrong on every point. Old World "monkeys" (in the colloquial sense) are not limited to Cercopithecidae, since Propliopithecoidea are Old World 'monkeys' too -even in the Linnaean system, which is not "universally accepted" after all. Evolution does not require that you always think of humans as monkeys. But there is at least one point where you must. If we evolved from monkeys, and it is still accurate to describe humans as such now, and that becomes the topic of debate, then you should concede that fact honorably and move on. Only then can the discussion get any more interesting.

I'll take the rest of your string of silly little insults to mean you're bowing out again, so I'll start in from where I left off and plow through to the end.

Buh bye now.

You will "plow on" alone. Because, if you won't be credible, then there's no reason to talk to you anymore, now is there?

 

[Lilandra]

If you like cladistics more than Linnaean taxonomy that’s fine with me. It does have much to recommend it.

Hello, I am curious about some of the many things you think cladistics has to recommend it.

 

[Lilandra]

I will thank you to keep me out of your little fantasy world from now on.

I was only paraphrasing one of your many dismissals in this thread, including this post.

Besides as far as fantasy worlds go, mine can't compare to a Robert Mitchum/Simon Lebon lookalike primatologist, who protests he is not a monkey.

 

[Cirbryn]

Hello, I am curious about some of the many things you think cladistics has to recommend it.

Well let’s see. I think the emphasis against polyphyletic groups makes pretty good sense, and the cladists were probably instrumental in getting the Linnaean system to adopt that rule as well. My Encyclopedia of Mammals (1987) still lists the order Pinnepedia, for instance, despite noting that eared seals and true seals probably evolved separately to become seal-like from carnivore stock. Actually, seals are a good reminder that there are no polyphyly police for the English language. I used to think if it was called a sea lion it was an eared seal (Otariidae) and could walk on its flippers, whereas if it was called a seal it was a true seal (Phocidae) and couldn’t walk on its flippers. Then I found out about the fur seals, which are in Otariidae and can walk on their flippers. Both families, plus the walruses (Odobenidae) are now in the order Carnivora. Had it been up to me I’d have dumped Pinnepedia as well, but I might have made the three seal-like families into orders instead, to emphasize their distinctiveness from the rest of the carnivores.

I think cladistics probably gets more user-friendly the farther back up the tree you go, because if it turns out you need to redraw the branching system based on additional information, you can just do so without having to try to figure out whether your new groups are subphyla or superorders, or whether they might throw off some of the taxa nested within the old group. (Also because you’re much less likely to know what the actual evolutionary line was, so you don’t have to worry so much about paraphyly since you can assume whatever you’re working with was a side branch that went extinct.) Additionally, the higher ranked Linnaean taxa, such as phyla, are supposed to have fairly essential differences. Yet obviously when the first members of those phyla were just evolving their differences from their contemporaries wouldn’t have been so notable.

[FONT=&quot]There is also, I suppose, something to be said for the fact that cladistics involves simple, hard and fast rules. I happen to think at least one of those rules - the one against paraphyly – is unnecessary and causes more problems than it solves, but at least it’s pretty straightforward. [/FONT]

 

[Cirbryn]

I don't know what Linnaeus' motivation was in the days before Darwin. But now that we know about evolutionary relationships, there is only one reason to do taxonomy at all, and that is to try and trace evolutionary phylogenies.

A second important goal of taxonomy is to categorize information about shared characteristics. For instance, if the members of a particular group uniquely share the characteristic of actually or potentially interbreeding with each other, then that group is a species. If they don’t, then it isn’t. You can’t find that out from the group’s phylogeny alone. We may also want to categorize parts of clades according to characteristics shared within those parts. For instance if a particular branch of a clade evolves a set of characteristics for a particular niche, and the rest of the clade retains another set of characteristics for another niche, then we might want words to differentiate those two groups. Or if the early members of a particular clade shared characteristics not shared by later members of the clade, we might want a word to indicate only those early members possessing the characteristics in question. Giving such groups a special word – assigning them to a unique family for instance - doesn’t suggest they are no longer part of the clade. It simply means we are taking note of the shared characteristics without saying anything about the phylogeny. In the same manner, a cladogram would take note of the phylogeny without saying anything about the shared characteristics. Both types of information are important.

Either all tetrapods have four legs or they don't.

What about cetaceans?

Those don’t.

We don't have tetrapods slithering around that both have four legs and don't have any legs.

What about Sirenians?

Sirenians don’t have both have four legs and no legs.

I do think you're correct that the characters are used to build the phylogenetic tree, which then serves to indicate the clade. I just think it's silly to pretend that therefore there must be characters that are constant throughout any particular clade.

Then why are you still arguing this with me? Snakes are at once members of Stegocephalia (characterized by having digits on their limbs) Tetrapoda, (adapted to four limbs) and Anthracosauria (having five digits on their limbs.) None of these traits are still present in snakes, and most of them are missing on horses too, who are also in both of those same groups. But then, none of these clades are identified only by those traits, and the only thing that really matters is what the evolutionary relationships are.

First, to claim that a group is characterized by a particular characteristic is to claim that all members of the group have the characteristic. If the characteristic is merely common within the group, then you’d say that instead. Second, you were the one claiming there had to be characteristics shared by all monkeys but not by apes. This is incorrect by Linnaean standards because monkeys don’t occupy a single Linnaean taxon by themselves, but it’s also incorrect even by cladistic standards, since all the members of a clade don’t have to share the same characteristics.

If having "four-limbs" doesn't have to be constant throughout the whole clade, then why do you insist on removing everything that doesn't retain four limbs?

I don’t insist on removing them from the clade. But the clade and the Linnaean taxon are two different things, and I do insist on acknowledging the Linnaean taxon. Just because snakes are in the lizard clade, or humans are in the monkey clade, doesn’t mean snakes are lizards or humans are monkeys. I’ve mentioned several times that if you told people humans are in the monkey clade I wouldn’t be arguing with you over it.

That's the same thing I was talking about when you asked me how we'd figure out whether a newly discovered animal was a monkey and I said we'd look at where it fit into the known tree.

No it is not the same thing. Because in that case, we still fit every character indicative of monkeys –including the fact that we have five digits on each of our four limbs. One of the characters which specify apes, (at least the 'great' apes) is that we have a broader chest than others in that lineage. You want to turn that around backwards and try to claim that monkeys have a narrower chest than apes. But you've failed even in that because Proconsul has the narrow rib cage you're talking about, and earlier monkeys had five-cusped molars, and everything else you want to try to use to keep us apart. Its not going to work. Every character trait indicative of all monkeys collectively is also descriptive of apes and still applies to humans. And (as I said before) once you isolate what kind of monkey it is, if you discover that it is an ape, then you've still identified what kind of monkey it is. Being an ape doesn't make it a non-monkey classification. It becomes a certain type monkey specification.

If, by “we still fit every character indicative of monkeys” you meant indicative of the monkey clade, I’d have to point out you just got through admitting that clades aren’t indicated by characters. I also haven’t claimed that we aren’t part of the monkey clade.

If instead you meant that we still fit every character indicative of the various Linnaean families considered to be monkeys, I’d have to ask what makes you think it’s reasonable to look only for those characters that are common to several separate families. If monkeys had a bunch of determinative characters in common they wouldn’t be separate families, they’d be the same family. Looking at where a newly discovered animal fits in on the tree (from a Linnaean perspective) means finding the family and genus and species to which it is most closely related. If it fits into a monkey family then it’s a monkey. If it fits into an ape family (Hominidae or Hylobatidae) then it’s an ape. At no point do we combine all the the monkey families into a single (non-Linnaean) group and compare the new animal to whatever characteristics are common to that group as a whole. Although the Linnaean system does recognize a taxon for apes (the superfamily Hominoidea), there is no equivalent Linnaean taxon containing all the monkeys and nothing else.

As for proconsul, it is a transitional, and so has some characteristics of old-world monkeys and some of the Hominoidea. As this site discusses:

“They had a mixture of Old World monkey and ape characteristics, so their placement in the ape superfamily Hominoidea is tentative; some scientists place Proconsul outside of Hominoidea, before the split of the apes and New World monkeys. If Proconsul is not an ape, then it would be somewhat closely related to Aegyptopithecus.

Proconsul's monkey-like features include thin tooth enamel, a light build with a narrow chest and short forelimbs, and an arboreal quadrupedal lifestyle. Its ape-like features are its lack of a tail, ape-like elbows, and a slightly larger brain relative to body size.”

The difficulty in assigning definite ape vs monkey status to something like proconsul might seem to be a drawback of the Linnaean system, but purely cladistic systems have similar difficulties. Recall that clades may be node based, stem based or apomorphy based.

(See here). So by a node-based system proconsul would not be an ape; by a stem-based system it probably would; and by an apomorphy-based system it might be, depending on which derived characteristic you chose as determinitive, and on whether proconsul inherited that characteristic from something on the main line to humans or else evolved it independently.

The ability to avoid worrying about characteristics common to the entire group could at times be an advantage of phylogenetic systematics over Linnaean, if the people supporting phylogenetic systematics would stop trying to pretend there must be such common characteristics for every clade.

Since we obviously don't, then maybe it is you who should stop all this "silly pretending" that we do.

Alright, let’s take a look and see who’s doing the pretending.

Cirbryn, post 106: “What I don't get is why either of you insist on defining characteristics for a clade in the first place.”

Loudmouth, post 115: “Because that is how you define and root clades. They are called synapomorphies, the features that all species in the clade share.”

(You never responded directly to my question in post 106, or commented on Loudmouth’s answer, but in post 119, which was your first response to me after I’d asked the question, you said): “whether you're talking about biodiversity, vehicles, art forms, electrical appliances, or even rocks, -you still have to classify them by the collective characters common to everything in that category.”

So I’d say both you and Loudmouth claimed pretty definitively that there have to be characteristics common to the entire clade. And the only one pretending otherwise now is you.

Linnaean taxa actually are defined by their common characteristics. That's why some taxa need to be paraphyletic – because they've produced organisms that evolved to lose those characteristics.

Then, by your own admission, you "fail to reflect" important information from an evolutionary perspective, and you do so deliberately.

True. Both systems deliberately fail to reflect some important evolutionary information in favor of other important evolutionary information. Because they allow paraphyly, the ranks of the Linnaean system do not correspond exactly to the branchings of the phylogenetic tree. Because they disallow paraphyly, clades are unable to convey where on the tree important characteristics are lost.

many of those common characteristics are important to note, and naming groups that share them allows us to talk about them more easily. I've already talked about the importance of the characteristic of gene flow, which defines Linnaean species.

Cladistics uses the same definition –where that applies to animals. So there is no specifically 'Linnaean' definition.

No, the standard definition of species can’t be used in a purely cladistic system, because that definition is character based. Speciation involves the loss by one population of the characteristic ability to interbreed with members of the original species. Cladistics can’t show this because all it shows is clades, and the new species remains in the clade of the original. Cladograms do show species, but every species so depicted is assumed to not have pruduced descendant species. Failure to group the ancestor species with all its descendants would be paraphyly.