• DroneRights [it/its]
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    8 months ago

    And the taxonomic rule that any animal is also all of its ancestors is garbage science.

    • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      That’s not “science,” that’s just an arbitrary convention that can help simplify communication of complex toppics. The genetic data that the convention is derived from is the science, in the form of a lineage of genetic relations between organisms and nothing else, because biology has exactly zero built-in categories or labels, and those are all human-made.

      • DroneRights [it/its]
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        8 months ago

        Exactly, it’s not science. And it’s not helpful either. It doesn’t simplify communication. The representative conventions of taxonomy are not derived from evidence, they’re derived from the irrelevant feelings of taxonomists hundreds of years ago who didn’t understand how the world works. It’s pseudoscience. Pointless tradition masquerading as a legitimate exploratory endeavour.