Species specifics exercise 1

[Ron Gatrelle]

A few days ago I noted that all our discussion is conceptual and no actual
examples. All theories - a verbal contest, no specific application - a
test.

Feniseca (the Harvester genus).  Is that a human idea? The word is a human
construct, but what about what its finger points to?  Does this group exist
only on paper because we built a nomenclatorial fence around it? Or, is it
a real thing in nature and our "name" is but a human acknowledgment of the
obvious?  Is this thing we call a genus artificial - not real (that is what
artificial means) or is it self evident and as such very real?

Exceptions are real too, but they do not disprove rules. Intellectual,
moral and other grays are disturbing and elusive, but they never cancel out
black and white. Our material universe is very real and operates in a great
order. We call these laws - because that is what they are.  Fight them and
it may cost you your life. Every new college freshman class is ripe and
ready to reinvent the wheel and easy prey for those professors -
theologians to mathematicians to biologists -  who want to wash out
anything that was parental or older.  (Plenty of theologians believe with
utter plasticity in nothing, and plenty of biologists believe rigidly in
something - evolution, caldistics, genetics).

Forget the Paramidea etc.counter points. Let's decide - is Feniscea a
butterfly _genus_ or not?  First, we have to go with the orthodox
definition of a _genus_. The term genus refers to and acknowledges that one
or more species is - in its current (time and space) state of being -
unique from all other species or groups of species. This is not an
artificial construct of man (humanity) - it is Man communicating to Man an
actuality based on real life observation of a naturally occurring distinct
entity.

Ron


 
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