Re: great chain of being

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Alex Duncan <aduncan@mail.utexas.edu> writes:

>Your insistence on the idea that some organisms are "evolutionarily
>advanced" over others reminds me of the idea of the "great chain of
>being". This idea held some intellectual currency in the time of
>Linneaus, but bit the dust when Darwin showed up.

I don't care about Linneaus. Neither do I have to accept
everything Darwin said. A guy could stand next to a building
and push against it for a week; he hasn't done any work. Just because
some organism has been around as long as us (evolutionarily speaking)
doesn't make it "advanced" or "complex".

if you want to talk about complexity and organization, well, this
is the right time, not the time of Darwin. See Carl Sagan,
Dragons of Eden for references to things like information content
of DNA, brain etc.

-- 



				Regards, Mark

				http://www.smns.montclair.edu/~hubey

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