From: alc@netcom.com (Chris Stassen)
Subject: Re: Species, Kinds, and Gaps (was: "Re: Darwin's Enigma")
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 92 03:16:41 GMT
Organization: The Lion's Den, San Jose

In article <dcnL02y8cegh00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> Jim Loucks writes:
[I wrote:]
>> John Morris says that "kind" is above the genus level, in proposing

> I didn't know John Morris said that.

Well, to be fair to Morris, he wasn't trying to find a reasonable
definition of "kind" so much as he was trying to radically lighten
the load on the Ark.  However, there can't be multiple levels of
"kinds"; there should only be one definition.  One can't argue for
"above genera" to make the Ark easy to load and then argue for "at
species" to align with punctuated equilibriists!

	"... only about 600 species of dinosaurs had ever been
	 named, that many species had been named from only a
	 piece of one bone, that many of the species were probably
	 the same "kind," that many dinosaurs were small, that
	 God wouldn't have brought the largest specimens to
	 Noah, and that, in my opinion, there were probably only
	 around 100 dinosaurs on-board the Ark ..."
	[_Back To Genesis_, #37, page "d";  March 1992]

You'll note that I missed a factor of two (I was working "from memory"
before and only remembered the number 100); in proposing 100 Ark
dinosaurs to represent all "kinds", Morris is proposing that there
were only *50* kinds.  ... or less than that, if some dinosaurs were
among the seven-pairs-each "clean" creatures.  :-)

I am not sure of Morris's count of 600 species.  If true, there's
only about one specie per genus, as the following from _Science News_
(Volume 138, Number 17, p. 270) indicates.  It's re-quoted from
an old article of mine, with an interesting (never yet answered)
question of mine included after the quotation:

#	"[...] Researchers have described about 550 dinosaur genera
#	 over the last 170 years, with the rate of new discoveries
#	 accelerating greatly during the last two decades.  Since
#	 1970, scientists have identified about six new genera each
#	 year, or a total of 40 percent of all known dinosaurs, ..."

#	"[...] In the future, he predicts, excavators will find most
#	 new dinosaur genera in Mongolia or Argentina, which hold
#	 promising reserves of unexplored rocks from the days of
#	 the dinosaurs. [...]"

# A question to the 'flood geologists':  Do you agree with the prediction
# above?  Where (geographically, and stratigraphically) would _you_ direct
# researchers to look for new genera of dinosaurs?  Why?

So, I guess Morris's words yield about 11 genera per "kind" for
dinosaurs (... and counting by 0.12 per year!).

> I really don't understand the hype over "kind."  Nobody was there to
> verify exactly what fell into this category.

You're right that nobody was present.  However, the astounding (to
biologists) claim that there are lots of distinct boundaries that
evolution could not / did not cross simply *begs* the question of
where the heck these boundaries are.  (It's one thing to tell all
these scientists that they're full of crap.  It's adding insult to
injury to refuse to tell them where.  :-)  )

It's hard to test an idea if we don't know what it is.  I don't
think a generic definition (e.g. "species" or "genera") will work,
but at least a list of examples would be nice.  I recall that when
Gish talks about this topic, some of the "kinds" that he mentions
are collections of smaller sets identified as "kinds" elsewhere by
him.  (Warning: I'm working from memory again.)

That can't be possible.  If all creatures *in* a "kind" share
biological ancestry with each other but *not* with anything outside
the "kind", you can't have a hierarchy.  If you proposed such a
hierarchy...  either the top level would be a "kind" -- in which
case the lower levels would not because they have common ancestry
with creatures outside their groups; or the low levels would be
"kinds" -- in which case the top level would not because its members
don't all have common ancestry.
-- 
Chris Stassen						stassen@alc.com
DISCLAIMER:  My employer's account, but not their opinions.