From: jacobus@symphony.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: Jared Diamond's _The Third Chimpanzee_
Date: 25 Jan 93 21:45:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: mentor.C1FJ3F.DMF
Organization: Purdue University

In article <727510995snx@tillage.DIALix.oz.au> gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>
>Further, I would point out here that not only is that time frame a
>cultural artifact, but so are *all* of the concepts of inheritance and
>classification borrowed from the European social hierarchy of the day.
>Animal KINGDOMS, indeed!
>       ^^^^
>You are a bunch of pretentious frauds, doing no more than re-imposing
>on us European conservative, royalist hegemony in the guise of *CARING*
>so about nature. An activity bordering on the sort of fruity expositions
>for which the present heir to the British throne himself is renowned.
>It is neither surprising that other fellow who wrote The Naked Ape, is
>also well advanced in his career as a *surrealist* painter.





Hee hee!  That's a good one!  So tell me, have you heard the one
about the evil mind-controlling Commies who want to destroy our psyches
with water flouridation?



As a working biologist (molecular at the moment, but I have worked in classical
botany) I find the statement that our current systematic classification schema
is an attempt to impose a royalist hegemony simply the biggest giggle ever!
Anyway, I can hope that you are familiar with the fact that "Kingdom" is
probably the LEAST-used of all the various levels of the schema.

Generally, in the real world, all the work in systematics tends to go on either
at the point of defining species or genera and then determining their taxonomic
interrelatedness.  Note that I say "taxonomic interrelatedness".  This is
known as a "technical term"--so far as I recall, anthropology has them, too.
It is analogous to "color", "spin", etc. in particle physics.  Terms that
have meaning within a field which may not closely correspond to vernacular
usage.  Such terms arise when researchers need to label some observed or
inferred phenomenon and do their best to apply the language they know to
a situation it is currently unable to describe.


>
>Every distinction you make can be shown readily to have been invented,
>by whom, when and where, were you honest enough to admit that like the
>rest of scientific endeavour your theoretical constructs are no more
>than models plainly subject to criticism and development.



Uh, yeah, so what?

That is virtually a DEFINITIONAL statement of science.
What we study is, quite literally, unspeakable.  It is the ineffable, the
unwritable, and the ultimately indescribable.  We can model it.  But, since
we are scientists, we are willing to alter our models.  That is what
separates the scientific from the dogmatic paradigm.

>
>My argument here, however, is that some *other* term may have been
>chosen by the biologists and their close, almost incestuous kinfolk
>physical anthropologists to communicate the fact that chimpanzees and
>humans are similar in many respects, not least that their theory on
>this matter may have been articulated far more clearly than it was,
>and amid far less confusion and noise.
>


Interesting choice of terms, incestuous--tell me, were you using it in the
normal sense of connoting immoral, unclean, and perverse, or was this some
sort of special meaning which does not indicate you were stooping to low
demagoguery?


>I repeat, I am *not* related to chimpanzees. I am not even related to
>most humans on this planet, and if all you mean to suggest is that as
>species we are very similar then it appears quite reasonable to me
>that that is precisely what might have been said. If we have 98% of
>our gene sequence in common, one simple sentence is all that is
>required to say it. If so many aspects of our social behaviour are
>also observed to be remarkably similar, that is also easy to say. I
>yet wonder when any of you are going to begin a dissertation on what
>we are to make of it.

Uh, you're not related to most humans on this planet?  WOW!  What planet
are you from then?  Or are you taking "related" in a sense different from 
the ordinary "tied by heritance or marriage"?  A little simple series math
can demonstrate that, due to various intermarriages and world wars, we
are all now related to some distant degree or another.  However, it's like
stating that a nanomolar solution of NaCl contains table salt, for most
common purposes, there's too little to really count.