Talk:Archaeopteryx is fully bird
From EvoWiki
Now this is going to be hard on someone... but I guess I have to do it.
I'd like to format this page, as some anonymous person asked me, but I don't understand it any more.
(Instead I'll clean up the other creationist arguments. They need work too after my sloppy copying.)
This text may be extremely useful for a handful of ornithologists but not as a reference for someone who wants to answer a Creationist.
If I didn't know (from Mark Isaak's text) that this is a list of bird characteristics and dino characteristics of Archaeopteryx, I couldn't infer it easily from this new text. To find it out, you have to jump to a lot of other pages, understand them und put them together - so you have to solve a puzzle in order to understand what this is even about! Unless you are an ornithologist. And in that case you already know that Archie is not fully bird.
As a refutation, it's a total failure now. I'd change it back but that wouldn't solve the problem. JGK would change it again.
The problem is not even that JGK is living is his own little world of ornithology where nothing else matters. The problem is that he can't explain his knowledge to outsiders and doesn't recognize it. He thinks that "maxilla" is something you don't have to explain - no, you mustn't explain! (I made links to "maxilla" in another page, but he changed it back.)
But he's not alone.
I think one big reason of why there are creationists is that most scientists aren't able to make themselves clear to laymen and don't know it. If we want to fight creationism we either have to learn how to explain, or let others do that after giving them the facts. There are experts on birds, and there are experts on explaining. We need both.
Or maybe I'm interpreting something wrong. If so, please tell me.
-- Thomas Kettenring
I will try to make it clear to you why what JGK is doing here is really very, very good. Some people who believe in creationism are either so stupid or so insane that they are simply beyond help, at least beyond that help that can be given to them by someone using rational argumentation. These unhappy souls, however, form only a tiny minority of creationists. Most have a fairly normal intelligence and are technically not insane. They are just people suffering from conflicting loyalties. They want to be loyal to God, and thus to what they have been taught, is the Word of God. They also want to be loyal to science, as this has given them a lot of insight into the world, and has been immensely useful to them in daily life. Now in that daily life, this normally poses no problem. They don't believe their car is moved by Spirits any other than the spirit of gasoline. Nor does any church. When things become more abstract however, as when discussing in school our more fundamental views on cosmology, some discrepancies become evident. They begin to ask themselves: "Hey, how is it that the cosmos was created 6000 years ago in six days AND is 14 billion years old?"
Those who are by nature wise, easily see the solution to this question. Genesis is not a science book, but exactly what it openly is: a myth, a sacred text guiding us by symbolical and simplifying language into a deeper understanding of meaning and being.
There are those who are not by nature very wise. They think that something has to give, that a choice must be made. Now if a person chooses for science seen in false opposition to ethics and ontology, the results can be horrendous. Easily such a person can degenerate into a nihilistic cynic; or a fascist and racist social darwinist. Many vaguely understand this and thus in choosing try to make themselves safe from such a fate. They choose against science. But they can't reject science altogether. They are simply too deeply immersed in its worldview and the technology it has generated. You can't go around being shocked every time the light is switched on. So they solve the presumed conflict between religion and science by rejecting only part of the latter: those esoteric bits that contradict the literal, fundamentalist, interpretation of the biblical cosmology. But so doing you make science broken. And so you have to replace the broken piece by a new one. And that piece is creationism.
Creationists are not, as you might presume, very credulous people. To the contrary, they are people of little faith. Had they been faithful, they would have dared to step forward unto the path of knowledge, trusting both God and the World.
Creationism is not, as you might think, a pseudoscience. It is a very real science in a state of deep refutation. It is contradicted by every known piece of diagnostic evidence.
Creationists are not, as it often claimed, pseudoscientists. In order that creationism may fulfil its function, making science work for them, creationists can never allow themselves to become aware of its empirical status. They must forever procrastinate the moment of conclusion. This of course nicely fits their insecurity of mind. So they do not deny the tenets of falsificationism. They hold Popper to his word by ever asking for the falsification to be falsified.
So how can you defeat creationists? Not by giving them the simple facts, simply explained. They can't allow themselves to trust them. They will ask you to proof what you claim. And again. And when at last you cannot, they'll pride themselves on their insecurity. They will claim to be better scientists than you by doing so, more critical.
There is however an alternative. There is the denying doubt of the creationist; there is also the embracing doubt of those who are involved in the sound dialectic of doubting and knowing. People can be tempted to grow from the negative to the positive state. And the best way to do this, is to involve them in a proces of developing science. To show them that evolution is not dead dogmatic fact but living and growing knowledge. So these pages might seem too esoteric, but their technical analysis of very controversial issues might get people truly interested. And a creationist with true scientific interest no longer has need of creationism. His science is healing itself.
MWAK
Sorry, but most of what you write is neither new to me nor relevant to this page. The relevant part seems to be in the last paragraph.
Are you saying that we should change all those EvoWiki pages which a layman can understand, into pages which a layman can't understand, in order to make him curious? I don't get it.
I'm not against making special ornithologists-only pages. I'm against making comprehensible pages incomprehensible.
The page I'm talking about is Archaeopteryx is fully bird. Before JGK touched it, it was structured like this:
Its bird traits are:
* ...
Its dinosaurian traits include:
* ...
Anybody who was interested could examine the traits in detail by consulting Chris Nedin's page or even the literature given there.
Anybody who was not that interested could at least see what the page was driving at: Archie is not fully bird and not fully dino, it has traits of both.
But I guess the traits weren't complete and not always exact, so they had to be changed. That's OK. But please, read the page as is it now, and, in order to emulate a layman (that is, a non-biologist), replace every technical term by a nonsense word. Can you guess that the page shows bird traits and dinosaur traits? I can't, at least not without a lot of work.
There is some introductory text followed by a list. In the introductory text, which presumably contains an explanation of what the list is, we first learn that "Archaeopteryx possesses but six autapomorphies which underwrite the holophyly of Archaeopterygiformes", but they are not given, which is just as well, since looking up "holophyly" and "Archaeopterygiformes" tells us that the h. of A. has not much to do with whether Archie is fully bird (the subject of the page) or, as we will find out, with the list below.
Next we learn, after a bit of pondering, that there are other transitional fossils beside Archie, namely Theropoda with feathers and furculae (whatever a furcula is). Another blind alley - nothing about the page subject or the list below.
Then, after looking up "plesiomorphic" and remembering what "homologous" is, we find out that the list contains traits of Archie's that it has in common with Avialae and Ornithurae, which turn out, after some looking up and thinking, to be birds and some other critters. So this is a list of bird features! Heureka!
The same amount of work, I guess, is necessary for finding out what the rest of the lists are. I didn't do that. I think that making sense of words is mostly the job of the writer, not the reader. This is more efficient since a typical text has more readers than writers.
Do you really think this is an improvement? Do you think that a piece of text of which you understand nothing makes you more "truly interested" that a piece of text of which you understand a little bit?
The opposite is the case - every bit you understand is a new starting point for understanding the related bits. If you know nothing, you can learn nothing (except with difficulties).
I can see that "It's bird traits are..." may be extremely sloppy and inaccurate to an ornithologist, but what's wrong with the following approach?
Archaeopteryx' Own Special Traits
Archaeopteryx possesses but six autapomorphies which underwrite the holophyly of Archaeopterygiformes.
Archaeopteryx' Bird Traits
Strictly speaking, the following traits are characters of the urvogel which are plesiomorphic comparative to all other Avialae and most notably Ornithurae.
- a) Lack of any of the cranial components permitting streptostylic kinesis.
etc.
As I said, I don't touch JGK's pages anymore, since he often changes them back without explanation, and I have better things to do than totally waste my time.
-- Thomas Kettenring
- Then, after looking up "plesiomorphic" and remembering what "homologous" is, we find out that the list contains traits of Archie's that it has in common with Avialae and Ornithurae, which turn out, after some looking up and thinking, to be birds and some other critters. So this is a list of bird features! Heureka!
That would be those characters which are plesiomorphic vis-a-vis Ornithurae and all other members of Aves -- those "birdy characters" they have but Archaeopteryx DOES NOT.
Given that he says these are "characters of the the urvogel which are plesiomorphic comparative to all other Avialae and most notably Ornithurae" and given the definition of "plesiomorphic" that is linked in the text, I dont find it terribly difficult.
Shrug. --GFA 00:39, 12 Jan 2004 (GMT)
After a two day absaence due to generally being busy, I find a genuine malestrom upon my return. I refuse to alter my Archaeopteryx pages simply because Kettenring doesn't understand them. To simplify is to sacrifice accuracy, and that I will not abide by. We must ask ourselves is the wiki to be an accurate and serious repository of data for those interested in the many aspects of evolutionary biology, or merely one of the mindless plethora of refutations of creationism offered ad nauseam on the Internet? If Kettenring cannot understand the posts that is his problem, as the rest of us seem to be doing quite fine. Perhaps he should read some of the readily available and excellently written material on ornithology, paleornithology, paleontology and systematics which is available to anyone sufficiently interested.
Furthermore, the accusation that I have somehow destroyed the Archaeopteryx is fully bird page, is utter rot. It was in need of revision, as it was quite simply (no offense to its original author) not entirely accurate. I think every paper submitted to the wiki should be held to a very high standard of accuracy--this is science we are discussing, accuracy is requisite.
JGK (8:05pm EST, 01/11/04)
Quick reference to the Goals page.
IMO this page is just fine as it is, and that it is the Archaeopteryx page that should be giving people an easy to understand introduction to what Archy is and why it's significant, and that should then reference to this page for an in depth page on why Archy is a transitional. The same goes for any non-glossary EvoWiki page - laymen should be able to understand what and why, but there should also be detailed science here. Selfish gene, for example, should be an introduction to the theory, but there should then be detailed pages about the statistics etc involved. --Steinsky 01:18, 12 Jan 2004 (GMT)
There are two types of answers here: 1) the page is comprehensible (GFA), 2) it doesn't matter if it isn't (MWAK, JGK, Steinsky).
I think the problem is that Archaeopteryx is fully bird lies on the intersection of JGK's Archaeopteryx pages and Mark Isaak's List of Creationist Claims.
Isaak's approach was: you have a list of claims, and every claim is refuted in one page. So, anybody who has problems discussing a creationist can give the creationist the refutation, or explain it to him. For that purpose, Archaeopteryx is fully bird is botched now. As a part of the Archaeopteryx network, it's fine, as you say.
I started this whole thing because someone asked me to format the page. (I am slowly formatting the other Creationist Claims pages.) But to format it you have to understand it, and I didn't, so I didn't. I also explained why, by stating this Talk page. That was in October. I haven't removed any typos from, or added links to, JGK pages since then, since he reacted negatively when I did it. (I thought that science is all about having your mistakes corrected by others, but I can live with the situation as it is.)
Now MWAK tried to convince me that the page is OK, which was beside the original point. I guess you are all biologists, so you are used to the terms, especially "plesiomorphic comparative to". The Plesiomorphy page doesn't tell what that means. According to it, plesiomorphy is a trait of a group, not a trait of one group "comparative to" another group.
It seems like I couldn't parse this since I'm a physicist, not a biologist. So it's worse than I thought: even after looking up all the terms I got it wrong. The page doesn't fulfil its original purpose anymore, but some other one.
JGK, if you say it's OK if only biologists understand it, then it's OK. This is not my wiki. But then why is there a Plesiomorphy page? All those little explanation-of-technical-terms pages made me think, erronously, that you wanted to make the Archie pages comprehensible to non-biologists. Biologists will know the term anyway, so why explain it if they are the intended readers? You are doing half a job, and after being told that, you refuse to do the other half or allow others to do it. Immunity to critique is what I would expect from a Creationist, not from a scientist. (Maybe I shouldn't write this, since it will probably make you all the more angry and critique-resistant...)
As far as I am concerned, the JGK part of this wiki will remain off limits. I won't touch it (though I find typos almost every time I look at one of his pages, which I don't do often), and I won't complain about it any more.
BTW, Steinsky: there is no "Archaeopteryx page that should be giving people an easy to understand introduction". Did you mean another page?
-- Thomas Kettenring
The simple fact of the matter is that you don't understand the paper whereas the rest of us apparently do, and demand that we change it to rectify what is your problem. I refuse to alter a perfectly decent page simply for your personal edification. Note that your objections have absolutely nothing to do with the science of the page, and so your moronic comment about how I am acting unscientific by resisting edits, is without basis in reality. What I am resisting is superfluous and misguided editing to my writing. Perhaps if you actually tried familiarizing yourself with fundamentals of paleornithological science you would not have such difficulty, and unless you do so, you ought to refrain from speaking about things you clearly do not understand. You don't see me pontificating on aspects of the wiki's content that I by my own admission have little knowledge of, whining and complaining to every person I can find about how inaccessible and abstruse they are, do you? It is not the job of the wiki to guide people by the hand through every single detail of whatever scientific topic we are dealing with. We, or at least I, expect readers to have a secure grasp on the fundamental concepts of whatever topic they happen to be reading about, and if they don't, I expect them to go out and rectify the problem through their own initiative. Unless you have something constructive to add (see e.g., the dialogue between MWAK, GFA and myself on the flightless hypothesis talk page), I think the conversation is quite finished.
JGK (10:22pm EST, 01/13/04)
I DO NOT DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE IT. There are three points I want to stress:
- I just refused to format it when somebody with the IP address 141.154.182.88 asked me on 01:42, 4 Oct 2003, and I gave my reason for that. I don't understand its structure, so I'm the wrong person to format it. (Maybe its format is OK now anyway, I'm not in a position to know.)
- I was under the mistaken impression that it was still supposed to be a popular-science article, as it was before the changes. You, Steinsky, and MWAK say it isn't, so that's OK. I'm sorry for that misunderstanding.
- Since it's a technical article now, it doesn't fit into the rest of the "Creationist Claims" pages, which is a pity. Now, if I happen to meet a creationist who makes that claim, I am helpless: I can't point him to Mark Isaak's article, since you say it is incorrect, and I trust your professional expertise. I also can't point him to your article, since he definitely won't understand it either.
The second problem would be resolved if someone would write a popular-science article about the same subject. But a person who writes popular-science articles has to be someone who
- knows enough about the subject,
- doesn't have a neener-neener-neener-I-know-things-that-you-do-not attitude to people working in other fields, calling them names for not understanding his articles. This condition is pretty basic: popular-science articles have to be proofread by people who don't know anything about the subject, and one should not treat people like dirt if one wants their cooperation.
So we two are out of the running. You are right, the conversation is finished.
Thomas Kettenring
