Talk:Trying to Understand the Other Side: An Attempt to Explain Systematic Ornithology's Take on the Origins of Birds

From EvoWiki

If only all participants in the debate on avian origins would show the temperance expressed in this article! Nothing can have delighted the enemies of science more than the utter irrationality displayed, with both sides often abandoning common sense, prudency and even simple decency. Am I now too direct myself? Let me then explain in greater detail what is irrational and what is not.

It is irrational for the cladist to presume that the exactitude used in the internal workings of his method somehow permeates its external relations. Yes, we can calculate the superiority of a cladogram to another one; yet we cannot decide by exact numbers that any cladogram should be prefered to another method that might give us knowledge. Knowledge, the philosophers of science profess, is justified belief. Surely other methods offer some justification? Or would the cladist claim the knowledge they generate is not scientific? That claim is both preposterous and irrelevant. Preposterous, as even the most deficient method, phenetics, judged by the most narrow interpretations, verificationism and falsificationism, is science still. Irrelevant as, call it what you will: metatheory, philosophy or metaphysics, it is still a rational activity that generates knowledge. What use is it to apply artificial divisions? Likewise logic and mathematics could be defined as "unscientific"; should we therefore abstain from them? Even if we could limit our intellectual praxis to the strictly empirical, nothing would be gained, much lost.

Or are other methods subjective? The common usage of the word suggests relativism, and thus ultimate falsehood, but it implies no such thing. That a subject is involved, does not mean it will fail in its task. Cladistics itself can, as we have seen, only be subjectively judged superior; and if it truly is so in general, it had better openly incorporate subjectivity by allowing qualitative judgement. And in reality, this cannot be avoided. Some characters, like a crurotarsal ankle, will always have more subjective weight than some minor features; and so, whatever the cladogram indicates, it will not lead to knowledge: the formal justification is present, but the belief is absent. The most foolish way to accommodate this is to vindicate quantativity by introducing weighted characters, trying to overcome vagueness by illusion.

But given the cladistic evidence it is irrational for any well-informed subject to deny that it is more likely than not that birds are theropods. The only explanation I can give for the unmistakeable fact that some do, is that these people are so strongly conditioned by avian templates through their career as ornithologists, that they can see only "bird" in Archaeopteryx; and that these templates exclude those of dinosaurs.

Well, what I have stated is merely the obvious; but perhaps it is nice to know someone agrees with you; and maybe I succeeded in making some arguments more persuasive.

MWAK

Making the page easier to read

Just wondering if anyone would be willing to break the page down into sections. Right now it's too doficult to read as it looks like one hige slab of text. Maybe have sections for References and things. Hope this helps.