Thanks scienceteacher. I was getting all militant about the use of the biological classification “ape”. As you pointed-out, it is clearly meaningless to argue such a position, and you’re right.
There are some interesting bugs in the world and I’m definitely no entomologist but I often point-out some weird ones to friends. A strange “thing” (not literally this foreign example, more like this) would land on a lettuce leaf at a braai and I’d say it’s a “fly”. Someone else would say “No ways, that too weird to be a fly, it’s a wasp.” But I’m determined in my classification, I can be proven right by consulting an encyclopedia, but that doesn’t change the thing on the lettuce leaf at all. It still thinks it’s a “me”, not a “wasp” or a “fly” - the words we as observers are using are really not important.
This classification really falls apart when one species has branched over time to a new species. When does it cease being classified (at a high level) as a fish and suddenly become classified as an amphibian (like the Tiktaalik which is amphibious in nature but not classification - they say it’s a “fishapod” - Inventing a new classification doesn’t make it clearer). There are also moths which are butterflies and butterflies which are moths.
When is it no longer a “wolf” and is now a “dog” (although still classified as canines in a high-level classification, the lower-level classification is blurry)?
This last example was discussed in the Kent Hovind vs. Michael Shermer debate where Hovind is emphatic that “dogs come from dogs” which Shermer obviously can’t challenge because it is a word game. It will lead to a discussion much like the one above where Hovind would point to a picture of dogs and ask “which of these dogs is not a dog?” Any answer is a victory because pointing at a dog defines it as a dog while refusing to answer the challenge is interpreted as “see, he agrees with me”.
But there is a need for classification, and that is all I have been trying to do all along. Using the word “ape” as a complete description of a thing is invalid. You can’t point to a creature and say “that is an ape and nothing else” because no such thing exists. Chimps are apes but they have more to them which makes them chimps. So all this time I’ve been trying to say that there is no one instance of a classification which is the classification itself.
To explore this in an analogy; consider that the newspapers tell us that Joburg has 300 000 new cars on the road every year. You can go to Investment Cars and say “I’d like to buy a car”. The salesman will smile and say “How about this Porsche Carerra?” to which you can reply; “But that isn’t a car, it’s a sportscar”. Perplexed the salesman might try a Hummer to which you can say “That’s not a car it’s a 4x4”. He may go on to suggest a Mercedes C-Class which you can say is a sedan, not a car. You can then appear irritated and say “The newspaper tells me that there are 300 000 new cars on the road this year and the name of your company is Investment Cars and yet you can’t sell me a car. If they can be counted they exist and yet they don’t seem to exist because you can’t sell me one. A car has wheels and carries its own propultion system and fuel source. These things you have shown me have so much more like suspension and seats and rubber tyres and petrol tanks and air conditioning.”
Now try this with Investment Apes which stocks chimps, bonoboes, orangutans, gorillas, humans and a rare example of the common ancestor but it can’t sell you an ape, a real true genuine ape which has no other properties.
The distinction that I’ve trying to make all along is that there is no car out there but there are cars everywhere. There is no ape and yet there are apes everywhere. So when metari1 was seeing the word “ape” he was expecting a thing when in fact when we use the word “ape” we are describing a blueprint of things, not one particular thing.
Oh dear, look at that, I’ve gone all militant again about language again.
