> First, what is a tree? It’s a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood.
Hmm. This is a circular definition. You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
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Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is such thing as a men and women. Gender has nothing to do with biology!
I can't resist... Language is, in fact, a matter of common usage. A man is (or was) generally considered to the thing that is (or was) a male human. While I recognise that gender theory has challenged this notion, introducing the idea that gender is socially constructed, it can easily be understood (by those who have the intention of understanding) why this confusion might exist.
Before contemporary gender theory challenged the distinction between male and man, there was also a common distinction, e.g. by "becoming a man". A man is a male human adult, and the idea of adulthood is to some degree fluid. The legal age limit of 18 or 21 suggests that this is/was when we consider humans adults. But notions of "when your brain fully develops" suggests ages of 25-28 for men. Other factors involve when your beard grows big enough, and when children on the sidewalk saying "that man" about you. Society seems to have a duck-typing approach to what a man is, i.e. when a male human transitions from boy to man. And indeed, transgender men fit the duck-typing of society to a point where "strongly influenced by testosterone" seems like just as good a definition of, at least, "manly". Contemporary Western culture would have that you can make all sorts of other transitions at different points.
Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#33There's no such thing as a fish, there's no such thing as a tree, there's no such thing as a vegetable, there's no such thing as a man, there's no such thing as a woman. Biology is weird and blurry and doesn't fit into well-defined groups
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Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. A fish is a category that we have made up to make it easier to communicate the concept of a wiggly thing that lives under the sea, in the same way that man is a social category we made up to communicate the concept of someone who presents in a male way
This is an analysis of the term "man" which is, at the very least, overly specialised to a technical reading in rhetorical or cultural analysis. In areas of cultural analysis, terms are often read rhetorically, meaning as merely social actions with a persuasive or claim-making intent. E.g., to say "I know that ball will go in the net!!" isn't a claim involving actual knowledge, but something like a rhetorical act whi…
Um... maybe I just need some coffee, or maybe I need more knowledge of philosophy. Would you be able to dumb that down a bit, or summarise?
Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#35> First, what is a tree? It’s a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood. Hmm. This is a circular definition. You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
No you don't.
Lots of plants have leaves. A few don't, some primitive because they hadn't evolved them yet (e.g. algae) and a few because they lost them (broom, cacti). If there were no trees and nobody had ever seen a tree you could still explain leaves.
Lots of plants have wood. Things that aren't trees have wood. They're called bushes. Wood is a thing separate from trees. Not all trees have wood: bananas grow on really big herbs that people call trees because they are tree-sized, but they're herbs. Palm trees aren't really made of wood.
Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#36> First, what is a tree? It’s a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood. Hmm. This is a circular definition. You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
> You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
I don't think so?
All non-tree plants have leaves (almost all maybe? edit: not cacti, so not all but most). Wood can be defined biologically ("cellulose fibers embedded in a lignin matrix" or something like that)
Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#37[deleted]
Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#38Well, the name is not the thing named, so ultimately there is no such thing as anything. See also "ceci n'est pas une pipe".
True but the wrong point here.
Lots of different and only loosely related types of plant have evolved to be tall with thick strong stems to get above other plants and capture the light.
That is a way of growing, and we call it a tree, but the point here is not "trees do not exist" but "lots of totally different unrelated types of plant came up with being tree-shaped independently."
Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#39> First, what is a tree? It’s a big long-lived self-supporting plant with leaves and wood. Hmm. This is a circular definition. You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood.
> You need to invoke tree to define leaves and wood. I don't think so? All non-tree plants have leaves (almost all maybe? edit: not cacti, so not all but most). Wood can be defined biologically ("cellulose fibers embedded in a lignin matrix" or something like that)
Non tree plants still require you assume what a tree is.
Re: There's no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically) (2021)
#40What is this "there no fish" thing? The blog link takes to a British show.
All fish are not phylogenetically correlated: Things became fish multiple times independently. There is no "first fish from which all fish derived". Phylogenetic existence refers to the evolutionary history and relationships of a species as represented in a phylogenetic tree. This tree is a diagram that depicts the lines of evolutionary descent of different species, organisms, or genes from a common ancestor. So monk…
I understand the idea, I was asking for a link where the original "there's no fish" is discussed. I've seen it linked on HN but haven't been able to find it since.