[Sigia-l] The Value of an IA discussion - from a newbie'sperspective

[Christopher Fahey]

>> On the contrary front though ... he wasn't the
>> first to classify stuff. Go back to the ancient greek.

>From memory, the particular Greek chap was Aratosthenes 

Aristotle is the one you're thinking of
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle). Like Linnaeus, Aristotle
classified all the animals, too. But like almost everything Aristotle
dreamed up, his system was fairly ridiculous (IMHO, of course). He had some
pretty bizzarre hierarchical categories, such as animals with blood vs.
without blood, animals found on Aristotle's estate vs. not-found on
Aristotle's estate, and animals that are delicious to eat versus those that
are not. Linneaus really and truly represented a massive step forward from
Aristotle's system (I sometimes think that the history of science can be
told in terms of scientists gradually breaking free from Aristotle's
ridiculous ideas.)

Linnaeus's system, by the way, had to be tweaked only slightly in modern
times to become entirely evolution-based. Each "fork" in the current life
classification system represents a evolutionary branching point, a specific
mutation. For example, the defining characteristic that separates mammals
from our reptile-like ancestors (the therapsids) is not warm blood or
mammary glands... it is, in fact, the three-boned inner ear. Weird, huh?

-Cf