Explaining Scientific Concepts from the Perspective of other Disciplines

[Kai]

Thoughts?

Dead on? Rewrite?

The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music.  As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.

Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]

[Reginald Ret]

All metaphors are flawed.  That's the nature of metaphor.

The trick is to find a metaphor that leads a person to a deeper truth about the object.

Very much this.
As such i very much liked the metaphor.
Well done, Twid!

[Ben Shapiro]

Keep trying twid. I want to hear more.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Thoughts?

Dead on? Rewrite?

The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music.  As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.

That's why I specified Western music- as it was rattling around in my head I realized I had to be culture specific to avoid getting into microtones and such.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Thoughts?

Dead on? Rewrite?

The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music.  As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.

Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]

They also both have mitochondria and don't photosynthesize (sorry if that's what Opsthokonta means)

[Nephew Twiddleton]

All metaphors are flawed.  That's the nature of metaphor.

The trick is to find a metaphor that leads a person to a deeper truth about the object.

That's kinda what I'm fishing around for. One of the problems with something like evolution is that the process is fairly slow from our perspective. I'm trying to think of an immediately graspable metaphor to counteract ideas like "natural selection occurs but can't lead to different species."

[Nephew Twiddleton]

All metaphors are flawed.  That's the nature of metaphor.

The trick is to find a metaphor that leads a person to a deeper truth about the object.

Very much this.
As such i very much liked the metaphor.
Well done, Twid!

Keep trying twid. I want to hear more.

Thanks guys- I might try my hand at explaining evolution again with something a little more on the head.

[rong]

Dick Clark is like Monsanto

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Dick Clark is like Monsanto

[Kai]

Thoughts?

Dead on? Rewrite?

The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music.  As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.

Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]

They also both have mitochondria and don't photosynthesize (sorry if that's what Opsthokonta means)

No, Opisthokonta refers to those clades where the motile cells have a single, posterior facing flagellum. It's suspected to be a group with a single common ancestor, and includes the Fungi, Metazoa, and a couple other groups of single celled Eukaryotes. Think sperm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Thoughts?

Dead on? Rewrite?

The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music.  As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.

Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]

They also both have mitochondria and don't photosynthesize (sorry if that's what Opsthokonta means)

No, Opisthokonta refers to those clades where the motile cells have a single, posterior facing flagellum. It's suspected to be a group with a single common ancestor, and includes the Fungi, Metazoa, and a couple other groups of single celled Eukaryotes. Think sperm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisthokont

I suspect you and I will be talking a lot more from this point on. Not that I wouldn't like that for its own sake, but, making the switch that I did, having you as a friend is going to make understanding this a whole lot easier.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

So, actually, Kai, I have somewhat of a question for you, and somewhat of figuring out where your stance is on it-

We have 3 domains now, Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota.

With Eukaryota, we have at least 3 distinct kingdoms and a 4th sort of kingdom-
Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, and Protista which are basically, as far as I can tell, categorized by how they create their energy.
Fungi absorb, Animalia ingest, Plantae photosynthesize, and Protista has a weird sort of in between kingdom and domain status since they have aspects similar to the previous three, and it seems like we currently don't know what to do with Protista, based on both energy production and genes. What are your thoughts on that?

With Bacteria, it seems like we're thinking of categorizing them along the lines of separate kingdoms but don't know what those kingdoms are yet.

Same with Archaea.

I find it interesting because I remember in grammar school, the thought was, there are 5 kingdoms (and no domains), Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, Protista, and Bacteria, but wait a minute, archaean bacteria are interesting enough that they might make a 6th kingdom. Turns out we just made another level of taxonomy as a result. Thoughts on that as well (the kingdoms within domain Archaea and Bacteria).

[Kai]

So, actually, Kai, I have somewhat of a question for you, and somewhat of figuring out where your stance is on it-

We have 3 domains now, Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota.

With Eukaryota, we have at least 3 distinct kingdoms and a 4th sort of kingdom-
Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, and Protista which are basically, as far as I can tell, categorized by how they create their energy.
Fungi absorb, Animalia ingest, Plantae photosynthesize, and Protista has a weird sort of in between kingdom and domain status since they have aspects similar to the previous three, and it seems like we currently don't know what to do with Protista, based on both energy production and genes. What are your thoughts on that?

With Bacteria, it seems like we're thinking of categorizing them along the lines of separate kingdoms but don't know what those kingdoms are yet.

Same with Archaea.

I find it interesting because I remember in grammar school, the thought was, there are 5 kingdoms (and no domains), Fungi, Animalia, Plantae, Protista, and Bacteria, but wait a minute, archaean bacteria are interesting enough that they might make a 6th kingdom. Turns out we just made another level of taxonomy as a result. Thoughts on that as well (the kingdoms within domain Archaea and Bacteria).

The Margulis "5 Kingdoms" system doesn't work very well when you look at multiple lines of evidence. Animalia is roughly equivalent to Metazoa, which is multicellular animals. Fungi is roughly the same, except there are some traditional Fungi that are not included. Plantae is Viridiplantae, the green plants, and includes green algae, and the whole grade up to land plants. The remaining "Protista" is a myriad of unrelated unicellular lifeforms, and does not exist as a natural group. This, even more than the other kingdoms, is the reason the 5 kingdom model utterly fails to represent the history of life. You can still talk about protists as an ecological grouping, just like fish or reptiles, but it is not a group that contains a common ancestor and all of it's descendents (called monophyletic). Therefore, there is no Protista.

So yes, three domains. Bacteria, which is as it was traditionally, Eukaryota, which is also the same, and Archaea, which are a separate kind of life entirely. They look different, they have different structures, they live in interesting places, and genetically they are completely distinct from Eukaryota and Bacteria. The three Domains are thought to have arisen from a single common ancestor, the ancestor of all life. There may be a 4th domain; quite a bit of ocean water sampling is going on right now, bioprospecting, "stalking the 4th domain" of life.

Back to eukaryotes. There's quite a bit of disagreement, but things seem to be falling out into these things I've started calling "superkingdoms".



People who work on protists have separated Eukaryota into roughly 6 or 7 groups above kingdom and below domain. I call them superkingdoms, some people call them supergroups, it's not really important since the names are unregulated by the codes of nomenclature.

There's the Opisthokonta, which includes Fungi, Metazoa, and some protist groups;
the Amoebozoa, which includes the classic amoebas and slime molds;
Archaeplastida, which is Viridiplantae plus the rhodophytes (red algae);
Chromalveolata, which there is great controversy about, but in the past has been put together based on a hypothesis of secondary endosymbiosis with a red alga, includes such things as diatoms, kelp, yellow algae, and other photosynthetic and nonphotosynthetic organisms (some people split this up into the Heterokonta (stramenopiles) and Aveolata);
The Rhizaria, which includes several groups of organisms that have filament like cytoplasmic streaming, like Foraminifera;
and the Excavata, motile organisms with mouth like depressions like Euglena and Paramecium.

Again, there is controversy in this arrangement, Especially with the stramenopiles-aveolates-rhizarians (sometimes called the SAR clade). But it makes a heck of a lot more sense from total evidence than the Margulis system.

In summary, organizing eukaryotes by trophic or "what it eats" centered groups oversimplifies the relationships. Photosynthetic organisms are scattered all over; Archaeplastida is of course photosynthetic, but even there you can find examples of trophic reversals (e.g. parasitic plants that lack chloroplasts). And the algae are scattered throughout, because endosymbiosis took place multiple times over the Earth's history. In some cases you get examples of /tertiary/ endosymbiosis (a bluegreen bacteria is eaten by what becomes a red alga, is eaten by what becomes a yellow alga, is eaten by a dinoflagellate). Many of these "algae" groups have a large number of members which aren't photosynthetic at all, they eat other microbes for a living. And Fungi do all sorts of things, from decomposers to pathogens to parasites. We're moving past the 5 kingdoms which is a rather naive view of life into something that more clearly represents the diversity and relationships of life.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Wow. That's going to take some processing. Thanks Kai.

[Pergamos]

Thoughts?

Dead on? Rewrite?

The metaphor is a bit flawed because the chromatic Western scale is not analogous to DNA, there's Eastern music as well, which uses a different system, but is still certainly music.  As different, perhaps, as a fungus is from an animal, but music all the same.

Fungi aren't all that different from animals, they're both in the same superkingdom (Opsthokonta). [/pedantic asshole]

Right, and Eastern and Western music aren't all that different, they both include rhythms and melodies that are recognizable as such by people raised listening to the other tradition.  As opposed, say, to Inuit throat singing.