Species - is there such a thing?
Recently, I have been thinking about evolution. Not unusual for me. Many apologists attack evolution, and attack the notion that species can evolve into new species, and that there is no transitional fossil evidence for X,Y and Z. However, what they do not realise is that there is no such thing as a species. Objectively, such an idea does not exist.
'Species' is a label that we humans have attached to groups of organisms that we see common characteristics between. We also tend to attach arbitrary rules to them to, such as they cannot interbreed with another species, otherwise they are effectively the same species etc. What this labelling does is give a false impression that a) species are static; and b) that these labels define these organisms whether humans exist or not. These labels are human constructs - that is all. Every organism is constantly shifting its genetic blueprint. We are constantly evolving. Humans now are different genetically from humans 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 100,000 years ago. Yet we still define ourselves as the same species.
Species is a temporal notion. It is like taking a picture of all organisms at a given time and sorting them according to effectively arbitrary characteristics. There is nothing to say you can't sort species by the number of legs. On the temporal front, every organism (and I mean that in its entirety - every organism on earth at a given time) is shifting in evolutionary terms. There is a dynamism to evolution, though some organisms do it on a much faster basis than others.
It renders the notion of when a reptile became a bird, or similar claims, utter nonsense. The slow and gradual process of changing one's genome piece by piece to morph into something ever so different at each mutation is a paradigm shift away from a simple view of biological taxonomy.
Every organism sits on a continuum of evolution from the very first organism to what will be the last in the heat death of the universe. You can pick any organism alive today and follow its path back to the first in a linear fashion. By declaring that species exist (in a sort of objective, definite manner), all you are doing is chopping up that line arbitrarily.
Thus, species don't exist other than in the human mind. A perfect example, if you will, of philosophical conceptualism.
In : Science