Pete

rotlf!!!

I don't understand the OP's point. Is he claiming that all women like bad boys, or just most of them? Since most women don't end up marrying bad boys is this because most women are supposeldy settling for less and actually falling in love with men they're really not attracted to? Sorry dude, but that makes no sense to me.

Mixing DNA seems to fail when the species are even a little different. "can we play God" if other than a technical question, a moral issue, is a moral one. But I don't think we should make a hamfish. It'd taste aweful!

Okay. I think I pretty much have what I came to ask. Here is the gist of what I got from all this: Mayr used the term gill to refer to the structure that will become the gill if the embryo is a fish. These same structure become other things in other species. Analogy - The term eye could be used to refer to the structure that will become the eye.

Why is that anyway? Do you think' date=' perhaps, that ist an evolution thing like I've read about? Eyes become eyes, heads become heads, but pharyngeal pouches become various things. From what little I know of evolution it seems like its related to the idea that, loosely speaking, animals evolved from fish. So perhaps those structures originally all became gills. And perhaps that's what Mayr was arguing. What kind of mistake could he have made? Do you believe Mayr made an mistake in his reasoning or his or was the mistake in his knowledge of embrology? I don't mean to be difficult but Mayr was one of the greatest scientists of his time and a very proliphic writer. His books for the layman aren't exactly easy reading so its not as if he dumbed them down. I just find it a hard to accept that Mayr made a bogus arguement on what must have been to him an obvious falsehood. For this reason I'd prefer to find out why he wrote what he did rather than to dismiss it as a mistake. I know of no example of a physics book where the author used such a horribly weak arguement.

I read that book and recall that chapter. If that was his intent then it was a very serious mistake. I.e. the purpose of that portion of the book was to argue that early embryonic stages have features in common across certain species. If he didn't really means gills then it would appear as if he was intentionally trying to mislead the reader. I don't know how else to interpret it otherwise.

Its my understanding that he started out as an ornithologist and ended up as an evolutionary biologist. The Harvard University Press refers to Mayr as a ..giant among evolutionary biologists http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2005/02/04-mayr.html Pretty impressive credentials!! Nature refers to him as The evolutionary biologist... They write (http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050131/full/news050131-19.html) FYI - See also http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1bio-1 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/06/2/l_062_01.html I suffer from ophidiophobia so I'm not responsible for my actions if your "little friends" get near me. Perhaps its a matter of interpretation and semantics. E.g. if the embryo is at a stage where the structures that become the eyes are present then it may be legitimate to refer to them as the eyes even though they aren't fully formed. Perhaps when Mayr refers to the pharyngeal pouches as gills that he's doing something analogous.

Thanks. That answers my question. Much appreciated. I only saw the term "gill slits" from that page on which recapitulation theory was menioned. And I only came across that page when I did a search on that term. I looked through a book by Richard Dawkins and found recapitulation theory in it. He referred to recapitulation theory as unfashionable. The only assumption I made was what I learned in that biology text, i.e. that in some species those things become gills which in other species they become other things. From what I read, in humans the first gill pouch forms the middle ear and the Eustachian tube, the second becomes the tonsils, the third and fourth become the thymus and parathyroid and the fitfh pouch disappears. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Why would Mayr refer to pharyngeal pouches as gills? Also, Mayr implies that there is an structure in fetal embryos which become tails in monkeys and disappears in humans. Is there a name for that structure?

Perhaps you're unaware of it but that kind of response is irritatating. Please don't do it again. Let me get this right. I said that you didn't understand me. You're response is to that assertion is to chastise me, your reason being that I didn't understand you? Sorry dude but that seems quite hypocritical to me.

(sigh!) Please don't start making accusations like this, i.e. as if I'm doing somthing wrong "again". You wrote I also think the opening post was loaded by suggesting ... That reads as if you thought the OP was loaded and that you suggested that it meant something else. And I hold that you thought wrong. I you disagree with that then simlpy say so.

That's because you didn't understand how the term psychological basis (i.e. psychological reason) was used in this context. Since only I can say what the purpose of the opening post was then only I can tell you that if anyone did make such an assumption then they be wrong. My question in the opening post was phrased as follows It was a Why do some people ...? kind of question and as such it was a question on psychology since it addresses mind set. If I thought there was something wrong with people who got pissed off for that reason then I'd have called it a question on pathology rather than psychology. My question is similar in nature to the questions at The Psychology of Atheism (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/vitz.txt) Dr. Vitz didn't imply that there is something psychologically wrong with atheists. If I placed this in the Evolution forum then people might have thought I wanted to talk about whether the term evolutionist was derogatory, well-defined, meaningful etc. That wasn't what I wanted to know. As sugh this is the correct place to ask this question.

Thank you. I didn't mention that since I looked that term up before I started this thread and came across sources which implied that it was just a synonym for gill slits. E.g. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recapitulation_theory This page seems to indicate that gill slit is a synonym of pharyngeal arche. I also learned about this in Biology, by Sylvia S. Mader, page 607 and from B]What Evolution Is, by Ernst Mayr (http://home.honolulu.hawaii.edu/~pine/book1qts/embryo-compare.html) All this seems to imply that Pharyngeal Pouches is just a formal/scientific name for gill slits. These are simply more reasons why I asked Is this an issue of semantics?

I know that the mental pictue helps in constructing the Hamiltonian. How's that?

Note - Pmb = Pete I think that the problem lies in the fact that I came to think about this because a theist claimed that human embryos don't have gills. So the real problem is that I started discussing science with a theist (even though I am one).