Dumb Newbie Questions -- 3 of N

[Jacques Hausser]

Hello everybody,

Just to put my "grano salis" in this discussion: runrev (and its  
ancestors) evolved rather biologically and a bit erratically, like any  
organism or any natural language. Several users from time to time  
claim to put more logic in its structures. I feel it is not only  
hopeless, but totally unrealistic. A fully logic system becomes either  
immediately fossilized or evolves out from the splendidly logical  
structure of its beginning. Curstom properties CAN be properties, as  
Jacque showed so well (in an application, I have flying hummingbirds  
with CP like "PerchLoc", "NestLoc" and so on. They are quite similar  
to the original properties). But the people who imagined CP asked  
themselves: it's any reason to limit CP to THAT, since they can be far  
more powerful ? And of course it was no good reason to limit the scope  
of this new feature.
As for the names; Darwin himself has made a rather bad choice in  
naming the natural selection "Natural selection", because selection  
implies somebody acting to select organisms. "Natural filter" or  
"Ecological sieve" would have been better. Perhaps. But natural  
selection it is, and custom properties they are. It's just so, and we  
have to learn their meaning. Every name in our pet programming  
language is an analogy: you don't plow your fields, you don't fasten  
your buttons, and you cannot tear your cards in little bits (sometimes  
I wish to do just that ! ).
And, to mention a linked question, in my view "parent script", whith  
it's heritability dye, was not less logical than "behavior", just  
emphasising (good english?) another characteristic of the same  
feature. I don't see one nickname as more logical than the other one.

Jacques (with s), in a philosophical mood...

Le 2 mai 2009 à 22:36, Richmond Mathewson a écrit :

> Seems a lot clearer now! Thank you, Jacque.
>

******************************************
Prof. Jacques Hausser
Department of Ecology and Evolution
Biophore / Sorge
University of Lausanne
CH 1015 Lausanne
please use my private address:
6 route de Burtigny
CH-1269 Bassins
tel/fax: 	++ 41 22 366 19 40
mobile:	++ 41 79 757 05 24
E-Mail:	jacques.hausser at unil.ch
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