Reply to comment

 I thought last week's discussion on classification brought up new discussions that last week's discussion did not. When we were looking through the Encyclopedia of Life at the "scientific" classifications of living organisms and being asked if we felt a kinship with our counterparts in a given classification, I couldn't help being reminded of the question, "How different is different?" How many broader categories would we have to go through before it's reasonable to not have a feeling of kinship? Eventually, all living things are going to fall into one big category--will we then be expected to feel a kinship with bacteria? As someone pointed out on Friday, classifications are only meaningful comparatively. It is difficult to make a blanket "these things are similar" statement because of the infinite diversity of all organisms. However, you could say that x and y are similar compared to z. I suppose that's why we need so many classifications. Rather than being rigid categories, they are more like units of comparison between living things.