I know, I wrote the comment. My point is that even that same definition is flawed and doesn’t work on an evolutionary scale. Because most of human categories exist out of convenience and not strict material objectivity. I chose whales, not at random, but very intentionally. At one point we have something we call a whale, that turned into a hippo. We don’t call hippos whales, but it came from a whale, and our modern whales look nothing like that whale, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s ok to use whatever works for the purposes at hand in the moment. We just need to accept that binary thinking and hard classifications are made up human constructs and nature doesn’t care.
I know, I wrote the comment. My point is that even that same definition is flawed and doesn’t work on an evolutionary scale. Because most of human categories exist out of convenience and not strict material objectivity. I chose whales, not at random, but very intentionally. At one point we have something we call a whale, that turned into a hippo. We don’t call hippos whales, but it came from a whale, and our modern whales look nothing like that whale, and it doesn’t matter, because it’s ok to use whatever works for the purposes at hand in the moment. We just need to accept that binary thinking and hard classifications are made up human constructs and nature doesn’t care.