[Cz-biology] Giant panda/naming

[Larry Sanger]

Right, but *almost all* scientific dogma would have originally been rejected
by a majority, and then accepted by a majority.  This does not impugn the
justice of voting; if you think it does, what do you propose to put in its
place?  It also does not make the idea of the majority incoherent; it only
shows that scientists, like all fallible humans, are sometimes dogmatic
about things that they have no right to be dogmatic about.

Anyway, we've already debated this one ad nauseam, as you can see in the
cz-biology archives!

Thanks to you Daniel, and others, for getting involved in Biology Week
planning!

--Larry

> -----Original Message-----
> From: cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org 
> [mailto:cz-biology-bounces at mail.citizendium.org] On Behalf Of 
> Daniel Mietchen
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 12:41 PM
> To: Biology Workgroup List
> Subject: Re: [Cz-biology] Giant panda/naming
> 
> 
> Hello together,
> 
> there was a time when geologists were voting about the 
> acceptability of Alfred Wegener's continental drift theory, 
> and they rejected it with majority.
> 
> Surely, CZ naming conventions tend to be of a less 
> fundamental nature but I still assume that 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polling_is_not_a_substi
> tute_for_discussion
> -
> rather on the contrary, it can stimulate and help guide 
> discussions, especially if combined with systematic 
> presentations of pros and cons (thanks for this, by the way) 
> of the alternatives. Cheers, Daniel