Massie (
Mon, 24 May 1999 16:27:18 -0700

David Campbell wrote:

> As a paleontologist, the advantages that come to mind first are with regard
> to understanding those. However, there are practical advantages. In
> medicine (and agriculture), an understanding of evolutionary patterns in
> pests such as bacteria and viruses better enables us to stop them.
> Likewise, understanding evolutionary connections helps choose what would be
> good animals to test a possible new drug on or likely organisms to look for
> useful genes in. (E.g., wild relatives of agriculturally important
> organisms may be able to tolerate conditions that kill domestic varieties.
> Transferring the responsible gene into the domestic form could produce a

However, lets just take the word "evolution" out of your model and
insert "connectedness" or some other such word of your chosing. You
we can look to the sequence of ancient animals as true without inserting
into our this our view of how the transitions occurred. This sequencing
of animals
and there connectedness or relatedness is a usefull and operational
paradaigm but it does not require the acceptance of either materialistic
evolution or anything of the sort or any other view of the changing of
the species of the moment.

Bert Massie