GER week 5+6

Differentia Specifica Of Humans

Humans are different from other animals mainly because of their high brain capacity. Other factors differentiating humans from other animals include; bipedalism, lack of a tail, their ability to use their forelimbs to manipulate and use tools, and also their advanced communication and language.

Classification Systems

Different classification systems have been used to categorize organisms over time. These include Aristotle’s Scala Naturae which ranks organisms on the order of their “superiority” in the ladder of life(Archibald, 2018). Inanimate matter is placed at the lowest while humans are placed at the top. Another classification system is “The Great Chain of Being”.In this, God is at the top while satan is at the bottom ( Egan, 2016). Human beings occupy the fourth position. The difference between this system and others is that it includes deities in its ranking of life.Other classification systems such as Linnaeus “Systema Natura” classify the natural world into; plants, animals, and minerals ( Müller-Wille, 2017). Each is further classified into; classes, orders, genres, and species.While these classification systems focus on showing the difference between organisms, Heckel’s tree focuses on showing how all organisms evolved from one primordial ancestor

References

Archibald, J. D. (2018). From Aristotle’s Teleology to Darwin’s Genealogy: The Stamp of Inutility. Philosophical Inquiries, 6(2), R1-R3.

Egan, G. (2016). Gaia and the great chain of being. In Ecocritical Shakespeare (pp. 81-93). Routledge.

Müller-Wille, S. (2017). Names and numbers:“data” in classical natural history, 1758–1859. Osiris, 32(1), 109-128.