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Old October 2nd 05, 07:51 PM
Floyd Davidson
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"Nostrobino" wrote:
I acknowledge the correction, but adaptation does imply improvement at least
with respect to the situation being adapted to. (Why else adapt?) I don't
see that using a term incorrectly, out of ignorance of that term's actual
meaning, can reasonably be described as "adaptation."


Your definition of "improvement" is highly suspect then.
Likewise, your use of "adaption" is not correct either, because
evolution is a *change*, and that is not necessarily either an
adaption or an improvement. It is just different, and that's
all.

Here's a quote for you:

"From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0[moby-thes]:

41 Moby Thesaurus words for "evolution":
addition, advance, approximation, beautification, change,
developing, development, differentiation, division,
elaboration, embellishment, equation, evolvement, evolving,
extrapolation, flowering, formation, growing, growth,
integration, interpolation, inversion, involution,
maturation, multiplication, notation, perfection,
phylogeny, practice, production, progress, progression,
proportion, reduction, refinement, ripening, seasoning,
subtraction, transformation, unfolding, upgrowth

Do you see any indication that either "adaption" or "improvement"
could be correctly inferred from "evolution"?

Shortening a term because it no longer needs to be full length to be
understood is a natural form of such adaptation. For example, submarine


Fine. What has this or the rest of your discussion got to do with
the entirely different case of the use of "prime" to mean a fixed
focal length lens vs a zoom lens?

boats quickly became "submarines," and automatic pistols became
"automatics." In both cases the adjective became the (and replaced) the
noun. That's evolution.


Yes, that is evolution, but that is *not* the only type of
evolution possible. Just because that paradigm is evolution
does not exclude something different from also being evolution.
That's not valid logic.

To take "prime lens," a term that already had a
specific technical meaning, and give it an entirely different and unrelated
meaning, is not evolution in any way that I can see.


Well, lets apply logic to your statement then, and see what we
get: you can't see.

There is no other logically valid conclusion which your
statement can lead to.

--
FloydL. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)