I think someone is being to bio-centric with the word species. It
does not apply only to the living world. Chemists can refer to a molecule
as being of a certain chemical species.
It seems to me that if the alien beings are not all identical, they
must be amenable of classification, which is to say, a taxonomy. If a
taxonomy is not to be purely mathematical, their must be taxa, and these
taxa must have names. Would we want to come up with a whole new set to
replace "Kindom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species" for each
planet with lifeforms? Indeed, perhaps all we need to is add a taxon above
kingdom representing the planet of origin, although this could be tricky if
a planet had more than one system of life, each without any ancestry in
common with the others.
Martin M. Meiss
2010/5/7 Shelly Thomas <sthomas...@hotmail.com>
> Dear Colleagues,
> This is outside the normal ecological questions we post here, but I am very
> interested in your opinions on this.
>
> I was having an armchair philosophical discussion with a colleague and some
> students the other day, trying to figure out if we (ecologists / scientists)
> would use the word "species" to describe an extra-terrestrial life form
> (supposing that someday we find one - or one finds us [c.f. Hawking]).
>
> Here is why we were unsure of the proper term to use.
>
> -The discussion over the basic definition of the word "species"
> -We seem to be leaning more toward the phylogenetic definition (although
> there is much discussion still going on about this and others may disagree);
> this definition uses the ancestor/lineage model.
> -If a life form is outside of our planet's big-picture evolutionary
> lineage, do we then use a different term than "species"? If so, what might
> we use?
>
> Would love to hear your ideas about this!
>
> Thanks,
> Shelly
>
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