No, modern cladistics is not like that at all, because fish do not form a clade. Fish are non-tetrapod vertebrates; humans are tetrapods, hence vertebrates but not fish.
I’m not sure if you’re missing that the whole point is that trying to treat “common” terms like scientific terms creates logical conundrums like this because nature isn’t about clean lines and groups.
The whole point of saying “Whales are fish” and things like that is as a reminder that human classification (even detailed and precision-focused scientific classification) is still just a human construct we use to order the world around us. It’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish.
In fact we see science educators bring this up so much, I think, because it’s important to be able to answer “why don’t the scientists just call them fish?” when discussing ray finned fishes or something like that and this discussion is helpful practice for that.
Yes it’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish… So why pretend that the category is something other than what it is? Noone who isn’t being weird about it on the internet thinks all vertebrates are fish.
No, modern cladistics is not like that at all, because fish do not form a clade. Fish are non-tetrapod vertebrates; humans are tetrapods, hence vertebrates but not fish.
I’m not sure if you’re missing that the whole point is that trying to treat “common” terms like scientific terms creates logical conundrums like this because nature isn’t about clean lines and groups.
The whole point of saying “Whales are fish” and things like that is as a reminder that human classification (even detailed and precision-focused scientific classification) is still just a human construct we use to order the world around us. It’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish.
In fact we see science educators bring this up so much, I think, because it’s important to be able to answer “why don’t the scientists just call them fish?” when discussing ray finned fishes or something like that and this discussion is helpful practice for that.
Yes it’s arbitrary what is and is not a fish… So why pretend that the category is something other than what it is? Noone who isn’t being weird about it on the internet thinks all vertebrates are fish.