Maher to Stewart: ‘Drugs are good, religion is bad’ and Obama’s spirituality is ‘bullsh*t’

[LostOne4Ever]

143. Many debates end up being about the meaning of words

The paper you linked is not a biological science paper. Its about ethics and patent laws.

We are sympathetic to both perspectives,but view this paper as a manageable introduction to a complicated field of law, public policy and ethics that has until recently been the domain of specialists.

It even says that it is creating a definition for higher life forms specifically for that single paper:

1For purposes of this document, “higher life forms” are defined as multicellular organisms, and “humanbiological materials” as biological materials or products of human origin or intended for incorporation intothe human phenotype or genotype, including but not necessarily limited to DNA sequences, cell lines,tissues, and organs.

Further, I said specifically, that I never heard it defined the way you are describing in any class, not that I have never heard the term before. When I have heard it, it is usually in reference to position on a clade diagram.

In fact, iirc the only times I have ever heard it was either in the context of someone speaking colloquially using over generalized and common vocabulary in lieu of the exact terminology they usually demand in papers and reports, or in references to theories older than the theory of evolution itself.

This scala naturæ, described in Historia animalium, classified organisms in relation to a hierarchical "Ladder of Life" or "Chain of Being", placing them according to their complexity of structure and function, with organisms that showed greater vitality and ability to move described as "higher organisms".[6] Aristotle believed that features of living organisms showed clearly that they must have had what he called a final cause, that is to say that they had been designed for a purpose.[9] He explicitly rejected the view of Empedocles that living creatures might have originated by chance.

Other Greek philosophers, such as Zeno of Citium (334–262 BC) the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, agreed with Aristotle and other earlier philosophers that nature showed clear evidence of being designed for a purpose; this view is known as teleology.[11] [10]

Huxley would make advocacy of evolution a cornerstone of the program of the X Club to reform and professionalise science by displacing natural theology with naturalism and to end the domination of British natural science by the clergy. By the early 1870s in English-speaking countries, thanks partly to these efforts, evolution had become the mainstream scientific explanation for the origin of species

Seems we are getting right back to the point that purpose implies design.

Anyway, higher species is not listed in the glossary of biological terms that I can find:

http://www.phschool.com/science/biology_place/glossary/
http://www.sciencedictionary.org/biology/
http://www.macroevolution.net/biology-dictionary.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_biology

Mainly I am getting hits from forums and from things like yahoo answers.

But then in the end, random variability does have a perpouse then don't it?...or is it just a random variability of a random variability?
Seems to me to be a moot point whether it happened by accident or not, it happened and because it did gave it a perpose...for survival of the fittest.

Again, purpose implies intention which implies design and a goal...which means it is not random.

If it happened by accident then there is no design, no goal, and no purpose.