Doubting Didymus

These are the most worthless technical terms I have ever met outside sociological studies (where technical terms reach a new level of macro-stupid).

wade-w

For what its worth, in all of the physical anthropology courses I took (which was every one my university offered), the terms microevolution and macroevolution were never mentioned.

Kevin

But is the macrostupidity of sociological terms more than the sum of a bunch of microstupid sociological terms?

I agree with you. I think that biologists' impressions of what consititutes 'major' evolutionary patterns is too qualitative and is not consistent across all higher (than species) level taxa. I can understand the need to identify when one is talking about large scale patterns in the fossil record or in morphological evolution, but articles like the one cited above are not helpful to anyone's understanding, IMO. I don't see the necessity for decoupling macroevolution from microevolution if nobody can consistently define what it is and what taxon-level evolution constitutes macroevolution (note that the article failed to define it unambiguosly, too. All definitions were provided in the context of a historical discussion, not as a way to understand what macroevolution actually is, if it is anything other than a term of convenience for referring to patterns of evolutionary change).