Definition of "Animal"

[eddymrsci]

I looked up the word "animal" on dictionary.com, and I got this:

an·i·mal
n.
1. A multicellular organism of the kingdom Animalia, differing from plants in certain typical characteristics such as capacity for locomotion, nonphotosynthetic metabolism, pronounced response to stimuli, restricted growth, and fixed bodily structure.
2. An animal organism other than a human, especially a mammal.
3. A person who behaves in a bestial or brutish manner.
4. A human considered with respect to his or her physical, as opposed to spiritual, nature.
5. A person having a specified aptitude or set of interests: “that rarest of musical animals, an instrumentalist who is as comfortable on a podium with a stick as he is playing his instrument” (Lon Tuck).

Am I the only one who noticed the obvious and outrageous conflict in these definitions?
Are dictionary definitions really reliable?

 

[spuriousmonkey]

Isn't it rather common that words have conflicting or different meanings?

 

[Nasor]

IAm I the only one who noticed the obvious and outrageous conflict in these definitions?
Are dictionary definitions really reliable?

Dictionary definitions are notoriously poor at defining scientific or technical words.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Am I the only one who noticed the obvious and outrageous conflict in these definitions? Are dictionary definitions really reliable?

This is not France, as if anybody was wondering about that. There is no "English Academy" that is the supreme official authority on the meanings of words, the creation of new ones, and the overall evolution of our language. Thank the goddess for that.

This is not Germany, where the government can punish you for thoughtlessly using a universally understood foreign word like "telefon" or "automobil," when there's a perfectly euphonious native word with exactly the same meaning and even a similar etymology, "Fernsprecher" or "Kraftwagen." Thank -- well some would say thank FDR and Uncle Joe Stalin for that.

The role of our dictionaries, even the venerable OED, is only to record and share the meanings that these words convey, at this moment in time, within a consensus of the English-speaking population, or alternate meanings within distinct English-speaking communities. It is the people who use the language as a tool for living who decide what words mean, not scientists or linguists.

That said, most heavy dictionaries do a pretty good job of placing the "proper" scientific definition first, a gentle reminder that language does its best work when it remains logical and consistent. Your definition number one is a textbook-perfect summary of the scientific use of the word "animal," in terms that any reasonably well educated anglophone can understand.

But they would not be doing their jobs well at all if they failed to tell us, in addition, how these words are very often, if not most often, used by laymen. There is a huge segment of the population that hews to a paradigm in which humans are held to be substantively different from all the rest of the animal kingdom, that only calls humans "animals" when they attend biology class. Your second definition speaks squarely to that.

Many of those people also hold mammals up as, second only to man, the pinnacle of evolution (if they even believe in it) and so do not call birds, reptiles, and amphibians -- much less true fish and cartilaginous fish (sharks, eels, etc.), not to mention arthropods, mollusks, bivalves, and amoeba -- "animals." They probably call the lower phyla "critters," "bugs," "vermin," "germs," etc.

This is admittedly a vestigial belief inherited from strict practitioners of the newer religions, especially the Abrahamic ones, who hold Homo sapiens in such awe and can't even spell "DNA." Nonetheless, as I've often said, some things aren't either right or wrong, they just are, and what we need to do is deal with them, not argue with them.

If not, it will be our loss when a communication barrier prevents us from being able to dialog with the people who hew to the third definition, that a human becomes, metaphorically, an animal when he ceases to avail himself of the abilities that differentiate him from "the animals" in the second definition.

This respect for science tempered with an acknowledgment of popular usage is rampant in dicitionaries. It has to be or they wouldn't be of much use. Imagine a European who led a sheltered life visiting America for the first time and seeing signs leading to a "buffalo ranch." He looks up "buffalo" in his unabridged dictionary and finds (I'm winging this, I don't have one at this location):

Any of various species of horned ungulates of genus Bos native to tropical regions and spending much of their time in the water.

He would be scratching his head in confusion, considering that he might be on a highway in sub-Arctic, relatively dry Montana. Good thing that definition number two is there (and this is a direct quote that I remember exactly):

Popularly, but unscientifically, the American bison.

So that's what the Americans call those big, hairy brown cows you see in all their western movies.

Or the teenager reading his neighbor's instructions on feed and care of his pet birds while he's on vacation, which include: "Give the songbirds plenty of greens and the small seeds, but the parakeets get kibble and the large seeds." He looks up "parakeet" in his dictionary and finds:

Any of various genera of small, tropical and subtropical psittacines, having long tails and no bare skin on their faces.

He searches the house and finds no bird matching that description. Fortunately definition number two is there:

The inaccurately named Budgerigar parakeet, a very small Australian parrot with a short tail and a hooked but extremely short beak, popularly known as the budgie in all English-speaking countries except the U.S.

The poor budgie will not have to survive on finch feed for two weeks.

 

[John Connellan]

I looked up the word "animal" on dictionary.com, and I got this:

Am I the only one who noticed the obvious and outrageous conflict in these definitions?
Are dictionary definitions really reliable?

Dictionaries try to explain words in the many ways they are used (hence # 1- 5). Scientists use #1 but a lot of people, when using the word, mean # 2.

 

[eddymrsci]

yeah dictionaries suck

 

[ElectricFetus]

Ya dictionary definitions suck because we should have the right to slap what ever meaning we want on to any word we want, I think I'll call this concept: gizlotop

As for using the word in its own definition that is completely wrong! that so norflar

if you wanted a scientific definition what are you doing looking in a internet general dictionary? I’ll call this nitpicking

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

If you wanted a scientific definition what are you doing looking in an internet general dictionary? I’ll call this nitpicking

It's internet dictionaries that suck. I have just about given up using them. I very rarely look up a word and find definitions that I couldn't have written better myself.

 

[eddymrsci]

I find Encarta dictionary rather more reliable than any other internet or software dictionaries

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

I looked up the word "animal" on dictionary.com....Are dictionary definitions really reliable?

When it comes to scientific definitions......no!

By taxonomic definition, an animal is an organism classified within the Kingdom Animalia.

Yes?

 

[Avatar]

From Wikipedia

Animals are a major group of living things, classified as the kingdom Animalia. These are generally multicellular, capable of locomotion and responding to their environment, and feed by consuming other organisms. Their body plan becomes fixed as they develop, usually early on in their development as embryos, unless they undergo a process of metamorphosis. Humans are animals, though colloquially the term is often taken to exclude them. The word comes from the Latin word animal (plural animalia) and ultimately from anima, meaning vital breath.

 

[what768]

1. Matter is the lowest state of consciousness. Matter expresses itself only by drawing inward, cooling off and paralysing.
2. Plants express all of the above. Plants search for food and becomes one with it. Plants express the material frequences unconsciously, and it wears its body as a suit.
3. Animals express all of the above. Animals have a body. They are conscious on the animal, mental, state: they have temper, instincts, feelings, lusts, pleasure, dislikes and desire.

4. Human expresses all of the above. Human has a conscious mind.

- A Genius has intuition, creativity and expresses himself through words, art, music etc.
- A Prophet has "divine" wisdom and universal love. A prophet never takes, he only gives and does what is best for mankind.
- The divine Self expresses God fully. It is the most exact expression of God, a man who has become totally self aware. What He expresses comes directly from God, the personal self does not seem to exist anymore. Only the self aware man can express all states of Life.

 

[river-wind]

ok, I have to do this. attempting to translate into common English:

1. Matter is the lowest state of consciousness. Matter expresses itself only by drawing inward, cooling off and paralysing.

Matter attracs matter via gravity. Via the laws of thermodynamics, in every transfer of energy, some work energy is lost to heat. paralysing=???

2. Plants express all of the above. Plants search for food and becomes one with it. Plants express the material frequences unconsciously, and it wears its body as a suit.

plants are made of matter. Plants search for food? become one with their food? Plants activly seek sunlight, withwhich they create their own food. light is their food.
material frequencies, plant consciousness, body-suits. huh?

3. Animals express all of the above. Animals have a body. They are conscious on the animal, mental, state: they have temper, instincts, feelings, lusts, pleasure, dislikes and desire.

Animals are both matter and plants. ?
animals do have a body.
many people believe (myself included) that animals are conscious. as for awareness in two diverging states, animal and mental, I am not sure what you mean. It suggests that you attribute and "animal consciousness" to the state of instictual action which is normally considered to be different than consciousness.
Animals exhibit behavior which suggests that they feel temper, instinct, 'feelings' lust, pleasure, dislike and desire; though this list is very repetative.

4. Human expresses all of the above. Human has a conscious mind.

Humans are made of matter, plants, and animals. This could sort of make sense if you are considering just the underlying rules of each, or if you consider the source of the matter/energy which makes up the human body.
Human has a conscious mind. However, it has been stated that Animals also present this ability, so there is no difference between humans and animals, then?

- A Genius has intuition, creativity and expresses himself through words, art, music etc.

You suggest that intuition and animal instinct described above are different. Elephants, parrots, gorillas and some bears have been taught to discover their artistic selves. Are they geniuses? If someone has no artistic talent, or is somehow politically prevented from expressing themselves, are they not a genius?

- A Prophet has "divine" wisdom and universal love. A prophet never takes, he only gives and does what is best for mankind.

Given your lack of explination in commonly accepted terms, and no attempt at supporting your descriptions with real-world examples, would you consider yourself to be in this group?
if a prophet never takes, then how does a profet survive? he is still human, still animal, and still a consumer of food, air and water. Anything that lives takes. Anyone who claims not to take is wrong, or no longer human.

- The divine Self expresses God fully. It is the most exact expression of God, a man who has become totally self aware. What He expresses comes directly from God, the personal self does not seem to exist anymore. Only the self aware man can express all states of Life.

Not being a divine self, or having any knowledge of godly existance, I cannot comment on this point.