The plants are organized into phyla, orders, families, etc. just like the animals are. Plants are in one kingdom, while animals are in another. There used to be only two kingdoms, but now there are more, and there are also domains. The plant and animal kingdoms are in one domain, along with some other stuff. I believe that domain is called "caria", or something like that. (Can't find it in my dictionary, and I no longer have the issue of National Geographic in which I read about it.) Two other domains are archaia and bacteria. They didn't used to be sure if bacteria was a plant or animal, and now they are saying that it's neither, it's in a class by itself. There may be one or two more domains, but I don't remember them. Anyway, trees are indeed all related to each other. By that I mean that one tree is more closely related to another tree than it is to a tomato.
An example of a hybrid animal would be a mule, which is a cross between a horse and a donkey. I think that one was made on purpose, as was the liger, a cross between a lion and a tiger. They had to use artificial insemination to produce the liger because they couldn't get a lion and a tiger to mate naturally. (I'm not making this up!) The other one that I know about is the dragon flies, which cross breed spontaneously in nature. They kept discovering new species of dragon flies and couldn't figure out where they all were coming from until someone observed two different dragon fly species mating with each other, and their offspring was none of the above. Some scientists believe that, when two species interbreed, it just proves that they aren't really two different species after all, but others maintain that they are so. Botanists are particularly contentious about that because plants interbreed way more often than animals, and it's not uncommon to find a species of plant called one thing in one book and a different thing in a different book.
I don't think that Einstein's time is considered theoretical anymore. While some of his theories have not been conclusively proven, substantial evidence has been uncovered that tends to confirm them. Scientists hardly prove anything anymore, the best you can get from them is "evidence tends to confirm". It makes you wonder why they get paid so well when all they seem to be doing is speculating. You and I can speculate with the best of them, but nobody pays us to do it. I wonder what we're doing wrong.
Now that you mention it, I don't remember if Doc Small called it "Newtonian physics". Is there another name for it? I remember that Mrs. Hradek made it clear that she was teaching us Euclidian geometry, and that there were at least two other geometries in existence. I don't think that either teacher was too lazy to teach us the other stuff, it's just that teachers have a prescribed curriculum that they have to follow. They have to cover a certain amount of material in a certain amount of time and, if they keep going off on tangents, they won't get the regular stuff done.
I think that I'm beginning to understand what you're saying about that digital/analog thing, but I'm afraid I can't give you much help with it. I have never thought about it before, and I'm not really eager to think about it now. Nevertheless, it's interesting to know that somebody is thinking about stuff like that. Who knows, something useful might even come out of it someday. If not, well I suppose there are worse things you could occupy your mind with.
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