On the problem of the idea of a “Tree of Life”: how many entities is a clade?
The entities of reality (like you and me) have two aspects in a classificatory sense: pattern and process. It means that their abstract opposites, ie, categories (like all humans or all gorillas) are contradictory in both these aspects, ie, paradoxically contradictory. This paradoxical contradiction is called Russell’s paradox.
Russell’s paradox is thus decoupled from reality and can thereby be turned up-side-down, which Willi Hennig did and cladistics does, instead comprehending categories as real and entities as abstract. This miscomprehension can, however, only confuse minds, not actually turn categories into real and entities into abstract. The fundamental obstacles for an actual turning of categories into real and entities into abstract are two: one abstract and one real. The abstract is that categories are paradoxically contradictory and thus infinitely recursive as a reality, and the real is that the fact that time is relative falsifies the hypothesis that categories are real. A turning of Russell’s paradox up-side-down (like cladistics) can thus only confuse minds.
Instead, Russell’s paradox (ie, the fact that the abstract opposites to entities, that is, categories, like all humans or all gorillas, are paradoxically contradictory) is not a problem we can solve, but a fact we have to adapt to. This we can do by using an orthogonal system of classification, like the Linnean systematics, because it consistently keeps the two aspects pattern and process (ie, entity and category) apart. Then, we just have to keep track of which that are the real entities and which that are the abstract categories, which may be difficult enough for many biological systematists.
Russell’s paradox is thus actually a conceptual interface between objectivity (ie, the approach resting on the axiom that entities are real) and subjectivity (ie, the approach resting on the axiom that categories are real), appearing abstract for objectivists and real for subjectivists. Unfortunately for subjectivists, it is an infinite recursion as a reality. It does thus actually falsify subjectivity as an approach, ie, reveals that it is paradoxically contradictory. It means that the class clade is not the savior for subjectivity, but instead its paradoxical contradiction in open display. The only fact that remains to be understood is that it is infinitely recursive, which is revealed by the question: how many entities is a clade? The problem of finding the idea of a”Tree of Life” meets the same problems as answering this question does.
Another contribution to understanding of conceptualization http://menvall.wordpress.com/
2012-07-29 22:25:44
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