When will the route of cladistics be excluded from biological systematics?
By distinguishing the class “clade”, the German Nazi entomologist Willi Hennig finally led biological systematics into the same illusion as many beliefs have arrived to before it – the idea of a single True Tree of Life. The entrance to this illusion obviously delievered biological systematics from the chains of traditional empirical science, as witnessed by the explosion of confused philosophical reasonings and putative trees of life after this delivery. The explosion continues today in that many biological systematists compete in producing as many confused philosophical reasonings and trees of life as possible, in order to increase their numbers of publications and thereby increase their rank (see for example Per Sundberg). Some of them do not even bother to change the group of organisms in focus, but just discuss with themselves producing a never-ending chain of trees of life for the same group of organisms. These biological systematists behave like bolting Wilderbeasts pressing to pass a river full of crocodiles. Somewhere deep down many of them feel that the occupation is stupid, but how to stop the bolt when it is materially rewarding?
The seed to this bolt was thus Hennig’s distinction of the class “clade”, which he originally called “monophyletic groups”. The idea behind this class is that an ancestor can form a group with its descendants. This idea is not wrong (or inconsistent) in itself; the problem resides in forming a class of such groups (ie, the class “clade”). The problem is that a consistent distinction of such class requires that we can allocate single entities of such groups (ie, “species”) to either this class or not, which is impossible. If a species is a clade, then every species is both single and several clades, whereas if it is not a clade, then clades are neither single nor several. A species thus can’t be either a clade or not. A consistent distinction of such class requires that we can confuse “group” with “entity”, which we thus can’t, because a group is several entities per definition(this is actually the difference between “group” and “entity”). Solution of this problem requires that we contradict ourselves, which is not consistent.
If we don’t reach an understanding of this problem, then we will demolish the glass house our conceptualization of reality is, ending up with nothing in a paranoic rotation seeking the illusion “The True Tree of Life”. Hennig’s route is thus a route into a paranoic rotation seeking the illusion “The True Tree of Life”. When will this route be excluded from biological systematics?
Another contribution to understanding of conceptualization http://menvall.wordpress.com/
2012-11-12 17:00:42
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