Cladistics is the ultimate sisyphus work
Cladistics is a vicious circle, because classification is paradoxically contradictory (see Russell’s paradox). Never can it arrive to a non-contradictory solution, because such solution is lacking (ie, void). It it just a modern variety of the mess in biological systematics before Linné.
A single cladist can thus search the clade of any group of organisms, or of all organisms for that sake (ie, the tree of life), without ever finding a solution that isn’t contradictory.
Cladistics is thus the ultimate sisyphus work.
The problem with cladistics for the rest of us (ie, non-cladists) is that it tears apart traditional biological systematics, that is, knowledge of organisms themselves, because this knowledge is attached to classes of organisms and is thus teared apart by a constant rearranging of classes. Cladistics will thus finally leave us without either classes or knowledge about biological organisms. It is the route back to what biological systematics started with.
Another contribution to understanding of conceptualization http://menvall.wordpress.com/
2012-12-06 06:40:49
Source: http://menvall.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/cladistics-is-the-ultimate-sisyphus-work/
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