T0E good for taxonomy?
david ford
taxonomy/ classification? Did evolutionary theory help,
hurt, or have no effect on taxonomy?
Fairbairn, J.W. 1973. Letter _Nature_ 241: 225. Fairbairn
is a creationist. The letter in its entirety:
SIR,-- Although I hesitate to claim to be an expert "in a
field of science bearing on the evolutionary theme", and
therefore have not been able to take up your offer
(_Nature_, 239, [page] 420; 1972), I have recently been
involved in teaching and research on chemical
taxonomy, and this has enabled me to look afresh at the
subject of evolution. This has been done against a
background of work on biogenesis which has certain
similarities to evolution, for in it an attempt is made to
determine how simple molecules have evolved into
more complex ones during the life of the plant. Fifty
years ago phytochemists speculated on possible
pathways of biogenesis, some most fruitfully, but no one
accepted these ideas as fact (or "truth") till innumerable
experiments, checking and rechecking claims, have
established some pathways with reasonable certainty.
Looking therefore afresh at evolution, the most striking
feature I find is the highly speculative nature of the
topic; the situation phytochemists (in their obviously
much more limited sphere of interest) were in 50 years
ago.
For instance, one would have expected that
classification of plants and animals would have been one
of the first subjects to benefit from Darwin's ideas, as
here at last was the basis for a "natural classification".
Some modern plant taxonomists do not agree and feel
that nothing has been fundamentally effected. "What is
the impact of Darwin's ideas on taxonomy? It is
commonly stated, or implied, that they were
revolutionary. No taxonomist who has ever given a
moment's thought to what he is doing in comparison to
his predecessors can believe this. He knows that
taxonomy in its broad outlines and in its more detailed
practice has hardly been affected by evolutionary ideas.
There is a curious dishonesty about this in much
biological writing. Either the fact is denied, or it is
glossed over, as if it is something to be ashamed of"^1.
In fact some seem to suggest that evolutionary ideas
have been a hindrance to taxonomy. "In the absence of
complete fossil records, so-called 'phylogony' is
deduced from taxonomy. Attempts to base taxonomy on
'phylogenetic criteria' generally involve circular
arguments, and it is now belatedly coming to be realized
that evolutionary speculation has had a deleterious effect
on practical taxonomy"^2. I find it difficult therefore to
accept your opinion that "Darwinism occupies a place in
science at least as strong as that of Newton's Laws".
Clearly, the situation is no fault of the biologists; if
adequate facts are not available they have to do with
what they have. But it amazes me why biologists seem
wedded to the rather limiting assumption that God must
have created life only once. Could He not have repeated
the operation, on various scales of complexity, several
times, thus explaining the great gaps between phyla and
such insoluble problems as the origin of the
angiosperms? I should guess that one of the motives
behind the "Californian Creationists" is to ensure that
young people are aware that the Bible, _inter alia_, at
least suggests this possibility. Like many of the people
referred to by Dr Hayward^3 I treat the Genesis account
of creation with as much respect as that of the biologist.
Perhaps we are not too far removed from Darwin, who
ended his _Origin of Species_ with these words: "There
is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed by the Creator into a
few forms or into one whilst this planet has gone cycling
on according to the fixed law of gravity...."
Yours faithfully,
J. W. FAIRBAIRN
_The School of Pharmacy,_
_University of London,_
29/39 _Brunswick Square,_
_London WC_1_N_ 1_AX_
1 Walton, S.M., in _Chemical Plant Taxonomy_ (edit.
by Swain, T.), 6 (Academic Press, London and New
York, 1963).
2 Watson, L., Williams, W.T., and Lance, G.N., _J.
Linn. Soc._, 59, [page] 492 (1966).
3 Hayward, A.T.J., _Nature_, 240, [page] 577 (1972).
Patterson, Colin. 29 April 1982. "Cladistics and
classification" _New Scientist_, 303-306. The first four
paragraphs:
Charles Darwin found one of the strongest arguments
for his theory in the fact that animal and plant species
fall into groups, and that these groups form a nested
series, or hierarchy. Smaller groups of species, such as
owls and ducks, or seals and deer, are included within
successively larger groups: birds and mammals within
vertebrates, vertebrates and invertebrates within
animals, and so on. But hierarchical classifications were
not Darwin's invention; the one we use today is derived
from the work of the 18th century Swedish naturalist
Carl von Linne, or Linnaeus.
Linnaeus introduced his system partly as a convenient
aid to memory, a means of making comprehensible the
diversity of nature. But Linnaeus also had a higher
purpose than merely to catalogue nature. He believed
that he was uncovering the plan of the Creator.
Linnaeus and his successors recognised genera, families
and other categories on the basis of similarities in
structure, and believed that each group had a set of
features which were its essence, or ideal plan,
corresponding to something in the mind of the Creator.
Comparative anatomy developed as a means of
searching out these ideal plans.
By the time Darwin published _The Origin_, Linnaean
hierarchical classification and classical comparative
anatomy were highly developed. Darwin's contribution
was to suggest, by detailed argument, that the
relationship between the species of a genus, or genera of
a family, is a "blood" relationship, caused by descent
from a common ancestor (Figure 1). He wrote in _The
Origin_: "Our classifications will come to be, as far as
they can be so made, genealogies: and will then truly
give what may be called the plan of creation."
Darwin's expectation has not yet been fully realised.
This is partly because classifications today, as in
Linnaeus's time, have two purposes-- to express
evolutionary relationships and to act as
_aides-memoire_ or simple summaries of knowledge.
These two aims come into conflict because relationships
of common ancestry are almost invariably more
complicated than the relationships of similarity and
difference on which Linnaean classification is based
(Figure 2). Cladistics (from the Greek for "branch") is
one method of biological classification that offers a new
approach to the problem. As a method, cladistics has
become both popular and controversial during the past
10 years or so; a review of the history of cladistics may
explain this.
A paragraph on 306:
Because of all these problems, it is rare to find
palaeontologists offering ancestral species, or doing so
with any conviction. Instead, they usually propose
"ancestral groups", as approximations to the truth, with
the claim that the true ancestor, if found, would fall
within the group. Extinct ancestral groups are
paraphyletic, just like Reptilia and Pongidae, and have
the same status as uncharacterisable artefacts, with the
added complication that the included fossils may not be
complete enough to say even what characters they lack.
Yet these flawed artefacts play a central role in
phylogenies-- accounts of the evolutionary descent of
lineages. This raises yet another problem, for groups
cannot evolve-- species are the largest units capable of
change. Thus cladistics calls into question much of
conventional evolutionary history.
The last paragraph:
The three components of the history of life are form,
time and space. The biological disciplines dealing with
these are systematics, which concerns the variety of
form, palaeontology, concerned with that variety in
time, and biogeography, concerned with that variety in
space. Cladistics calls into question traditional attitudes
in all three, and offers a new approach to comparative
biology which has a coherent theoretical base that is not
necessarily tied to evolutionary theory. As a science of
pattern, cladistics holds out the possibility of a
reconstruction of the history of life in space and time
that does not depend on Darwinian or neo-Darwinian
presuppositions. The interest of that reconstruction or
cladogram is that theories of process-- neo-Darwinism
or any other-- can be tested only against nature, and the
best test will be their success in explaining past and
present configurations of life. But if we are taught, as
we have been, to see that pattern through the spectacles
of evolutionary theory, how could the pattern ever test
the theory?
Patterson, Colin. 5 November 1981. "Can You Tell Me
Anything about Evolution?" transcript of presentation at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York City,
edited by Paul A. Nelson and William W. Kvasnikoff for
Access Research Network, which released the transcript in
2000. On 4-5:
Here's one quote from [Neal] Gillespie's book [_Charles
Darwin and the Problem of Creation_ (1979)]:
The old scientific episteme... had sanctioned...
or so it appeared from the new... perspective, a
pseudoparadigm that was not a research governing
theory (since its power to explain was only verbal)
but an antitheory, a void that had the function of
knowledge but, as naturalists increasingly came to
feel, conveyed none.
Now, here Gillespie's characterizing the old
pre-Darwinian creationist paradigm. But I feel that what
he says could just as well be applied to evolution as we
understand it today. Let me repeat part of that quotation
[not-precisely]: "...not a research-governing theory,
since its power to explain is only verbal, but an
anti-theory, a void that has the function of knowledge,
but conveys none."
Now, of course, it must seem to you that I'm either
misguided or malicious to suggest that such words can
be applied to evolutionary theory. But I hope to show
you that there's something in it at least as far as
systematics is concerned. Gillespie says first that
creationism can't be a research governing theory, since
its power to explain is only verbal. Now today
evolution certainly seems to be a research-governing
theory. Most of us think that we are working in
evolutionary research. But is its explanatory power any
more than verbal? Well, in systematics the
research-governing aspect of evolution is common
ancestry, or descent with modification and divergence.
Those of you who were at the Hennig meeting in Ann
Arbor last month may have heard that both Ron Brady
and I, without any prior collusion, quoted the same
statement. This was the statement: "The explanatory
value of the hypothesis of common ancestry is nil." And
we attributed that statement to E. S. Russell's 1916
book, _Form and Function_. In thinking about it since
then, I feel that the effect of hypotheses of common
ancestry in systematics has not been merely void, not
just a lack of knowledge-- I think it has been positively
anti-knowledge. I'll come back to that later anyway.
Gillespie also says that creationism is an anti-theory, a
void that has the function of knowledge but conveys
none. Well, what about evolution? It certainly has the
function of knowledge, but has it conveyed any? Well,
we're back to the question I've been putting to people,
"Is there one thing you can tell me about evolution?"
And the absence of an answer seems to suggest that it is
true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so,
I haven't yet heard it.
Well, here we all are with all our shelves full of books
on evolution. We've all read tons of them, and most of
us have written one or two. And how could it be that
we've done all that, we've read these books and learned
nothing from them? And how could I have worked on
evolution for twenty years, and learned nothing from it?
Gillespie's comment, "a void that has the function of
knowledge but conveys none," seems to me to be very
precise, very apt.
Well, in systematics there are pieces of evolutionary
knowledge that all our heads are stuffed with, from the
most general statements, like eukaryotes evolved from
prokaryotes, vertebrates evolved from invertebrates,
down to specific ones like man evolved from apes.
Well, I imagine that by now this group does appreciate
that such statements exactly fit Gillespie's description:
voids that have the function of knowledge, but convey
none.
Because when I analyze all such statements saying that
there is a group, a real group with characters--
eukaryotes, vertebrates, _Homo sapiens_, whatever--
and opposed to it is a non-group: prokaryotes,
invertebrates, apes-- these are abstractions that have no
characters of their own. They have no existence in
nature, and therefore they cannot possibly convey
knowledge, although they appear to when you first hear
such statements.
So, in general, I'm trying to suggest two themes. The
first is that evolutionism and creationism seem to me to
have become very hard to distinguish, particularly
lately. I've just been showing how Gillespie's vicious
characterization of creationism seems to be, as I think,
applicable to evolutionism-- a sign that the two are very
similar.
about Patterson, in
Simpson, Eldredge in _Synthese_, Ager, Corner, Rosen, Grasse,
Patterson, Raup, Stanley
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.981222231509.19980I-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu
about Ghiselin
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0312092129.724a79df%40posting.google.com
Simpson misled 1995 Cheetham
http://www.google.com/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0312080520.163bc617%40posting.google.com
John Harshman
david ford wrote:
> What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
> taxonomy/ classification? Did evolutionary theory help,
> hurt, or have no effect on taxonomy?
[snip]
I removed your quotes because they're all so badly dated. It's often
said that taxonomists read Darwin, nodded, and kept on doing all the
same thing's they'd been doing all along, though for different reasons.
I don't think that's quite true. We gained a new basis for arguments,
though that basis only slowly found its way into practice. You could say
that it didn't fully enter taxonomy until the victory of the cladists in
the classification wars. This victory occurred at different times in
different disciplines, and invertebrate paleontology was perhaps one of
the last -- I put it in the mid-90's. And of course now the new DNA
sequence data is making possible classifications (of extant species, at
least) that are much more strongly based on phylogeny than those of
previous generations.
What a person like you, who doesn't believe there is such a thing as
phylogeny, can make of all this is quite beyond me.
mel turner
dfo...@gl.umbc.edu [david ford] wrote...
>
>What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
>taxonomy/ classification?
It provides the explanatory basis for it. Without it, there
is no real reason to expect to see any real groups at all, or
expect them to form a nested heirarchy.
Did evolutionary theory help,
>hurt, or have no effect on taxonomy?
Help, of course. And vice-versa. Do you disagree? If so, why?
cheers
[quotes snipped]
Chris Merli
"david ford" <dfo...@gl.umbc.edu> wrote in message
news:b1c67abe.04021...@posting.google.com...
Clearly taxonomyt has benefited enourmously from Darwin's ideas as the
Leeuwenhoek Medal winning scientist Carl Woese would attest. He completely
rewrote the taxonomic landscape with his studies based on common descent.
Taken from http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/00/1113woese.html
In 1977, in collaboration with UI microbiologist Ralph S. Wolfe, Woese
overturned one of the major dogmas of biology. Until then, all life on Earth
belonged to one of two primary lineages, the eukaryotes (animals, plants,
fungi and certain unicellular organisms such as paramecia) and the
prokaryotes (all remaining microscopic organisms). The archaea --
microorganisms that live in extreme environments without oxygen in
conditions thought to be reminiscent of Earth's early environment -- changed
that long-accepted view.
Woese's molecular studies of RNA sequences led to the realization that the
archaea were distinct from the two accepted classifications. His analytic
approach has since become the standard for identifying and classifying
microorganisms. Now three primary divisions of life are recognized:
eukaryotes, archaea and bacteria.
Nancy Kroohs
Taxonomy is an oddball science within biology, IMO. It's artificial;
it attempts to draw convenient dividing lines between groups of
organisms that exist in something closer to a continuum --- even the
smallest taxonomic unit, species, is difficult to pin down in many
instances. And this is just concerning living organisms; add in all
the thousands of fossil species and things rapidly become hopeless.
It's now clear from genetic and morphological evidence that the
lobe-finned fishes are at least as closely related to humans as they
are to your common brook trout, but how are taxonomists to deal with
that fact? To all appearances, it's still a fish, even if the term
'fish' has lost some meaning. And then of course there's the lack of
complete knowledge of the fossil record that the first article
references: even if taxonomists attempted to re-order their
conventional groupings based on cladistic information, there would be
numerous gaps where information is not available, and some groups
would be in a constant state of flux as arguments shifted back and
forth and new information was aquired. It's more convenient for
taxonomists to stick with the tried and true, even acknowledging that
the tried and true in this case doesn't accurately reflect current
knowledge of history. That's all the first article was saying.
Taxonomy is only nomenclature, after all --- if every chemist in the
world suddenly decided to call carbon 'oxygen' and vice versa, the
former would still be the basis of organic chemistry, and the latter
would still be what we breathe.
Nothing to damage evolution there, sorry.
Nancy
Frank Reichenbacher
> evolution? Did evolutionary theory help,
> hurt, or have no effect on the alphabet?
<snip ridiculous bullshit>
Frank
"Rev Dr" Lenny Flank
david ford wrote:
> What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
> taxonomy/ classification?
What, if anything, is the scientific theory of creation? How, if any
way, can we test it using the scientific method?
===============================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Creation "Science" Debunked:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank
DebunkCreation Email list:
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/DebunkCreation
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
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John Harshman
Nancy Kroohs wrote:
I beg your pardon. It is not. Now, the difference between taxonomy and
systematics has always been unclear. Ask five people, get five different
answers. So I'll ignore the difference and pretend that you have
insulted systematics. And them's fightin' words.
> It's artificial;
> it attempts to draw convenient dividing lines between groups of
> organisms that exist in something closer to a continuum --- even the
> smallest taxonomic unit, species, is difficult to pin down in many
> instances.
But the larger ones are a bit easier. There is a certain amount of
abstraction involved in thinking of clades as real, but after a few
million years of separation, they are as real as you could ask for. It's
no more artificial than thinking about atoms instead of quantum
probability distributions.
> And this is just concerning living organisms; add in all
> the thousands of fossil species and things rapidly become hopeless.
> It's now clear from genetic and morphological evidence that the
> lobe-finned fishes are at least as closely related to humans as they
> are to your common brook trout,
Closer, actually.
> but how are taxonomists to deal with
> that fact?
By placing humans and other lobe-finned fishes in a separate clade,
named Sarcopterygii. Next?
> To all appearances, it's still a fish, even if the term
> 'fish' has lost some meaning.
How is this a problem for systematists? I see how it might be a problem
for the general public, who are used to thinking of fish as fish. But
once you realize that humans are just highly specialized, terrestrial
fish (gnathostomes, if you like), there's no problem.
> And then of course there's the lack of
> complete knowledge of the fossil record that the first article
> references: even if taxonomists attempted to re-order their
> conventional groupings based on cladistic information, there would be
> numerous gaps where information is not available, and some groups
> would be in a constant state of flux as arguments shifted back and
> forth and new information was aquired.
Not so much as you might think. But to the extent that happens, isn't it
how science works? Hypotheses are refined or abandoned with new data.
> It's more convenient for
> taxonomists to stick with the tried and true, even acknowledging that
> the tried and true in this case doesn't accurately reflect current
> knowledge of history.
More convenient, perhaps, but nobody is doing that any more. Cladistics,
the reigning paradigm, attempts to classify based on recency of common
descent. If your current classification doesn't reflect that, you throw
it out. Which is why systematists these days don't (for example) use the
class Pisces, substituting Gnathostomata, which includes sharks, bony
fish, and tetrapods, of which you are one.
> That's all the first article was saying.
> Taxonomy is only nomenclature, after all --- if every chemist in the
> world suddenly decided to call carbon 'oxygen' and vice versa, the
> former would still be the basis of organic chemistry, and the latter
> would still be what we breathe.
However, if classifications are supposed to express common descent,
which systematists these days almost all think they are, then
classifications are merely the reflection of what we currently think
phylogeny looks like. And that's important -- not just meaningless names.
> Nothing to damage evolution there, sorry.
No, of course not.
david ford
> david ford wrote:
>
> > What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
> > taxonomy/ classification?
>
> What, if anything, is the scientific theory of creation?
What is the meaning of [LF]"scientific" here?
R.Schenck
ford) wrote:
>"\"Rev Dr\" Lenny Flank" <lflank...@ij.net> wrote in message news:<40316...@corp.newsgroups.com>...
>> david ford wrote:
>>
>> > What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
>> > taxonomy/ classification?
>>
>> What, if anything, is the scientific theory of creation?
>
>What is the meaning of [LF]"scientific" here?
>
perhaps you should have read another line or two.
Eros
> "\"Rev Dr\" Lenny Flank" <lflank...@ij.net> wrote in message news:<40316...@corp.newsgroups.com>...
> > david ford wrote:
> >
> > > What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
> > > taxonomy/ classification?
> >
> > What, if anything, is the scientific theory of creation?
>
> What is the meaning of [LF]"scientific" here?
Maybe you should ask a Creation "scientist". You can find a few of
them hiding here;-
http://www.icr.org/
http://www.icr.org/abouticr/tenets.htm
and here;-
http://www.answersingenesis.org/
> > How, if any
> > way, can we test it using the scientific method?
Care to answer that question, or do you need clarification of the term
"scientific method" too?
EROS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Now please state the scientific theory of creationism." -- Dr.
Pepper's imperative
david ford
> On Sun, 22 Feb 2004 17:35:51 +0000 (UTC), dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david
> ford) wrote:
>
> >"\"Rev Dr\" Lenny Flank" <lflank...@ij.net> wrote in message news:<40316...@corp.newsgroups.com>...
> >> david ford wrote:
> >>
> >> > What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
> >> > taxonomy/ classification?
> >>
> >> What, if anything, is the scientific theory of creation?
> >
> >What is the meaning of [LF]"scientific" here?
>
> perhaps you should have read another line or two.
I did do so. Would you care to answer on Lenny's behalf?
david ford
> dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david ford) wrote in message news:<b1c67abe.04022...@posting.google.com>...
> > "\"Rev Dr\" Lenny Flank" <lflank...@ij.net> wrote in message news:<40316...@corp.newsgroups.com>...
> > > david ford wrote:
> > >
> > > > What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
> > > > taxonomy/ classification?
> > >
> > > What, if anything, is the scientific theory of creation?
> >
> > What is the meaning of [LF]"scientific" here?
>
> Maybe you should ask a Creation "scientist". You can find a few of
> them hiding here;-
>
> http://www.icr.org/
> http://www.icr.org/abouticr/tenets.htm
>
> and here;-
>
> http://www.answersingenesis.org/
No, I should be asking Lenny, who posed the question to me.
> > > How, if any
> > > way, can we test it using the scientific method?
>
> Care to answer that question, or do you need clarification of the term
> "scientific method" too?
To answer Lenny's 2nd question, I must first answer his 1st question.
R.Schenck
ford) wrote:
>"R.Schenck" <nygdan_mo...@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<9sbi305s89ube1v1q...@4ax.com>...
>> On Sun, 22 Feb 2004 17:35:51 +0000 (UTC), dfo...@gl.umbc.edu (david
>> ford) wrote:
>>
>> >"\"Rev Dr\" Lenny Flank" <lflank...@ij.net> wrote in message news:<40316...@corp.newsgroups.com>...
>> >> david ford wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > What effect did the advent of the T0E have on the field of
>> >> > taxonomy/ classification?
>> >>
>> >> What, if anything, is the scientific theory of creation?
>> >
>> >What is the meaning of [LF]"scientific" here?
>>
>> perhaps you should have read another line or two.
>
>I did do so. Would you care to answer on Lenny's behalf?
>
well for starters, you could say that something is scientific if it
can be tested using the 'scientific method'. do you not know what the
method is? is that the difficulty?/
Eros
You really can't be *that* stupid, can you?
EROS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The creationist account of the origin of life is not therefore
appropriate to a course in the science of biology, and the claim that
it is a viable scientific explanation of the diversity of life does
not warrant support." -- Australian Academy of Science, extract from
å…¨tatement on Creationism'.