'Total evidence' in phylogenetic systematics
Biology and Philosophy 24 (5):607-622 (2009)
| Abstract | Taking its clues from Popperian philosophy of science, cladistics adopted a number of assumptions of the empiricist tradition. These include the identification of a dichotomy between observation reports and theoretical statements and its subsequent abandonment on the basis of the insight that all observation reports are theory-laden. The neglect of the ‘context of discovery’, which is the step of theory (hypothesis) generation. The emphasis on coherentism in the ‘context of justification’, which is the step of evaluation of the relative merits of alternative theories. The appeal to a total evidence approach in phylogenetic inference. And finally, a silence about causation, which results in an instrumentalist approach to phylogeny reconstruction. This paper explores how these empiricist assumptions are embedded in phylogenetic systematics, and why these assumptions are problematic for cladists (or any taxonomists). | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,709 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesNico M. Franz (2005). Outline of an Explanatory Account of Cladistic Practice. Biology and Philosophy 20 (2-3):489-515.
Bengt Autzen (2011). Constraining Prior Probabilities of Phylogenetic Trees. Biology and Philosophy 26 (4):567-581.
Timothy Williamson (1998). Conditionalizing on Knowledge. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1):89-121.
Kevin De Queiroz & Michael J. Donoghue (1988). Phylogenetic Systematics and the Species Problem. Cladistics 4:317-38.
Richard Richards (2003). Character Individuation in Phylogenetic Inference. Philosophy of Science 70 (2):264-279.
Joel Velasco (2013). Phylogeny as Population History. Philosophy and Theory in Biology 5.
E. Kurt Lienau & Rob DeSalle (forthcoming). Evidence, Content and Corroboration and the Tree of Life. Acta Biotheoretica.
Olivier Rieppel & Maureen Kearney (2007). The Poverty of Taxonomic Characters. Biology and Philosophy 22 (1):95-113.
Kirk Fitzhugh (2006). The 'Requirement of Total Evidence' and its Role in Phylogenetic Systematics. Biology and Philosophy 21 (3):309-351.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads35 ( #34,187 of 549,591 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,397 of 549,591 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
