Croizat and classification

[John Grehan]

I agree with the comments by Kenneth Kinman on the
problems of recognizing ancestors. I think Croizat's concept of
ancestor involved the differentiation process as much as
a particular taxonomic entity.

As someone who is more interested in biogeography
than taxonomy, my focus is more on what one might do
biogeographically with a given taxonomy than with
being too caught up with the ultimate "truth" of the
taxonomy itself. Croizat was once consigned to the
trash heap of history (ref. David Hull's book), and
vicariance cladistic
biogeographers took this view for Croizat having used
non-cladistic classifications. Yet these same vicariance
cladistic biogeographers did not
come up with anything to contradict Croizat's biogeographic
synthesis, and ironically it was Croizats "non-cladistic"
biogeography that called some vicariance narratives into
question.

Sincerely, John Grehan