panbiogeographic trivia

[John Grehan]

>John Grehan is too modest to note in his message that he is the coauthor of
>an excellent new book on panbiogeography:
>
>Craw, R. C., J. R. Grehan, M. J. Heads.  1999. Panbiogeography: Tracking
>the History of Life.  Oxford U. Press.  229 pp.
>
>I would agree with Prof. Grehan that panbiogeography is not so lightly to
>be dismissed.  I also would add that the original views of Croizat are only
>marginally relevant to any discussion of panbiogeography as it exists
>today.  We no longer appeal to the early work of Hennig for justification
>of current practice in cladistics, nor to Darwin for evolutionary biology.
>Science progresses by correcting the errors of our predecessors and filling
>in the gaps in their knowledge; this is happening in panbiogeography as
>elsewhere.
>
>Bill Shear
>Department of Biology
>Hampden-Sydney College
>Hampden-Sydney VA 23943
>(804)223-6172
>FAX (804)223-6374
>email<bills at hsc.edu>

My appreciation of the acknowledgement, but I am not so certain that Croizat has
yet been rendered enirely redundant by subsequent developments. There is a
longer
and more extensive history of study for Darwin and Hennig, whereas
panbiogeography
is comparatively unexplored. Certainly Craw, Page, Henderson and others have
developed new conceptual and analytical models to justify the method, but
judging
by the comments published by people such as Brown, Lomolino, and Cox,
there is still much to be explored within Croizat's own writings. At least
that's my
personal belief, but perhaps Bill Shear will turn out to be more correct.
Croizat said
that he would applaud the future developments from Beyond.

John Grehan