2000 years of stasis

[Stuart G. Poss]

Thomas DiBenedetto wrote:

>  But this seems to fly in the face of the fact that it has been cladists who
> have been in the
> forefront of the "diagnose vs. define" debates, and very much on the side of
> "diagnoses"! I mean, for example, read anything by Kluge in the past few
> decades for long and extended philosophical arguments about why species and
> taxa are individuals, not somehting that can be defined, but must be
> diagnosed etc. etc. How on earth can cladistics be seen as essentialistic?
>

> I am also puzzeled by the remark "...I am looking at morphological
> discontinuities in a limited part of the world, and putting morphologically
> similar things into groups within groups.