Part 2 (was: rankless nomenclature)

[Richard Jensen]

On Sat, 14 Oct 2000, Richard Pyle wrote:
>
> Richard Jensen wrote:
>
> > A key here is to
> > provide access to information in a stable and predictive way. A rankless
> > classification has the same goal, except that it is designed specifically
> > to reflect phylogenetic relationships.  So, I suggest that Richard Pyle
> > consider history.
>
> I assume that by "history", you mean the previous suggestions by others
> along the same lines as what I am suggesting (as outlined in your ensuing
> paragraph)? I hope I didn't seem to imply that my suggestions are in any way
> original. It certainly wasn't my intent to imply as much.  I only stepped
> into this conversation because it appeared to me that there was some
> miscommunication going on, and I hoped to try to add my own perspective
> (lengthy though it may be) as a way to perhaps add some clarity. I fear
> however, I may have only muddied the waters.....which leads me to my final
> point:
>

My mistake.  By "history" I meant the information in the paragraph
immediately following my suggestion that you (meaning all of us) remember
history I should have used a colon after the word history.

My point was that there were those us who believed that phenetic and
cladistic classifications could coexist because they represented two
different ways of describing the same information.  There were some
well-reasoned and logical proposals to allow such coexistence, but nothing
really developed.  Those who were interested in cladistics went
their way and those interested in phenetics did likewise.  The debate
about which approach was "better" or "correct" was often heated and
sometimes became personal.  It seemed that peaceful and
integrated coexistence was not an idea whose time had come.  Will the same
thing happen if the two codes try to coexist?

Cheers,
Dick

Richard J. Jensen      |   E-MAIL: rjensen at saintmarys.edu
Dept. of Biology       |   TELEPHONE: 219-284-4674
Saint Mary's College   |   FAX: 219-284-4716
Notre Dame, IN  46556  |