Boredom and recombination

[John Grehan]

>'s "character recombination": it refers to the observed patterns, not to
>the inferred processes ("evolution"). I was taught as a student to make a
>distinction between reticulate patterns and reticulate evolution - I still
>think it is a useful distinction.

On this we can agree to disagree. Croizat referred to character
recombination as a process and described it as such. Others can make their
own choice on this.

>I suppose "differentiated ancestor" is a typo for "undifferentiated ancestor"?

No - I was indeed referring to a differentiated ancestor in that the
ancestor has already differentiated geographically before the development
of distinct descendant lineages.

>For the rest of this statement, it seems to me rather unspectacular to
>allow for the fact that ancestors may consist of a number of somewhat
>differentiated but not fully isolated populations. But the connection of
>this to a better understanding of Croizat's concept of character
>recombination eludes me.

No worries.

>>It was not my impression that new characters were excluded. However, the
>>importance of recombination in differentiation was certainly emphasized.
>>So while the evolution of the feather may involve the recombination of
>>five 'fish' scales, it does not necessarily mean that every aspect of the
>>feather morphology was already present (preformed) in the fish scale.
>
>Impressions may vary, even after reading the same text. Much of postmodern
>philosophy comes down to that point, I believe.

Meaning?

>But somehow the problem seems greater for texts by Croizat than by most
>other authors in the last 2 centuries (restricting myself to authors on
>scientific subjects).

For some maybe so. For others maybe not. Maybe Darwin takes the cake for
having the greatest amount of controversy over what he did or not mean or
did or not say - even entire books on the question.

>>I don't know about 'any number'
>My impression was that Croizat did not restrict character recombination to
>any specified number of characters.

But on the other hand he did not say that there was not a restriction. His
concept of orthogenesis is explicit in their being limits to character
recombination within the type of organization.

>In which case I do not understand your remark at all...

Since we work within different conceptual frameworks perhaps this is not
surprising.

John Grehan