[Taxacom] Are species real? Doesn't matter.

[pierre deleporte]

A 10:42 31/05/2007 -1000, Richard Pyle wrote :

>Yes, I do view species as classes, rather than individuals.
>(...)
>
>I still don't buy the "species as hypothesis" argument.
>(...)
>
>and we still have several constructs of "populations" to go through before 
>we get to
>"species".
>(...)
>
>Many of these points (e.g., species as classes, rather than individuals) 
>have been on this list before, and should be somewhere in the archives.

yes they are - so, just a reminder of some suggestions of mine (much in 
agreement with, and possibly complementary to Richard Pyle's ones):

- species are not biological "individuals" from a materialist point of 
view: they are definitely not consistent material systems (not even 
populations, as frequently conceived) - they are materially "divided" 
instead, into a lot of spatially, temporally and biologically disconnected 
individuals
- so-called "species as historical individuals" can't be anything but 
classes, i.e. historically meaningful concepts for the evolutionary 
biologist and the phylogenetic systematician
- classes are concepts, "clusters" can be material systems (physically 
connected aggregates of things) or concepts (pseudo classes of some kind)

- one can avoid confusing "real" (materially) with "biologically meaningful 
/ useful to the scientist"
- one can avoid confusing "existing" (as a material system) with "true" or 
"likely" (as a historical sketch of events - see Fitzhugh for clades as 
historical explanation)

so, 'it' really doesn't matter a bit, by any means... two cents more to the 
'classes pot'
(but I just picked them in this very pot  ;-)  - e.g. Mahner and Bunge 1997 
on Systematics)

best,
Pierre


Pierre Deleporte
CNRS UMR 6552 - Station Biologique de Paimpont
F-35380 Paimpont   FRANCE
Téléphone : 02 99 61 81 63
Télécopie : 02 99 61 81 88