[Taxacom] Endless debate

[Kenneth Kinman]

Hi Curtis,
     I'm not sure if you are finally agreeing with me or just teasing?
Indeed, Hull (1979) was just lamenting that methods had not YET been
proposed that could combine phylogeny and divergence in a single
classification so that they could be retrievable, NOT that it wasn't
possible.  My view has always been that it is not only possible, but
preferable.                
      As for PhyloCode, a major modification that would allowed for
paraphyletic groups and more emphasis on synapomorphically-defined taxa
could possibly help, but my own numerous debates with PhyloCodists
suggest that they hardly ever support apomorphy-based taxa (even though
they do supposedly and grudgingly allow them).  In reality, they almost
always prefer clades based on arbitrarily selected taxa, not
synapomorphies.  It is even more doubtful that they would EVER consider
any paraphyletic taxon (defined by a synapomorphy at the base, and
truncated by a synapomorphy at the top).   In other words, a
"Paraphylocode" would mostly likely be just a smoke screen for
"PhyloCode".  I'll stick with the traditional Codes of Nomenclature,
thank you very much.
           --------Ken Kinman 
            
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Curtis Clark wrote:
On 2009-04-06 11:05, Richard Zander wrote: 
> Well, how about this: Don Colless suggested that reference to a 
> cladogram clarifies a classification. Perhaps a >classification that 
> includes evolutionary information about both sister-group >and 
> ancestor-descendant relationships can be disambiguated >with reference
to 
> both a cladogram (or phylogram) and a taxon tree. 

Why not bite the bullet and go for a Kinman classification, which
includes both kinds of information? Or the intersection of Phylocode
with a "Paraphylocode" that marks grades by key innovations? The
Phylocode proponents believe that Linnaean classification can't
unambiguously specify clades; perhaps it can't unambiguously specify
grades either.