Wow! Having just read Ken's comment, and your reply, I see that the three
of us (at least) appear to be very harmonious in our perspective on this
topic. I probably should have just stayed out of the conversation....
Aloha,
Rich
> -----Original Message-----
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of
> Stephen Thorpe
> Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 7:56 PM
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] paraphylophobia again
>
> I agree wholeheartedly that a little paraphyly is a necessary
> part of a balanced diet (ruffage, perhaps!). I think it
> applies to a slightly different problem, though: given any
> monophyletic group, there will be one of more clearly
> monophyletic subgroups, plus a (basal) "remainder". Far too
> much funding and effort these days goes into trying to
> eliminate the paraphyly from the basal remainder, but it may
> well be futile in many (most?) cases. It would, in my
> opinion, be far more sensible to just flag the remainder as
> (potentially) paraphyletic, and get on with documenting the
> vast undescribed biota of the world...
>
> Stephen
>
> Quoting Kenneth Kinman <kennethkinman at webtv.net>:
>
> > Hi Stephen,
> > Well, I don't think going back in time and killing Hennig
> > would solve anything. Someone else would have eventually
> espoused the
> > same counter-revolution against the excesses of
> authoritarian, often
> > rampant, paraphyleticism back in the 1950's. Either way,
> the result
> > would probably have been an over-reaction that resulted in an
> > excessive aversion to paraphyletic groups.
> > My experience is that it is human nature to
> over-react to one
> > extreme with an opposite extreme, especially in a social
> context (mob
> > behavior can affect scientists as well as less educated elements of
> > humanity). Too many paraphyletic taxa were unfortunately
> replaced by
> > a pendulum swing toward an intolerance of paraphyletic taxa
> at all.
> > That it has taken so long to recognize that this counter-revolution
> > created as many problems as it solved is frankly baffling
> to me. That
> > it further led to a widespread acceptance of the Three Domain
> > classification of life, much less that Archaebacteria
> ("Archaea") are
> > in any way "archaic" is equally baffling. It's about as
> baffling as
> > the common view that stock prices and real-estate prices
> would climb
> > indefinitely.
> > Eventually the real world kicks in, and as I have warned for
> > years, strict cladism is going to suffer the same kind of
> reality check.
> > Not that I think that cladistic analysis is bad (when done
> well), but
> > it's just the automatic conversion of cladistic analyses into
> > cladifications that is problematic. That you would feel
> compelled to
> > elevate obscure protists groups to the status of Kingdom
> just to avoid
> > the now widespread dreaded fear of paraphyly shows how deeply that
> > "public-relations" campaign has infected our educational (even
> > post-graduate) system over the past few decades. It
> somewhat reminds
> > me of diet fads that rail against carbohydrates or fats,
> instead of a
> > more moderate intake that recognizes that we need a balance of
> > everything in moderation. A little paraphyly is a
> wonderful thing if
> > it is sparingly used in the proper context, but a total
> rejection of
> > paraphyly is about as nutty as obsessive-compulsives rubbing their
> > bleeding hands raw trying to kill every bacterium in their house.
> > Paraphyly is part of reality and fighting it is about as
> fruitless as
> > trying to rid the world of bacteria, fungi, or even
> mosquitos. If you
> > want to have a healthy immune system (or biological
> classification),
> > being obsessive-compulsive about it is a losing battle when
> you pursue it to an extreme.
> > --------Ken Kinman
> > -----------------------------------------------------
> > Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> > some of the replies to my last email lead me to make the following
> > comment:
> > the classification of life into "kingdoms" (or "regna")
> doesn't really
> > work. For a start, there are the "problematic" viruses - in
> or out of
> > the biotic realm??? But, just to talk about eucaryotes, it is
> > completely obvious that "Protista" are paraphyletic with respect to
> > Animalia (=Metazoa), Plantae, and Fungi. This leads to a dilemma:
> > either (1) animals and plants are no longer to be
> considered kingdoms
> > of life (which takes us disturbingly far away from the original
> > meaning of "kingdom"), or (2) we must elevate a plethora of
> obscure "protist"
> > groups to the level of kingdom, and run the risk of our beloved
> > animals and plants just being sub-sub-sub-...clades of some newly
> > recognised kingdom!
> > Someone please go back in time an kill Hennig, before he invented
> > cladistics!!! [just kidding!]
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
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>
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