[Taxacom] This week's paraphyly discussions

[John Grehan]

What's this 'lack of self awareness' Please give this some objective
referent.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of
dipteryx at freeler.nl
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 12:07 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] This week's paraphyly discussions

Van: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu namens John Grehan
Verzonden: ma 20-12-2010 16:50

> I guess one might regard 'natural' and any grouping 
> that is accepted by an individual. 

***
Yes, in practice "natural" means "conforming to my own nature"
/ "conforming to my own views". That is, to a taxonomist usually 
the groups he accepts are 'natural', while those espoused by 
others are not. Cladists do not differ in this respect: 
their monophyletic / holophyletic groups are 'natural', while 
groups accepted by non-cladists are not worth considering. 
If there is a difference between cladists and non-cladists 
it will be a tendency to a lack of self-awareness in the former. 

Paul
_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of
these methods:

(1) http://taxacom.markmail.org

Or (2) a Google search specified as:
site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here