[Taxacom] Antw:Re: Antw:Re: Antw:Re: Evolution of human-aperelationships, remains open for investigation

John Grehan jgrehan at sciencebuff.org
Sat Aug 13 07:56:29 CDT 2011 

Peter's additional comments are a little more informative.

There can be differences among people as to what constitutes a particular research program. After all, 'cladistics' and 'panbiogeography' are just labels, and the scope and meaning of those labels can vary, or even change over time (I think Hull and others have made this kind of characterization - and also that participants under a particular label can even have contradictory positions). So as far as I am concerned there would be nothing wrong with someone arguing that my analyses were not panbiogeographic for one or other reason, just as I may have, for example, my doubts that constructing tracks using PAE is panbiogeographic.

Just because one or more authors assert something in a paper does not make it necessarily so. Perhaps my position on cladistics is wrong and misguided, bet perhaps also maybe not. And perhaps all of this has been argued about already as most things in life have.

Ultimately, for me, the substantial issue is whether there is anything out there in cladistic methodology that would refute our (Schwartz and I) current claims that the preponderance of systematic evidence of morphogenetics favors the orangutan relationship rather than the chimpanzee, and that there is nothing empirical to require that this finding has to be subordinated to molecular theories of relationship. So far, in the 10 years since I jumped into the fray the efforts so far to repudiate the orangutan evidence have been surprisingly weak.

John Grehan


-----Original Message-----
From: P.H. HOVENKAMP [mailto:phovenkamp at casema.nl] 
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 5:42 PM
To: John Grehan; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Antw:Re: [Taxacom] Antw:Re: Antw:Re: Evolution of human-aperelationships, remains open for investigation


These papers in particular investigate the relation between parsimony, cladistic analysis, polarity and out-group analysis (in arbitrary order).  What they show is that Johns assertions about cladistics and phenetics, in particular his assertion that only his approach is cladistic and others are phenetic is simply not true. N o t  t r u e. Unless we allow John to use his own particular definition of cladistic - a definition shared with no-one else. That would be like me arguing that John's analyses are not panbiogeographic because I consider an analysis panbiogeographic only if it draws lines separating, not connecting taxon occurrences. 

Peter 



Op 12/08/11, John Grehan  <jgrehan at sciencebuff.org> schreef: 

> This kind of assertion is uninformative and pointless. If Peter can specify something in particular about those papers that make a point for him then there is something to discuss. Just saying 'read the papers' is silly (it would be like me saying that to those who ask questions on this list about panbiogeography or make various assertions about it to go read the panbiogeographic literature).
> 
> Most of what is talked about on this list in all manner of subjects has been talked about or said before somewhere.
> 
> 
> John Grehan
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: P.H. HOVENKAMP 
> [mailto:phovenkamp at casema.nl](javascript:main.compose()
> Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 3:22 PM
> To: John Grehan; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Antw:Re: [Taxacom] Antw:Re: Evolution of human-ape 
> relationships, remains open for investigation
> 
> Straight from the horse's mouth:
> I expect a discussion to continue from where it was stopped, not to be repeated from the beginning for ever and ever and ever and ever. 
> In this discussion, the participants are repeating the arguments made between 1966 (significant date) and 1985 (approximately, date without any significance whatsoever), apparently without realizing it. 
> 
> I don't know whether I can expect that John realizes that his arguments are incoherent - but others should realize that they have been made before.
> 
> Read the papers.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Peter Hovenkamp
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Op 12/08/11, John Grehan  <jgrehan at sciencebuff.org> schreef: 
> 
> > Bet all you like Pierre, but I want to hear from Peter directly.
> > 
> > John Grehan
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
> > [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu](javascript:main.compose(
> > )(javascript:main.compose() On Behalf Of Pierre Deleporte
> > Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 12:38 PM
> > To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Antw:Re: Evolution of human-ape 
> > relationships, remains open for investigation
> > 
> > 
> > I bet Peter is suggesting that you read it before talking of 
> > cladistic analysis with outgroup rooting I further bet that Peter is 
> > expecting that this reading could help you to understand your own 
> > logical incoherence - like a priori selecting characters a 
> > clique-lique way, while performing standard parsimony analysis on 
> > the surviving data set, while acknowledging at the same time that 
> > the characters you assassinated would have survived for an analysis 
> > at a larger phylogenetic scale (see you last posts), all kinds of 
> > inconsistencies the Maddisons would certainly not recommend - see 
> > also your pet textbooks (if any, I have growing doubts about 
> > this...)
> > 
> > Pierre
> > 
> > 
> > Le 12/08/2011 18:20, John Grehan wrote:
> > > So what is the point you want to make with respect to Maddison et al?
> > >
> > > John Grehan
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: P.H. HOVENKAMP 
> > > [mailto:phovenkamp at casema.nl](javascript:main.compose()(javascript
> > > :main.compose()
> > > Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2011 4:57 PM
> > > To: John Grehan; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> > > Subject: Antw:Re: [Taxacom] Evolution of human-ape relationships, 
> > > remains open for investigation
> > >
> > > This is exactly the topic of the discussion in the 70ties/80ies I referred to earlier.
> > >
> > > If this post makes it to the list: scroll down in John's previous message to find a number of references to classic papers in which this topic is treated. To which may be added a paper by Maddison, Donoghue and Maddison from 1984 on outgroups and parsimony.
> > >
> > > Apparently, these are still relevant, and are to be considered required reading.
> > >
> > > Peter Hovenkamp
> > >
> > > Op 11/08/11, John Grehan<jgrehan at sciencebuff.org>  schreef:
> > >
> > >> "Binary transformation series, whether restricted in a way that 
> > >> one character state is present in the ingroup and absent in the 
> > >> outgroup or not, contribute the same number of steps to a 
> > >> parsimony analysis independently of the polarity assessment so 
> > >> identifying polarity in this characters prior to the analysis is irrelevant."
> > >>
> > >> But an algorithm cannot distinguish derived states if they are 
> > >> not specified. If one mixes in non-derived states and codes them 
> > >> as such, then no problem - but then why bother including them?
> > >>
> > >> John Grehan
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >>
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> > --
> > Pierre DELEPORTE
> > UMR6552 EthoS
> > Université Rennes 1
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> > 
> > 
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