[Taxacom] Order Campanulales (worth maintaining?)

[dipteryx at freeler.nl]

Van: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu namens Jim Croft
Verzonden: do 17-2-2011 22:18

> There should always be evidence to back a lump or split decision
> in a classification, even if you choose to be selective about it, 
> even if you weight it, even if it is trivial as something like
> consistency/compatability with existing practice. If you want 
> to convince people of a truth, you have to produce evidence, 
> otherwise it is devoid of understanding, just a meaningless 
> and unproductive battle of belief.

***
Except for those who hold by arcane beliefs, a classification 
is not a truth (or Truth), a classification is (among others)
a means to communicate a scientific insight.
* * *

> If you can not produce reason, rationale and evidence for your
> decision, I cannot test it, I cannot refute it, I can not 
> understand it, I just have to believe it (or not). You are 
> a religion, not a science and you do not deserve my tax dollar.

***
Just the reverse: if you think of a classification as a Truth, 
then you are a religion.
* * *

> In taxonomy a cigar is never just a cigar. It is a manufactured
> product of the leaf of Nicotiana tabacum, which is related to 
> other species of Nicotiana, a genus of like plants in the family 
> Solanaceae, a family in the dicot order... at least that is what 
> the evidence suggests.

***
Actually there is plenty of evidence that the dicots are not a 
natural group ...

And as far as I can tell, dicots were never regarded as an order ...
Paul