[Taxacom] RES: south-west Australia

[Curtis Clark]

On 6/24/2011 11:30 AM, John Grehan wrote:
>> panbiogeography is on a side track, no doubt due to Croizat's own
>> >  eccentricities.
> Curtis, since you are so big on objectivity and math how about backing
> up that claim with some corresponding evidence.

Because I'm talking about the culture of science, not the knowledge 
itself, the fact that so few people do panbiogeography is evidence. As 
to his eccentricities, I only have the word of people who knew others 
who knew him, and literature accounts. Certainly all scientists are 
eccentric in the broader sense, but I have read that Croizat angered 
some who might have otherwise been his supporters (no, I'm really not 
going to look up the specifics), which, if true, is seldom a productive 
thing to do, no matter how right you are.

>> >  I would venture that it will become mainstream only if its current
>> >  practicioners reinvent it, or more likely when it is rediscovered in
>> >  the future, much as genetics was.
> Yes - when biogeographers free themselves from the slavery to imaginary
> centers of origin and dispersal.

David Hull (if I'm not mistaken) once wrote an article "Why Darwin won" 
(lack of Google results suggests that I may have the title wrong as 
well). I heard him present the material back in the late 1970s. His 
thesis was that Darwin's theory of evolution took hold, when so many 
other similar theories didn't, because Darwin played by the rules of 
science in Europe at that time. It is unfortunate that ideas often live 
and die, not by their merits, but by how they are presented. 
Nevertheless, it's true. Polemics alone, even when backed up by the 
supposedly blinding light of truth, almost never carry the day, and 
biogeographers will "free" themselves of the "slavery" when it seems to 
be worthwhile to them in the context of their careers. Or as they said 
years ago in information technology, "No one was ever fired for buying IBM."

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Curtis Clark
Cal Poly Pomona