[Taxacom] Hedges /Kumar (eds) The Timetree of Life
Richard Zander
Richard.Zander at mobot.org
Mon May 23 09:18:18 CDT 2011
" The phylogeny provides the structure on to which organise the distributional data." This is structuralism. Why can't both pattern and distributional data be explained by a theory that accounts for both? Why relegate distributional data to a pattern. That pattern is ONLY of present-day relationships of exemplars, which needs itself explaining given the inconsistencies (paraphyly) and contradictions (versus morphological cladograms of same taxa). Structuralism is a quick fix based on the impressive precision of measuring present-day relationships, but does not develop a scientific theory.
Even the word "estimation" is loaded. In statistics, we "estimate" when no hypothesis is available. No hypothesis? No previously postulated evolutionary theory? None?
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Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden, PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA�
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/�and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
Modern Evolutionary Systematics Web site: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/21EvSy.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Jason Mate
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2011 6:15 PM
To: Taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Hedges /Kumar (eds) The Timetree of Life
The phylogeny provides the structure on to which organise the distributional data. Also saying that one starts from the lowest level (i.e. genus) hardly matters if your genus is something more speciose than hominids (Onthophagus for example?).
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