[Taxacom] Fwd: Woodpeckers, primates, as well as the Wallace Line gauntlet

[Michael Heads]

Dear Robin,


 
 
As usual, I'm in complete agreement with everything you've written. Using chance (dispersal) to explain a pattern is just nihilism and leads nowhere. On the positive side, have a look at the Mol. Phylogen. Evol. website. 13 of the 46 forthcoming papers (28%) have chosen to put maps in their graphic abstracts - their most interesting result was a geographic pattern! At the rate these patterns are now accumulating, I can't see the concept of chance dispersal lasting much longer. Once it's dropped, a real science of biogeography may develop. 

Michael

Wellington, New Zealand.

My papers on biogeography are at: http://tiny.cc/RiUE0

--- On Tue, 24/5/11, Robinwbruce at aol.com <Robinwbruce at aol.com> wrote:


From: Robinwbruce at aol.com <Robinwbruce at aol.com>
Subject: [Taxacom] Fwd: Woodpeckers, primates, as well as the Wallace Line gauntlet
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Received: Tuesday, 24 May, 2011, 1:13 AM





  
____________________________________
From: Robinwbruce at aol.com
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: 5/23/2011  1:29:10 P.M. GMT Daylight Time
Subj: [Taxacom] Woodpeckers, primates, as  well as the Wallace Line gauntlet




Hi  Michael,



The  following thoughts have developed from the ongoing thread. I claim 
neither  certitude nor infallibility!

The current  form of the dispersal/vicariance antithesis is not to be found 
in Croizat's  writings and post-dates him. Perhaps more correctly this  
modern antithesis should be chance/order. Random dispersal should perhaps be 
cited as (endlessly  repeating?) happenstance for the events, and casualism 
for the process. Whether science can survive long  exposure to casualism is a 
moot point.



Phylogeny is  a time-line, now rooted via Hennig, back to Haeckel, and 
perhaps thence Hegel.  It is temporal but non-spatial, and thus perhaps  both 
idealistic and restrictive. The arrow of time?  The present and the past have 
the same nature, and we  can treat them both the same, as a line of 
divergent materialistic continuity. Interestingly as a  graphic form, a phylogeny 
always shows spatial separation! Trompe  l'oeil?

Dispersal in  Croizat's sense was form-making plus displacement in space; 
it is a time and  space construction; time-space is a front, perhaps even  a 
field, not a line as in phylogeny. Perhaps we can view time-space as the 
generative present which  rolls forward; it is thus combinative (and 
realistic?). The present and the past have different natures,  and we must treat them 
differently; the generative front of the present rolls forward and leaves  
traces in various forms in the now emerging non-generative past.In this way 
perhaps Croizat's concept  of dispersal overcomes the failing in western 
languages, that Agnes Arber recognised, to address  the germinal in nature.

Thus because of their differing  natures, any confluence or fusion of 
phylogeny and dispersal in Croizat's  sense is likely to be at best  
uncomfortable.

Mobilism and immobilism for Croizat  were relative terms; when relative 
mobilism prevails, significant differences in form do not arise as a  
consequence, i.e. there is little generation of difference, but the  possibility of 
much spatial expansion. When  relative immobilism prevails, relative static 
localization results in  significant differences in form arising, and  thence 
vicariism, i.e. the generation of difference and its subsequent  
recognition. Mobilism and immobilism only occur  in the generative present, but the 
patterns thus created linger into the past,  and are partly recoverable as 
consequences of  time-space order.

Croizat  seems almost unique in 20th century biology; he was both a 
biogeographer and a  morphogeneticist, disciplines both with different but global  
frameworks ( taxonomy was secondary for him). Thus is a most unusual  
combination for this period (or any period?),  when consensus had centered on 
material adaptationist evolution, as indeed it  still does, almost as an 
intellectual monoculture (but fortunately not  quite!). Other critics of the 
consensus have lacked this coupling of  biogeography and morphogeny, and as a 
consequence their critiques have  been much less trenchant and their  insights 
less profound.

Robin






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