[Taxacom] Upcoming systematics course

[Kirk Fitzhugh]

Colleagues,

I wanted to pass along early notice of a five-day course to be offered 
7-11 September 2015, /Philosophy of Biological Systematics/, at the 
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium. 
Additional information can be found on the DEST Taxonomy Training 
<http://taxonomytraining.eu/content/philosophy-biological-systematics> 
website. The deadline for registration is 1 June 2015. Please feel free 
to contact me if you have any questions. Below is a list of topics to be 
covered.

1.    Introduction
2.    The goal of science. The goal of biological systematics
         a. The nature of understanding
         b. Basic foundations of scientific inquiry
         c. Systematics versus taxonomy
3.    Causal relationships in systematics
         a. Taxa and causal understanding
4.    The nature of why-questions
5.    The three forms of reasoning: deduction, induction, abduction
6.    The uses of deduction, induction, and abduction in science
         a. Defining fact, hypothesis, and theory
         b. Background knowledge
         c. Theory and hypothesis testing
         d. The meanings of evidence and support
7.    Systematics involves abductive reasoning
8.    Inferences of systematics hypotheses, i.e. taxa
         a. The 'species problem' and its solution
         b. Implications for bar coding
         c. Specific and phylogenetic hypotheses/taxa
9.    Some implications for "phylogenetic" methods
         a. The limits of phylogenetic hypotheses
         b. Relations between types of evidence in systematics
         c. Abductive reasoning and parsimony
         d. Abductive reasoning and likelihood
         e. Abductive reasoning and Bayesianism
10.    The Requirement of total evidence (RTE)
         a. Relation of RTE to inference
         b. Relation of RTE to systematics
         c. Implications for systematics
         d. The errors of cladogram comparisons and character mapping
11.    Homology & homogeny & homoplasy
         a. Richard Owen's use of homologue and homology
         b. E.R. Lankester's replacement terms, homogen, homogeny, and 
homoplasy
         c. Implications of abductive reasoning for the utility of these 
concepts
12.    Character coding
         a. Why character coding is necessary for systematics
         b. Accurately representing observation statements
         c. Character coding, why-questions, and the data matrix
13.    Sequence data and phylogenetic inference: implications of 
top-down causation
14.    The mechanics of hypothesis testing in biological systematics
         a. Traditional misconceptions about testing phylogenetic hypotheses
         b. Basics of testing explanatory hypotheses
         c. The uses of evidence, revisited
         d. What is actually required to test phylogenetic hypotheses
         e. The limits on acquiring causal understanding via 
phylogenetic hypotheses
         f.  The myths of support measures: bootstrap, jack-knife, 
Bremer, etc.
15.    Implications for nomenclature
16.    Defining biodiversity and conservation

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
J. Kirk Fitzhugh, Ph.D.
Curator of Polychaetes
Invertebrate Zoology Section
Research & Collections Branch
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
900 Exposition Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90007
Phone: 213-763-3233
FAX: 213-746-2999
e-mail: kfitzhug at nhm.org
http://www.nhm.org/site/research-collections/polychaetous-annelids
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~