[Taxacom] A Cladist is a systematist who seeks a natural classification

Sat Apr 7 05:57:05 CDT 2018

Since I assume that a systematist is someone who seeks to
understand natural relationships between groups of
organisms, and a classification is by definition man-made
(and just about any classification is a "natural classification"
in the eye of its creator; only rarely will someone draw up an
"artificial clasification"), this a "A cladist is a systematist who
seeks to discover natural classifications" reads like "A cladist
is someone who misunderstands systematists and who refuses
to put in the work required to draw up a usable classification".

Paul

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Grehan" <calabar.john at gmail.com>
To: "taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Saturday, April 7, 2018 7:10 AM
Subject: [Taxacom] A Cladist is a systematist who seeks a
naturalclassification

> Since there are at various times some strong opinions on cladistics and on
> natural classification I have pasted below the text of a recent article
> that might be of interest to some (some typos may have crept in during the
> copy/paste).
>
> Biol Philos (2018) 33:10
> https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-018-9621-7
>
> David M. Williams & Malte C. Ebach
>
> A Cladist is a systematist who seeks a natural classifcation: some
> comments
> on Quinn (2017)
>
> Abstract. In response to Quinn (Biol Philos, 2017.
> https://doi.org/10.1007/s1053
> 9-017-9577-z) we identify cladistics to be about natural classifications
> and their
> discovery and thereby propose to add an eighth cladistic defnition to
> Quinn’s list,
> namely the systematist who seeks to discover natural classifications,
> regardless of their affiliation, theoretical or methodological
> justifications.
>
> Derived from various permutations of phylogeny, biology, philosophy,
> methodology, sociology, loyalty etc., Aleta Quinn recently proposed “seven
> specific definitions that capture distinct contemporary uses” of
> cladistics
> (Quinn 2017, p. 1). Our own efforts, based on the same criteria, yielded a
> further seven, which we do not intend to bore our readers with here. We
> are
> sure more could be found and more people could be found who
> subscribe/correspond to them. Suffice to say, one might find definitions
> for anything—and in any case, Quinn was clear about her motives:“I do not
> intend to classify individuals, ideas, or research programs. Rather, I
> clarify distinct things that speakers mean by the term ‘cladist’” (Quinn
> 2017, p. 1). Depending on one’s outlook—philosopher, historian, biologist,
> even sociologist (Hull 1988)—the definitions might help progress their
> subject. As biologists, we found much to think about but rather than
> dissecting the minutiae, we seek to clarify by attempting to simplify.
> We need first to dispense with one misconception. Quinn draws upon a
> commonly preconceived notion, namely that systematics requires evolution
> as
> a prior condition:1
>
> “What that theoretical foundation may have been [in reference to de
> Candolle’s
> view on characters] is not relevant to my points about contemporary
> systematics,
> whose conceptual framework presupposes the concept of evolution” (Quinn
> 2017, footnote 11).
>
> Consider the concept of a cladogram, which everyone might agree is a
> branching diagram commonly included as part of the results of a cladistic
> analysis. One might derive from this diagram which taxon is more closely
> related to itself than to any other. One might explain this relationship
> by
> common descent. The cladogram, however, need not be constructed with any
> evolutionary assumptions in mind; rather, the evolutionary assumptions
> serve to explain why one taxon is more closely related to itself than any
> other.
>
> The search for a natural classifcation was established prior to the
> adoption of
> any theory of evolution. In fact Augustin P. de Candolle’s had a great
> deal
> to say
> on the matter, especially the differences between natural and artificial
> classifications (Candolle 1913). But de Candolle was working some time
> ago,
> so what, if anything, might be his relevance today? Methods of systematics
> change as time passes. But all methods fnd cladograms, in the sense that
> the results yield sets of relationships, either as a branching diagram or
> as a written classification. Regardless of method, which of these
> relationships might be considered to reflect something that actually
> exists, rather than a product (an artefact) of the method? How can any
> method achieve that without knowing the answer beforehand? Obviously it
> can’t. One might play around with simulation studies to judge the
> performance of any suite of methods, or one might delve into philosophy to
> create justification, but in the court of last resort all that remains are
> sets of cladograms that either agree or disagree to a greater or lesser
> extent in terms of common relationships found. That is, they agree in the
> cladistic parameter, the relationships specified—that the signal to noise
> ratio is working in our favour, as is evident from classifications of the
> past. Here we might argue that natural classification is the result
> derived
> from several cladograms, regardless as to how they were arrived at;
> artificial classifications are derived from a specific method, be that
> Wagner parsimony, UPGMA, maximum likelihood and so on, or from a specific
> source  of data (DNA, ultrastructure, etc.), and so on. Why are these
> artificial? Because a method, any method, assumes the results that are
> required (the shortest tree; or the most similar taxa grouped together; or
> the most similar taxa grouped together via a weighted model of character
> change, etc.); for a data source, they assume those data are privileged
> over other data (DNA must be the source of ‘true’ relationships, etc.).
> Cladistics, in its most general sense, does not associate with any one
> method, or any one data source. It applies to sets of relationships—it is
> the set of relationships. This is effectively what de Candolle argued for,
> and has been the basis of systematics for decades, if not centuries:
>
> “For the last 50  years and more—even now continuing into the realm of
> nomenclature—in the name of the modern and the new, Visionaries aim, as
> it were, to confine the past to a dustbin of history, and to bolt and lock
> the
> lid upon it. As if without it, we be in some way better, even born again
> more
> whole-some; as if Carl Linnaeus really were among the last of the
> Ancients,
> and not, rightly, the first of the moderns, and so related to us—of a
> group
> inclusive of us” (Annual Review of the Linnean Society, 2001).
>
> These words, not readily accessible, were spoken by Gareth Nelson after
> receiving the Linnean Gold Medal and re-cast above as part of the 2001
> Annual Review of the Linnean Society, London. Linnaeus as the first of the
> moderns? Among other matters, Linnaeus spoke of the differences between
> artificial and natural classification, a subject taken up and developed by
> de Candolle (1913). One might cast that debate in very simple terms:
> artificial classifications are found by imposition, natural classification
> is discovered. Imposition implies some method or motivation to erect a
> particular classification, such as a field guide or handbook for
> identifying specimens—today it is more likely those would be websites, or
> online interactive guides. There is nothing wrong with artificial
> classifications. We both use them all the time, almost every day (
> https://www.trilobites.info/;
> http://naturalhistory.museumwales.ac.uk/diatoms/). But whatever merits
> they
> have, and there are many, they
> are created by acts of imposition. We ask our readers, then, if they would
> consider analysis of some data with one or another statistical program, or
> with one or another parsimony program, or with one or another phenetic
> program, whether this is an act of imposition or an act of discovery? We
> see it as an act of imposition. How could it be otherwise? Cladistics,
> then, is about discovery, about finding repeating patterns,finding the
> same
> relationships, finding relationships that are not method dependent,
> finding
> relationships that are reflections of the world as it is:
>
> “What, then, of cladistics in relation to the history of systematics? If
> cladistics
> is merely a restatement of the principles of natural classifcation, why
> has
> cladistics been the subject of argument? I suspect that the argument is
> largely
> misplaced, and that the misplacement stems, as de Candolle suggests, from
> confounding the goals of artifcial and natural systems” (Nelson 1979, p.
> 20).
>
>
> For us, cladistics is about natural classifcations and their discovery, an
> activity
> that occurs with or without “knowledge of process”. Look in museums,
> herbaria,
> universities and other institutions that still hire systematists and you
> will see:
>
> Cladist (viii): A cladist is a systematist who seeks to discover natural
> classifications.
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