Re: More on the genus problem

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

>  This is just another problem with the belief that all around can fit
>  into species according to the biological species concepts, which is
>  based on sex and gene pools.

To be fair, Ernst Mayr said out loud that asexual organisms "do not form 
species".

That's right: he told the ICZN, the ICBN, and the ICNB* to go cheney 
themselves. They did, however, not listen...

* ...which may not even have existed yet... it only dates to 1980...

>  Who can ascertain two duckbilled dinosaurs with strikingly different
>  head ornament cannot bring fertile offspring? Will expose myself to
>  ridicule with a further exaggeration, but the same applies with a
>  ceratopsian and a duckbill.

The "Biological Species Concept"s cannot be applied to the dead. End of 
discussion. :-|

>  The principal reason for the use of cladistic classification

I wouldn't call cladistics "classification". It's just the method of the 
science of phylogenetics, the way to reconstruct phylogenetic trees. 
It's not concerned with the pseudoproblem of "translating the tree into 
a classification" (...even though Hennig, for no good reason, considered 
that the goal of phylogenetics).

>  As Gould said, if something ends up being a mess, it is possible that
>  we are asking wrong questions and so we may better leave the matter
>  and think on it other way.

Yupyup <vehement nodding>.