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Re: More on the genus problem



2009/9/20 David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>:
> 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 far as I know, a "transformed" cladist would think it different.
Although the phylogenetic tree may be appreached with cladistic
methodology, we have no certainty that parsimony prevailed in
evolution. As far as I understood, we use parsimony because the
resulting scheme have maximal information content. At least that is
what I think from reading some Farris' stuff some years ago, I will
search. However, Farris accepted the utility of cladistics to
reconstruct phylogenetic kinship, and didn't reach some extremes some
transformed cladists did.

By now, I think the paper is:
Farris, J. S. 1979. The information content of the phylogenetic
system. Systematic Zoology, 28 (4): 483-519.