Re: Martin 2004 critique (somewhat lengthy)

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<You are using "cladistics" as the overarching expression for both cladistics
and phenetics. This is incorrect.>

  Cladistics has nothing to do with phylogeny, and it seems that the continuing
issue of confusion that it does have something to do with phylogeny implicitly
may be why so many are adverse to using it as a tool. Cladistics, like hand
clading, is simply a tool used to find a topology, either via parsimony,
likelihood, or other algorithms. As I noted before, application of the saem
software can be used to create a data matrix of just about anything and find
best-fit matches. This results in a graphical output of closest-match versus
farthest-match in the same data set based on the input. Phylogenetic inferrence
comes from the separate hypothesis that the input be taxa versus characters and
that the shared characters represent acquisitions in evolution. Only then, and
through this genetic lens, does the output become phylogenetic. At this point,
it becomes easy to interpret the method of cladistics (branching arrangements
from common reference poits of shared versus unshared data, in other words, as
in reference to the term's etymology) as separate from phylogeny or phenetics.
Using cladistics to refer to phylogeny implicitly appears to be in error, as I
understand this.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

  Little steps are often the hardest to take.  We are too used to making leaps 
in the face of adversity, that a simple skip is so hard to do.  We should all 
learn to walk soft, walk small, see the world around us rather than zoom by it.

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)

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