Comments on: Taxonomy’s rightful place in history

By: Mats Envall

Mats Envall — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:15:54 +0000

Excuse me, Roberto, but I was a little confused by your reasoning here and your comment on John Wilkins’ blog. On this posting you appear to acknowledge (Polly’s argument for) taxonomy’s (i.e., classification’s) importance and priority to process explanations, whereas you on John Wilkins’ blog appear to prefer induction to falsification as a scientific method, although induction views (as Mill clearly states it) classification as “subsidiary to induction”. These two preferences appear incompatible, since “prior” is clearly distinguished from “subsidiary”. Or, do you see any overlap between them in or over time?

(BTW, John does in his posting about Mill discuss the difference between what in multivariate statistics is called class respectively segment, and otherwise often is called infinite respectively finite classes. Taxa are clearly segments, that’s actually the problem that makes paraphyletic groups necessary: there’s no single pass between two points in a multidimensional space that is shorter than all other passes, i.e., no single “most parsimonious” pass).

By: Roberto Keller

Roberto Keller — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:04:52 +0000

Polly.- Your comments and clarifications are most welcome. Thank you for stopping by! P.S. I was indeed excited when I learnt that Owen's Limbs was recently reprinted.

By: Polly Winsor

Polly Winsor — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:47:29 +0000

Actually, I basically agree with Eldgridge that Darwin’s intensive studies of barnacles were not relevant to the development of his theory, because almost all the elements of the theory were present before he undertook that work, as the 1842 and 44 sketches show. This is broad-brush history, of course, and we do know that his “principle of divergence” came in the 50s, and was something he was very pleased about (the idea that ecological pressures select for greater difference and so encourage the branches to veer apart). Still, the point of my paper was that branching evolution, which he became convinced of in 1837, was a response to naturalists’ perception that the hierarchical format codified by Linnaeus mostly expressed nature’s own order. (Certainly not the format alone, but the weird parallels to it in biogeography, paleontology, and embryology!)
No question but that the barnacle work vastly encouraged Darwin, because their morphology, embryology, and variability confirmed what his theory had supposed, but if his theory had an essence (!!!), it was in place by 1842.
Thanks for noticing my paper. (Incidentally, my full name is Mary Pickard Winsor, but I happily go by my nickname, Polly (a traditional variant of “Molly”).

By: Roberto Keller

Roberto Keller — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:45:58 +0000

I remember when Fortey’s book came out, but had forgot about it. I’m definitely getting myself a copy now after your recommendation.

By: Laelaps

Laelaps — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:47:07 +0000

“oh, by the way, Darwin spend some time on the taxonomy of barnacles, but this didn’t have any relevance to the development of his theory”

Yikes. It’s not like Darwin spent years on barnacles, studying their minute variations. Surely that didn’t matter at all to the development of his theory.

Thank you for writing this post. Have you read Fortey’s “Dry Storeroom No.1″? I didn’t particularly care for it, but he too makes the case that taxonomy is vitally important to other areas of biological/evolutionary science.