Pattern poses

Abstract

Sir,Hull (1979, 1988) and his ally Beatty (1982) suggested that a non-evolutionary school of taxonomists -often (though misleadingly) called "pattern cladists"-had split off from legitimate cladists. At the time, some of the latter (Farris, 1985;Carpenter, 1987;Mishler, 1987) doubted that suggestion, but it will be shown here that those doubts were based on what has turned out to be incomplete or inaccurate information, while it is obvious from more recent literature (summarized by Farris, 2012b) that some former cladists have indeed reverted to a kind of pre-evolutionary taxonomy. That development, however, does not vindicate Hull's and Beatty's arguments, for it will also be shown that they were using the pattern cladistics question to promote other claims. To see all this, first consider Beatty's (1982, p. 25) position:Disillusions concerning evolutionary theorizing have forced a split among cladists. The disillusioned group of "pattern" cladists seeks an evolutionarily neutral brand of cladistics. But pattern cladistics is not, after all, evolutionarily neutral. Rather, it is at odds with evolutionary theorizing.

Processed science

“… The same applies to the other inventions discussed here and earlier (Farris, , , 2014a). Apparently, I was given a “complete” draft that pre‐dated those embellishments.…”

“…Amusingly, Hull () later decided that species with defining characters could not evolve (cf. Farris, , 2014a).…”

“… Hull never mentioned this passage, although he discussed my 1985 paper for other purposes, including trying to bolster his own ideas by thoroughly misrepresenting my comments on pattern cladistics (see Farris, 2014a). …”

Assessing similarity: on homology, characters and the need for a semantic approach to non‐evolutionary comparative homology

“…Homology is considered to be one of the most important concepts in biology and the problem of homology is a perennially controversial issue at the foundation of systematic biology (e.g. Hennig, ; Remane, ; Jardine and Jardine, ; de Beer, ; Bock, ; Riedl, ; Patterson, ; Rieppel, ; Hall, , ; Panchen, ; Bock and Cardew, ; Brigandt and Griffiths, ; Wagner, , ; Assis and Rieppel, ; Brower and De Pinna, ; Nixon and Carpenter, ,b,c, ; Williams and Ebach, ; Assis, , ; Ebach et al., ; Farris, ,b, ,b,c,d; Minelli and Fusco, ; Platnick, ; Brower and de Pinna, ; Ereshefsky, ). Homology is essentially a comparative concept, whose relationship to systematics always has been very close.…”

Histories on thin IISE

“…I had not yet seen Patterson's () paper. Moreover, as I have recently reported (Farris, ), I had been misled concerning the actual views of some ostensible cladists.…”