SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE and THE FUTURE OF HENNIGIAN PHYLOGENETIC SYSTEMATICS

Pattern poses

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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.

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Pattern Cladistics and the ‘Realism–Antirealism Debate’ in the Philosophy of Biology

“…In my experience as a systematist, the label 'pattern cladist' still does function as a derogatory label. Mishler (1987), Felsenstein (2001) and Funk (2001) offer three additional (though not completely neutral), contextualized views on 'pattern cladistics'. 25 For an outstanding review of the semantic dimensions of 'evolution', see Robert Richards' book The Meaning of Evolution (especially Chaps.…”

Ronald Brady and the cladists

“…The problem, of course, is that the definitions stayed associated with the label “pattern cladistics” leading cladists to unwittingly take the position of philosophers such as Greene and Hull when accusing patterns cladists of being “anti‐evolutionary” and “theory‐neutral” (see Williams and Ebach for a history). For example, Carpenter (), in a tongue‐and‐cheek article published in Cladistics , presented a “Cladistics of Cladists.” The article was a response to an earlier piece by bryologist Brent Mishler, who was a “naive graduate student [and] teaching fellow for Professor John Beatty (of pattern cladistics fame, 1982) in a course called ‘The Darwinian Revolution’” (Mishler, , p.55). Mishler wondered if pattern cladistics existed at all: “Is there a split within cladistics at present?…”

“…I used to think so, when I thought in terms of ideological systems as phenetic clusters. But now I think that there is currently no split; perhaps the best evidence to offer is that we all attend meetings together” (Mishler, , p.59). Carpenter () was well aware of the split between pattern and phylogenetic cladistics and responded by constructing a data matrix based on characters resembling in‐house jokes within the Willi Hennig Society.…”