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The Principles of Biological Classification: The Use and Abuse of Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

David L. Hull
David L. Hull*
Affiliation:
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Extract

In recent years two groups of taxonomists have attempted to influence the general goals and methods of biological classification. The first group, which emerged in the late 1950’s, has been called variously neo-Adansonian, numerical, computer and phenetic taxonomy. The founders of this school, Robert R. Sokal and P.H.A. Sneath, termed their unified approach to systematics “neo-Adansonian” because of the affinities which they saw between their views and those of the 18th century botanist, Michel Adanson (1727-1806). Today little mention is made of Adanson. His ideas turned out not to be as prescient as Sokal and Sneath had at first thought. Besides, he had served his purpose as a patron saint ([79], p. 23). Sokal and Sneath also termed their approach “numerical” because they believed that taxonomists should make greater use of available mathematical techniques. Not only should taxonomic characters be coded quantitatively but also estimates of affinity should be made on the basis of explicitly stated clustering procedures.

Type
Part IV. The Purposes of Biological Classification
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1978 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1978 , 1978 , pp. 130 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

The research for this paper was supported by NSF grant Soc 75 03535. I wish to thank Steve Farris, Norman Platnick and Michael Ruse for their comments.

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