wrote:

> In article ,
> John Wilkins  wrote:
> >Robert  wrote:
> >
> >[On Phylocode]
> >> Questions: What is the current stance of the scientific
community on this
> >> proposal? Does anyone know of any official or unofficial
statements on this
> >> project from professional socities and/or journals?
> >
> >Most systematists I have spoken to on this reject it, including ardent
> >cladists, on the grounds that the current ad hoc classification scheme
> >stores and retrieves information about the organisms that a straight
> >cladistic one doesn't (but that cladistic classification is a natural
> >one, rather than one of convenience). The boosters for it include the
> >originators and one philosopher (Ereshevsky) - nobody else seems all
> >that keen.
> >
> >An impressionistic viewpoint only, though. Time will tell. Try the
> >journals Cladistics or Systematic Biology for discussion.
> 
> I think the situation is different.  Most biologists would these days
> accept a "straight cladistic" classification rather than the
traditional
> one, so that they would not countenance groups like Reptilia (bye-bye,
> reptiles).
> 
> But the Phylocode is controversial, not because it is strictly cladistic
> but as a way of expressing this.  Cladists of the Willi Hennig Society
> persuasion absolutely *hate* the Phylocode and the pages of Cladistics are
> filled with papers denouncing it.  Many other people who would call
> themselves phylogenetic systematists are adopting a wait-and-see attitude.
> 
> **tiresome advocacy on** You might think that one could quickly judge the
> support for the Phylocode by looking at what percentage of classifications
> in the literature use it, but this is harder than you might think -- as
> not that many classifications are being published.  These days not that
> many phylogenetic systematists make classifications.  They infer
> phylogenies, and base interesting biological conclusions on them, without
> the intermediate step of reducing them to classifications.  How one does
> the classification matters less and less to drawing conclusions from
> phylogenies.  The whole subject of classification (at least, above the
> species level) is widely hailed as Central To Systematics, praised in
> presidential addresses and meeting banquet speeches, taught as basic in
> courses, held out to philosophers and historians as The Main Issue, but
> then increasingly ignored in practice.` **tiresome advocacy off**

Of course, as the leading advocate of the It Doesn't Matter Very Much
School of systematics, you *would* say that :-)

I think there are two distinct notions of classification in play - one,
which is a very English thing (at least most of those who take this
line, like Maynard Smith, are English) is that classification is a
matter of communication, as John Locke (another Englishman) noted a
short while back. The other is that groups in classifications must be
natural groups. The rest of the debate is over which of these rules
systematics, and what counts as a "natural" group (the options being
clouds, clades, grades or classes). But since I'm merely a member of the
nonparticipant audience, my views matter not at all.
-- 
John Wilkins - wilkins.id.au
[I]magine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, "...interesting
hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? ...
must have been made to have me in it." Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt
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