[Taxacom] Why character-tracking doesn't happen?

[Curtis Clark]

On 2008-09-12 09:23, Thomas G. Lammers wrote:
> No.  I do not accept the "reality" of species.  They are an aggregation of 
> convenience.  Even populations can be of dubious reality.  The only reality 
> is the individual.

Okay, that explains a lot. I suppose that makes the study of speciation 
equivalent to the study of leprechauns.

But why stop with the individual in your reductionism? The only reality 
is the quark...for now.

> Guess you've not worked with angiosperms, huh?

I have; I actually studied hybrid speciation, and thought that I could 
distinguish it from lineage-splitting based on character distributions. 
But then I guess all that is leprechauns.

> I don't think there is a better methodology than cladistics for answer 
> relationship questions above the level of species. 

If species aren't real, those questions are theological, not scientific.


-- 
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Director, I&IT Web Development                   +1 909 979 6371
University Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona