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Total Evidence Or Taxonomic Congruence: Cladistics Or Consensus Classification
Author(s) -
Kluge Arnold G.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
cladistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.323
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1096-0031
pISSN - 0748-3007
DOI - 10.1111/j.1096-0031.1998.tb00328.x
Subject(s) - congruence (geometry) , cladistics , independence (probability theory) , phylogenetic tree , taxon , taxonomy (biology) , biology , mathematics , evolutionary biology , zoology , statistics , ecology , genetics , geometry , gene
Miyamoto and Fitch's (1995, Syst. Biol. 44: 64–76) verificationist arguments for taxonomic congruence are evaluated and found to be unconvincing. In particular, there is no logical connection between the truth of phylogenetic hypotheses and the independence of the sets of characters analysed for their consensus. Further, the character set partitions emphasized by Miyamoto and Fitch must be considered arbitrary, because they are based on untestable process assumptions.