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Aside from that, the article above seems fine, except perhaps for a negative image cast towards the subject. But whether that's deserved or not I can't say; I am not a biologist, so have no idea about the objections you present. As stated, most trees I've seen come out relatively close to earlier ones - and when they don't there are darn good reasons - and most recent sources on evolution I've seen are fairly pro-cladistics. But I really don't know that much. |
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Ah, one more thing I noticed. Cladistics is not a classification system, as stated on [Linnaean Taxonomy/Talk]?. It's a methodology for elucidating evolutionary relationships. Taxonomy ties in because cladists intend it to reflect the phylogeny of organisms. However this intention is shared by pretty much the majority of biologists. If you look at some of the more recent Linnaean schemes for, say, protists and flowers, you'd find everything up in the air for precisely these reasons. So objections to the practice on these grounds have kind of been superceded. |
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Ah, one more thing I noticed. Cladistics is not a classification system, as stated on [Linnaean Taxonomy/Talk]?. It's a methodology for elucidating evolutionary relationships. Taxonomy has, for a long time, intended to reflect these (which also, btw, makes the point about continually changing classifications moot - it's a problem we already have), although cladistics people tend to make an insane amount of subclasses, infraclasses, subinfraclasses and so forth as they go through. |
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On these grounds I think I'm going to take a stab at rewriting the article. Please don't be insulted by this! I'll try and leave all your points except the above, but move them to a criticisms paragraph down at the bottom, since that seems to be the standard way of presenting a neutral point of view. Personally I think cladistics is neat, at least when it works, but takes forever to get used to. :) |
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