Is there a single objective, evolutionary tree of life?

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 102, Issue 7, 2005, Pages 357-374

  Laporte, Joseph ^a  

^a HOPE COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33847150986     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/jphil2005102717     Document Type: Review

References (82)

1. Hennig, Phylogenetic Systematics (Urbana: Illinois UP, 1966)
2. Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology (Chicago: University Press, 1999), p. 196
3. I quote from Robert W. Scotland, "Cladistic Theory," in Peter L. Forey, Christopher J. Humphries, Ian J. Kitching, Robert W. Scotland, Darrell J. Siebert, and David M. Williams, eds., Cladistics: A Practical Course in Systematics (New York: Oxford, 1992), pp. 3-13, at p. 3
4. Ridley, "Can Classification Do Without Evolution?," in Ridley, ed., Evolution (New York: Oxford, 1997), pp. 196-206; this citation is from p. 202
5. That cladism "allows only one classification: the classification defined by the hierarchy of phylogenetic branching," as Ridley is always reminding his many readers, is widely accepted: Evolution and Classification: The Reformation of Cladism (New York: Longman, 1986), p. 46
6. See Griffiths, "Cladistic Classification and Functional Explanation," Philosophy of Science, LXI (1994): 206-27, at p. 207
7. David Hull, "The Role of Theories in Biological Systematics," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, XXXII (2001): 221-38, at p. 224
8. "The Limits of Cladism," Systematic Zoology, XXVIII (1979): 416-40, at pp. 437-38
9. Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford, 2002), pp. 111-12
10. "The Cladistic Solution to the Species Problem," Biology and Philosophy, IV (1989): 1-16
11. The Problems of Evolution (New York: Oxford, 1985)
12. Donn Eric Rosen, "Cladism or Gradism?: A Reply to Ernst Mayr," Systematic Zoology, XXIII (1974): 446-51, at pp. 447-48
13. David N. Stamos, The Species Problem: Biological Species, Ontology, and the Metaphysics of Biology (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003), p. 265
14. E.O. Wiley, Phylogenetics: The Theory and Practice of Phylogenetic Systematics (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1981), p. 268
15. Foreshadows of the problems that I raise may be found, in some measure or other, in L.A.S. Johnson, "Rainbow's End: The Quest for an Optimal Taxonomy," Systematic Zoology, XIX (1970): 203-39, at p. 231
16. Robert O'Hara, "Systematic Generalization, Historical Fate, and the Species Problem," Systematic Biology, XLII (1993): 231-16, at pp. 232-33
17. and Sterelny, "The Nature of Species," Philosophical Books, XXXV (1994): pp. 9-20 at p. 17
18. who appears since to have had a change of heart (cf. Griffiths and Sterelny, Sex and Death, pp. 194-97): in section v, I indicate that there is something importantly right in each position
19. Mayr, "The Biological Species Concept," in Quentin D. Wheeler and Rudolf Meier, eds., Species Concepts and Phylogenetic Theory (New York: Columbia, 2000), pp. 17-29, cited at p. 17
20. This is a typical statement of the biological species concept. It is repeated word for word in several places: Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Harvard, 1976), p. 518
21. Populations, Species, and Evolution: An Abridgment of Animal Species and Evolution (Cambridge: Harvard, 1970), p. 12
22. Principles of Systematic Zoology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 26
23. Still, the biological species concept has undergone change over Mayr's many active decades: see Peter Beurton, "Ernst Mayr through Time on the Biological Species Concept: A Conceptual Analysis," Theory in Biosciences, CXXI (2002): 81-98
24. and Mayr, "Comments by Ernst Mayr," Theory in Biosciences, CXXI (2002): 99-100
25. Cracraft, "Species Concepts and Speciation Analysis," in R.F. Johnston, ed., Current Ornithology (New York: Plenum, 1983), pp. 159-87, cited at p. 170
26. Cracraft, "Species Concepts in Systematics and Conservation Biology: An Ornithological Viewpoint," in M. Claridge, H. Dawah, and M. R. Wilson, eds., Species: The Units of Biodiversity (New York: Chapman and Hall, 1997), pp. 325-39, p. 331
27. Graham Martin, "Birds in Double Trouble," Nature, CCCLXXX (1996): 666-67
28. Martin, "Birds in Double Trouble," p. 667
29. For further discussion, see Joseph LaPorte, Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change (New York: Cambridge, 2004), chapter 3
30. This sort of budding from a parental species that survives without much change is probably common: most speciation events probably start with small, isolated founder populations: Mayr, "A Defense of the Biological Species Concept," in Wheeler and Meier, eds., pp. 161-66, p. 164
31. The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge: Harvard, 1982), p. 229
32. nd ed.), p. 225
33. Ridley, "The Cladistic Solution," pp. 3, 5-6, 8
34. Objection: the issue has been misconceived. The real issue is not whether Cracraft is wrong to name his narrower groups. One can apply names as one fancies. The real issue is whether Cracraft's use of 'species' breaks from traditional use. If there is a break from traditional use, then Cracraft errs in supposing that he is talking about species; he is talking about some other kind of group to which he has applied the name. Reply: traditional use does not settle in favor of any rival of the phylogenetic species concept. The tradition has long been shared by "lumpers" and "splitters." Both persuasions are reasonable. Over generations, workers of different persuasions have treated the same lineages differently: for examples, see Wiley and Richard L. Mayden, "The Evolutionary Species Concept," in Wheeler and Meier, eds., pp. 70-89, at p. 86
35. Jody Hey, Genes, Categories, and Species: The Evolutionary and Cognitive Causes of the Species Problem (New York: Oxford, 2001), pp. 19-20
36. The tradition has also long been characterized by different measures to delimit species, including patterns of resemblance, as Darwin indicates in a famous passage: It is really laughable to see what different ideas are prominent in various naturalists' minds, when they speak of "species"; in some, resemblance is everything and descent of little weight - in some, resemblance seems to go for nothing, and Creation the reigning idea - in some, sterility an unfailing test, with others it is not worth a farthing. It all comes, I believe, from trying to define the indefinable (The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Including an Autobiographical Chapter, Volume 2, F. Darwin, ed. (London: John Murray, 1887), p.88)
37. Even the tradition of cladism fails to settle upon a single species concept. Hennig dodges the issue: see section VI. Hennig's most stalwart followers fail to agree on a single concept: cf. D. J. Kornet, "Permanent Splits as Speciation Events: A Formal Reconstruction of the Internodal Species Concept," Journal of Theoretical Biology, CLXIV (1993): 407-35
38. Rudolf Meier and Rainer Willmann, "The Hennigian Species Concept," in Wheeler and Meier, eds., pp. 30-43
39. "A Defense of the Hennigian Species Concept," in Wheeler and Meier, eds., pp. 167-78
40. Ridley, "The Cladistic Solution."
41. Alan Templeton, "The Meaning of Species and Speciation: A Genetic Perspective," in Marc Ereshefsky, ed., The Units of Evolution (Cambridge: MIT, 1992), pp. 159-83, p. 174
42. L. Van Valen, "Ecological Species, Multispecies, and Oaks," in Ereshefsky, pp. 69-77, pp. 72-73
43. Werner Kunz, "When Is a Parasite Species a Species?," Trends in Parasitology, XVIII (2002): 121-24
44. Van Valen, "Ecological Species"
45. L. Andersson, "The Driving Force: Species Concepts and Ecology," Taxon, XXXIX (1990): 375-82
46. Jody Hey, Robin S. Waples, Michael L. Arnold, Roger K. Butlin, and Richard G. Harrison, "Understanding and Confronting Species Uncertainty in Biology and Conservation," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, XVIII (2003): 597-603, p. 599
47. Sybil Wolfram, Philosophical Logic: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 239
48. A limited amount of hybridization is common among recognized species of both plants and animals: for discussion of examples, see C. J. Hearn, "The Evolution of Citrus Species: Methods to Develop New Sweet Orange Cultivars," Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Florida State Horticultural Society, CVII (1994): 1-3, p. 2
49. Daniel Potter, Fangyou Gao, Scott Baggett, James R. McKenna, and Gale H. McGranahan, "Defining the Sources of Paradox: DNA Sequence Markers for North American Walnut (Juglans L.) Species and Hybrids," Scientia Horticulturae, XCIV (2002): 157-70
50. rd ed.), p. 448
51. The problem of drawing a line at some point has long been recognized: "the infertility of species when crossed graduates away so insensibly that the two most experienced observers who ever lived have come to diametrically opposite results when experimentising on the same forms," Darwin writes (Charles Darwin's Natural Selection: Being the Second Part of His Big Species Book Written From 1856 to 1858), R.C. Stauffer, ed. (New York: Cambridge, 1975), p. 165)
52. The same observation has been made more recently by Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics of the Evolutionary Process (New York: Columbia, 1970), p. 359
53. Hey, Genes, Categories, and Species, pp. 20-21
54. Johnson, "Rainbow's End," p. 231
55. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, p. 282
56. B. Mishler and M. Donoghue, "Species Concepts: A Case for Pluralism," Systematic Zoology, xxxi (1982): 491-503, p. 495
57. Templeton, "The Meaning of Species and Speciation," p. 165
58. Cf. Meier and Willmann, "A Defense." This suggestion raises the possibility that the term 'species' be given by stipulation a new use that would make tree construction a repeatable enterprise. Occasions of discord could be reduced in this way: even stipulating the biological species concept over the phylogenetic species concept is an improvement. But there is little value in going to drastic measures in this direction to describe a kind of group that, however quirky or biologically meaningless, allows for repeatable ordering. Nor would any algorithm generating an ordering of quirky groups show that there is a repeatable account of the hierarchy of species; at best, such an algorithm would show that there is a repeatable account of the hierarchy of some new kind of group deserving a new name. Observe that just as 'species' might be given an artificial, stipulated use that approximates to some extent ordinary use in order to allow for repeatable groupings, so might 'similarity': tellingly, cladists find this trick for achieving repeatability to be arbitrary and to preclude the kind of objectivity in ordering that cladism is supposed to enjoy (Ridley, "Can Classification Do Without Evolution?," p. 199)
59. LaPorte, Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change, chapter 2
60. Philip Kitcher, "Some Puzzles about Species," in Michael Ruse, ed., What the Philosophy of Biology Is: Essays Dedicated to David Hull (Boston: Kluwer, 1989), pp. 183-208, pp. 197-98
61. Ridley, Evolution, p. 358
62. I survey some other concepts in chapter 3 of Natural Kinds and Conceptual Change
63. Principles of Animal Taxonomy (New York: Columbia, 1961), p. 152
64. Homo neanderthalensis is typically thought to be around 400,000 years old and Homo sapiens around 200,000 years old. Homo floresiensis may be as young as 70,000 years, as preliminary dating for the species indicates, but it could also be much older, perhaps 800,000 years old: Rex Dalton, "Little Lady of Flores Forces Rethink of Human Evolution," Nature, CDXXXI (2004): 1029
65. see also Marta Mirazón Lahr and Robert Foley, " Palaeoanthropology: Human Evolution Writ Small," Nature, CDXXXI (2004): 1043-44, at p. 1043
66. If the earlier date is accurate, Homo floresiensis may still be younger than Homo neanderthalensis, whose roots may lie further back in Africa than the date of origin just mentioned: Chris Stringer, "Human Evolution: Out of Ethiopia," Nature, CDXXIII (2003): 692-95, p. 693
67. Further information might, of course, reveal that the order in which the three species in question emerged is not as I have assumed. But even if my example becomes outdated for this reason, minor alterations could probably render it historically accurate: some other lineage could be substituted in place of Homo floresiensis to the same effect. As one of the team leaders responsible for finding Homo floresiensis indicates, Homo floresiensis was probably one of many species to arise during human history from populations isolated on islands: "I think we're going to have a plethora of new human species showing up," Michael Morwood says (quoted in Michael Lemonick, "Hobbits of the South Pacific," Time (November 8, 2004): 50-52, at p. 52)
68. the same claim is made by P. Brown, T. Sutikna, M. J. Morwood, R. P. Soejono, Jatmiko, E. Wayhu Saptomo, Rokus Awe Due, "A New Small-Bodied Hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia," Nature, CDXXXI (2004): 1055-61, at p. 1061
69. Barbara King, Biological Anthropology: An Evolutionary Perspective, Part I (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Co., 2002), pp. 164, 170
70. rd ed.), p. 483
71. King, Biological Anthropology, Part I, p. 159
72. King, Biological Anthropology: An Evolutionary Perspective, Part II (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Co., 2002), p. 17
73. Stringer, "The Evolution of Modern Humans: Where Are We Now?," General Anthropology, VII (2001): 1-5, at p. 3
74. Kornet, "Permanent Splits"
75. Meier and Sillman, "The Hennigian Species Concept"; "A Defense," p. 167
76. Hennig, Phylogenetic Systematics, p. 66
77. See Strickberger, Evolution, p. 483
78. Lahr and Foley, "Paleoanthropology"
79. Stringer, "Human Evolution."
80. "A Defense," p. 164
81. Meier and Willmann acknowledge this, citing species of freshwater gastropods: " A Critique from the Hennigian Species Concept Perspective," in Wheeler and Meier, eds., pp. 101-18, p. 105
82. see also Wiley and Mayden, "A Critique from the Evolutionary Species Concept Perspective," in Wheeler and Meier, eds., pp. 146-58, at p. 157