On biological systematics - its eternal rift between subjectivity and objectivity

Biological systematics is traditionally a battle between realists (i.e., subjectivists) and nominalists (i.e., objectivists), the former assuming as an axiom that classes are real, whereas the latter assuming as an axiom that objects are real, undulating back and forth between these entrances to reasoning. Realists created the mess in biological systematics before Linné, and Linné as a nominalist straightened out the mess. However, recently (around the 1950-ies), realists had gained new strength reappearing on the scene by the German entomologist Willi Hennig introducing a new kind of realist approach, called cladistics, which is best described as "consistent subjectivity".

Hennig's idea is basically that a consistent dichotomous confusion of classes will ultimately (i.e., by optimization of the number of included properties) lead to a single consistent classification, which is "True" with regard to the origin of classes (called "The Tree of Life"). The idea does thus not only rest on the axiom that classes are real, but also on the axiom that classes have originated in a dichotomous fashion, that is, opposite to the consistent confusion of them by which their True origin is found.

Much can be said about this idea. The first is that it is able to rotate around any classification, given that it finds the "True" origin of classes by confusion of any particular classification. This method is indeed paranoic, but not necessarily inconsistent, since its consistency is ultimately decided by whether there are several different possible classifications of the True origin of classes to be found or not, and thus ultimately of whether classes are real or not. If classes are real, and if they have originated according to the model, then this paranoic reconstruction of their origin is consistent, because it actually reconstructs their origin. The question whether this paranoic method is rational or not is thus transferred to whether classes are real or not.

This question, i.e., whether classes are real or not, can be answered only if it can be tested empirically. If it can't, then the two entrances to reasoning (i.e., subjectivity and objectivity) are indecisive, in which case cladistics is ultimately correct by the scientific parsimony criterion. The problem is thus to find facts that can decide between the two (orthogonal, i.e., diametrically opposed) approaches empirically. This search has only a single finding, namely the only fact that distinguishes reality from abstraction, that is, that time is relative to space. This fact namely falsifies subjectivity by that subjectivity equalizes space with time, thereby leaving no possibility for time to be relative to space, whereas objectivity leaves the relation between time and space open. This fact thus falsifies subjectivity in favor for objectivity. It thus reveals that subjectivity is inconsistent, and thereby that objectivity is consistent, and thus that cladistics is consistently inconsistent. This fact is thus, no matter how far-fetched it may appear, the decisive fact for the choice between subjectivity and objectivity, It actually falsifies subjectivity in a specific sense, and cladistics in a generic sense, by denying subjectivity's axiom that classes are real. It thus answers the question whether classes are real or not with a NO. Classes are not real.

Subjectivists (i.e., cladists) are thus merely a pain in the ass for biological systematics. Their approach is a paranoic, and this paranoia is falsified by empirical facts. Subjectivity can actually not find neither a specific nor a generic classification that is consistent and unambiguous, because consistent can't be consistently combined with unambiguous, no matter how much we wish it could have.