måndag 26 september 2011

Unambiguous "natural groups" is an impossibility

Biological systematists have been searching for unambiguous so-called "natural groups" since the dawn of Man. Today, scientific discoveries have, however, paved the way for an understanding that unambiguous (i.e., neither ambiguous nor contradictory) such "natural groups" is a both theoretical and practical impossibility.

The fundamental problem is that a logical discussion about finite classes, that is, set theory, ends in contradiction (i.e., Russell's paradox) in the objective perspective, because it means that the opposite, that is, the subjective perspective, also ends in contradiction (concerning which class a particular object belongs to). Russell's paradox simply reveals that the opposite to the concept object, that is, the concept finite class is fundamentally contradictory, a contradiction that can be changed into an ambiguity if we classify classes in categories, but which can never be turned into an unambiguity. A fusion (i.e., equalization) of the concept classification with the concept class is simply contradictory, but the concepts can be consistently, although ambiguously, kept apart using the concept category.

The discovery of Russell's paradox thus revealed that the ancient idea of unambiguous so-called "natural groups" is a both theoretical and practical impossibility. The idea is actually just as impossible as objects are possible (i.e., given). Instead, the closest we can come (i.e., the best we can get) is ambiguous "natural groups" (like in the orthogonal Linnean system of classification). Such "natural groups" can't be unambiguous, but are at least not contradictory.

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