tisdag 20 december 2011

Realism vs nominalism (or cladistics vs Linnean systematics)

Classification can only be contradictory or ambiguous: internally contradictory or ambiguous with regard to reality. It is internally contradictory when applied on a single level (like cladistics), and ambiguous with regard to reality when applied on two levels (then necessarily orthogonal, like Linnean systematics). Classification thus can't reach consistent unambiguity, for the simple reason it IS consistently ambiguous, that is, splits every class into two classes.

Now, there are fundamentally two opposite approaches to conceptualization of reality: realism (i.e., subjectivity) assuming as an axiom that classes are real (and thus that objects are abstract), and nominalism (i.e., objectivity) assuming as an axiom that objects are real (and thus that classes are abstract). Since realism assumes that classes are real, it tends towards classification on a single level, that is, towards internal contradiction, whereas since nominalism instead assumes that objects are real, it instead tends towards classification on two levels, that is, towards ambiguity with regard to reality.

In summary: there are fundamentally two opposite approaches to conceptualization: realism and nominalism, whereof realism is internally contradictory and nominalism is ambiguous with regard to reality. Between them resides the idea of a consistent and unambiguous classification (e.g., the True Tree of Life), thus totally impossible to reach.

The idea of a consistent and unambiguous classification is thus a running point, which realism tries to catch and nominalism tries to encircle. Neither of them will, of course, succeed to catch the impossible idea, but whereas nominalism (i.e., objectivity) ought to close up on it, realism instead drifts without a rudder. The realistic (cladistic) idea that parsimony might do the trick is a return alley, since it does not offer any criteria to distinguish between just as parsimonious hypotheses, which, thus, will always remain. A worse problem with realism is, however, that it is both consistently inconsistent and at odds with facts.

The sooner we get rid of realism in the form of cladism in biological systematics the better thus for biological systematics. How can anyone believe that biological systematics can defend consistent inconsistency and incongruence with facts in the long run?
     

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