Neither single nor several classes (ie, infinite classes) can make up a category (ie, a finite class). But, there can be several categories of classes. Classes are namely real (ie, finite) only in the sense of being different. In the sense of being similar, they simply collapse into nothing. Categories is what make classes real.
This was expressed by Linné as: the properties do not make the genus, but the genus makes the properties.
Neither classes nor categories can thus be single, only objects can.
It also means that single objects can't form lineages, since lineages in a definitional sense are infinite classes, which thus can't be single, only several consecutive objects can.
A perhaps seemingly paradoxical consequence of this is that single lineages can't be real, since it would mean that infinite classes could make up categories, which they thus can't, by meaning that the lineage of all lineages, ie, everything over time, can't be real. This perhaps seemingly paradox is a consequence of that it conflates what it distinguishes, thus ending up with nothing. The consistent solution of the paradox is that reality belongs to the single consecutive objects in the lineage, not to the lineage itself. It is not the lineage, but the objects in the lineage that are real. The lineage do not make the objects, but the objects make the lineage.
This is the fact that cladistics turns up-side-down by "only acknowledging" lineages (and thus such paradoxes). It means that cladistics succeeds to achieve consistent, paradoxical contradiction in a single strike. This does not mean, however, that it also creates a single class that can make up a category, like the cladistic idea "a single true tree of life", but only that it enters the paradoxically contradictory belief in such a "thing".
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