The (today cladistic) idea of a single "True Tree of Life" is contradictory between being a single entity or many entities, ie, between being one or many (independently of what).
This contradiction is, however, ambiguous in that it can be consistently folded backwards until ending in a single entitity, thus making the idea appear as a "natural" (and thereby axiomatically consistent) idea of the origin of many entities from a single entity (thus at the same time as it is contradictory between one or many).
Now, if this "folding backwards" indeed is consistent, and the idea thus is a consistent idea of the origin of many entities from a single entity, then the idea is obviously contradictory between being consistent or inconsistent.
Understanding of this contradiction (actually Russell's paradox) resides in that the idea is contradictory in terms of being one or many entities of the same kind, but consistent in terms of being of the same kind, because a class (ie, kind) is both infinite and finite per definition, and is thus contradictory between being inconsistent or consistent per definition. The idea is thus contradictory between being consistent or inconsistent simply because classes are contradictory between being inconsistent or consistent. The idea is thus a practical impossibility, ie, an illusion, that emerges when we believe that kinds (ie, classes) are real (ie, form consistent entities), because such "entities" are contradictory between being one or many, and are thus incompatible with (actually orthogonal to) real entities (eg, organisms).
The (today cladistic) idea of a single "True Tree of Life" is thus a practical impossibility, ie, an illusion, that emerges when we believe that kinds (ie, classes) are real (ie, form consistent entities), because classes are fundamentally contradictory between one and many (as Bertrand Russell also showed in 1901 with Russell's paradox).
Had we all been aware of human progress, cladistics should thus not have emerged.
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