tisdag 2 juli 2013

Cladistics is not just ignorant, but also vain

Cladistics partitions states (of species) into "characters" and "character states". The question on this partition is what the difference is between "character" states and "character state" states? The fact that there isn't any difference between them is actually the reason why cladistics ends in Russell's paradox. The state of all states by cladistics presumedly possessed by the ultimate ancestor is namely the paradox itself, since it is the "character state" and the "character" of which it is the "character state" at the same time . This state is thus both identical to itself and different from itself at the same time.

The problem with cladistics is that it discusses combinations of states as if they are entities INSTEAD of entities (ie, strict typology). Such approach does, as Bertrand Russell demonstrated, end in paradox. Evolution is not a dichotomous splitting of types, but of random change directed by natural selection. It can be described with a dichotomously branching graph, but there are several just as true such descriptions per definition. A search for a single true such description, ie, cladistics, is thus not only ignorant, but also vain.

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