Willi Hennig’s approach “cladistics” is a fundamental spin

Willi Hennig (“the father of cladics”) obviously lacked knowledge about the historical development of science in general, and Bertrand Russell’s demonstration that classification is contradictory (ie, Russell’s paradox) in particular. Otherwise, he should at least have understood that he conflated process with pattern, if not that his class clade actually is the subjective aspect of Russell’s paradox (ie, believing that the paradox is real), which is slightly more difficult to understand.

Hennig must thus have been totally ignorant about that the problem for biological systematics in particular (and for science in general) is that classification is contradictory (ie, Russell’s paradox), and thus also that the success of the Linnean systematics is due to that it arranges classes into an orthogonal hierarchy (classifying entities into categories of classes), and thereby bridges this problem consistently by keeping infinite class and finite class apart.

When Hennig distinguished the class clade, he must thus have thought that he actually found the “natural class” of “natural groups”, as some kind of religious enlightment, in his apparently total lack of scientific and philosophical knowledge and understanding, when all he actually did was just to conflate entity with class.

The problem with Hennig’s fundamental conflation of entity and class is, however, not his problem, but ours. It is not he, but we, that have to distinguish them again (and thus show that the class clade is contradictory) to avoid (or get out of) the paradoxical contradiction it leads into. We have to clarify that the problem is not “which the natural groups are”, but that the idea of “natural groups” is fundamentally contradictory (as shown by Russell’s paradox). It also means that the question we ought to put in this issue is: why is subjectivity contradictory? This question has an objective answer in the context of relativity, but this is, as we often say, another story.

In this story, I just point at Hennig’s apparently total ignorance about the development of science and philosophy (ie, the history of science and philosophy). This ignorance thus allowed him to believe that he can find “the natural groups” (ie, The Tree of Life) by simply turning his classification of biodiversity orthogonally up-side-down. Just as if the contradiction of classification (ie, Russell’s paradox) can be turned into “natural groups” by turning it up-side-down. It is indeed a spin, a fundamental spin.

Another contribution to understanding of conceptualization http://menvall.wordpress.com/