The irony of cladistics

Those biological systematists that are called cladists are interested in history, especially the history of life. They can, however, increase their understanding of this their interest considerably on a metalevel by looking at their own personal histories in their chase for the true history of life, contemplating whether this their chase has a higher probability of reaching an end than history itself has.

This meta-perspective reveals that cladistics makes history rather than investigate it. It reveals cladistics as the autoplaying, never-ending piano it actually is. An end for it is just as impossible as an end for history itself is. Cladistics is actually a marriage with the endless process. It is a never-ending merry-go-round.

(But, I guess cladistics merely institutionalizes the chase for the “true” classification that many biological systematists have been occupied with since the dawn of Man. Like Don Quijote, it chases a delusion. Linnean systematics, and thus also evolutionary taxonomy, avoids this endlessness by classifying organisms into categories).

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