Why didn’t anyone tell me that biological systematics is a playhouse for fools before I entered it?

Biological systematics has a fundamental problem. While all other sciences just use classification to discuss their subjects, biological systematics is instead expected to find the “true” classification, that is, what the single entities (ie, organisms) “really” ARE.

The first question is then: ARE organisms anything at all, really? If they are, how can we know when we have found out what they ”really are”? Will there not be just another question of what they “really are” at every conclusion of what they “really are” we arrive to? Is there any bottom in “really are”? This question did Bertrand Russell answer in 1901 with: there isn’t, because the answer is a paradox (later called Russell’s paradox). This answer was later also empirically supported by Einsteins discovery that time is relative to speed in space. These discoveries did thus reveal that the fundamental problem lacks a solution.

It left biological systematics with the question of how it shall handle this fact. Linné had already given the answer with his orthogonal system of classification, but neither the problem nor Linné’s solution of it was understood by many biological systematists. Instead, many biological systematists had (and have) a tendency to dismiss this fundamental problem, instead simply going on searching the “true” classification, The reasons for this tendency are many (eg, not understanding the problem or simply wanting to make an academic career) , but these biological systematists did anyway in the 1960-ies boldly “deny” the problem (and thus also Linné’s solution of it), instead claiming (asserting) that there indeed is a “true” classification to be found in the form of a single “true tree of life”. These biological systematists became known as ”cladists”.

Cladists’ claim (assertion) really screwed biological systematics up. It is thus false, but how can we demonstrate the already existing evidences that it is false to someone that denies the evidences? How can we falsify an erroneous claim (assertion) with facts if the person that claims (asserts) it “denies” these facts?

This turning of matters up-side-down instead left biological systematics with the question of how to handle cladists. The fundamental problem had thus diverged into two different tracks: how to handle the problem (which was thus already solved) and how to handle those that denies it (ie. cladists). Cladists had thus liberated biological systematics from the fetters of being impossible into being paradoxically contradictory, thereby turning biological systematics into an endless search for a void. This choice may appear stupid to many of us, but it does indeed have the advantage of paying off better than its opposite sensible choice.

I must thereby ask myself: why am I trying to clarify matters when there is so much more to be earned by confusing them? My answer is: isn’t there any money to be made by clarifying the problem?  Is not life a matter of understanding, but of avoiding understanding? The answer there questions is that confusion is profitable in biological systematics, but not in sciences. In sciences, it is the other way around, ie, that understanding is profitable. I thus just have to spend my time with sciences instead of with biological systematics. If I had been aware of this fact before I went to university, I would never have entered biological systematics. Why didn’t anyone tell me that biological systematics is just a playhouse for fools before I invested 40,000 $ in an education in it? And, how can a playhouse for fools be allowed in tax financed universities in Sweden? Isn’t there any supervision of these institutions?     

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