Framing systematics as a field consistent with scientific inquiry entails that inferences of
phylogenetic hypotheses have the goal of producing accounts of past causal events that …

Three competing 'methods' have been endorsed for inferring phylogenetic hypotheses:
parsimony, likelihood, and Bayesianism. The latter two have been claimed superior because …

The formal structure of the inference of a phylogenetic hypothesis is analyzed in the context
of the different classes of reasoning applied in all fields of science. Rather than making the …

The revolution in comparative biology that occurred over the past 15 years stemmed from
two related developments. In the early 1980's, a number of workers argued that …

I respond to the bad lot argument in the context of biological systematics. The response
relies on the historical nature of biological systematics and on the availability of pattern …

A common claim among advocates of the 'phylogenetic'system of nomenclature (PN) is that
the 'Linnean'system (LN) is defective because it fails to promote stability, universality, and …

Abstract Sir Karl Popper is well known for explicating science in falsificationist terms, for
which his degree of corroboration formalism, C (h, e, b), has become little more than a …

Abstract Ernst Mayr's (1961, Science 131: 1501–1506) distinction between proximate and
ultimate causation in biology is examined with regard to the acquisition of understanding in …

The question of whether or not to partition data for the purposes of inferring phylogenetic
hypotheses remains controversial. Opinions have been especially divided since Kluge's …

Within evolutionary biology a distinction is frequently made between proximate and ultimate
causes. One apparently plausible interpretation of this dichotomy is that proximate causes …