When I wrote: > >As what classifications should be, or whether methods should be > >considered as making phylogenetic or phenetic classifications, I have my > >own position, that no one else seems to back (in public, anyway). I > >think that we should not think of these trees as classifications, and not > >call them phylogenetic classifications or phenetic classifications, but > >consider them as estimates of the phylogeny. The issue of how to classify > >is less important anyway.
Emmanuel Paradis responded - > I have the strong feeling that most users of R and its [phylo]genetics > packages are interested in the study of evolutionary processes, not in > classification (I rarely see questions about classification or > systematics here). So maybe most of us silently back Joe's position. > > About the issue of how to classify, I think it is very important. The > point here is, in my view, that the confusion between classification and > evolution greatly hampered the progress of evolutionary biology, but the > situation has improved in recent years. I can't speak for most users of R, but I do suspect that Emmanuel is right in that there is agreement with this position among many younger evolutionary biologists. But it is a sufficiently intimidating atmosphere for them that they do not usually say that out loud. I have stuck my neck out, mostly for the fun of it. The reactions among many systematists have been strong -- they are really outraged, and figure that this is just some arbitrary opinion of mine, which they are (barely) willing to tolerate. I suppose the matter will become one of open discussion some day. Anyway, back to R. J.F. ---- Joe Felsenstein [email protected] Department of Genome Sciences and Department of Biology, University of Washington, Box 355065, Seattle, WA 98195-5065 USA _______________________________________________ R-sig-phylo mailing list [email protected] https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-phylo
