Cover

Half-title

Series information

Title page

Copyright information

Table of contents

List of contributors

Foreword

Introduction

Acknowledgements

References

1 Mission impossible: the childhood and youth of Willi Hennig

1.1 Introduction

1.2 The family of Willi Hennig

1.3 Willi Hennig and his time in Upper Lusatia

1.4 Social and familiar circumstances...

1.5 Support and supervision: the time at the Landesschule Klotzsche

1.6 Mission fulfilled: reflections from Hennig’s childhood...

Acknowledgements

References

2 Willi Hennig: a shy man behind a scientific revolution

2.1 Willi Hennig’s life

2.2 Willi Hennig’s personality

2.3 From order to phylogeny

References

3 Willi Hennig’s legacy in the Nordic countries

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Hennig in the Nordic countries

3.3 Hennig and Sweden

3.4 Hennig and Denmark

3.5 Hennig and Finland

3.6 Hennig and Norway

3.7 Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

4 Hennigian systematics in France, a historical approach with glimpses of sociology

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Historical path

Entomology circles

Palaeontology circles

Universities

Unnoticed conflict between Hennigian and pattern cladistics in the 1980s

4.3 Present cladistic debates

4.4 Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

5 Are we all cladists?

5.1 Introduction

5.2 What does it mean to be a “Hennigian”?

5.3 Theories of truth

5.4 Hennig: realist or empiricist?

5.5 The inconsistency of parsimony: what would Willi do?

5.6 The realist philosophy of model-based approaches

5.7 What is branch length?

5.8 Parsimony, simplicity, models and coherence

5.9 The Hennigian aesthetic of heuristic accessibility

5.10 -isms

5.11 Ragnarøkkr

Acknowledgments

References

6 How much of Hennig is in present day cladistics?

6.1 The ‘father of cladistics’

6.2 Sources for comparison

6.3 Aspects compared

6.4 Concept of ‘relationship’

6.5 Concept of ‘monophyly’

6.6 Concept of ‘apomorphy’

6.7 Principles of grouping

6.8 Method of polarising characters

6.9 Weighting characters

6.10 Concept of ‘homology’

6.11 Role of ancestors

6.12 Concept of ‘species as individuals’

6.13 Use of the term ‘phylogeny’

6.14 Graphical representations and their meaning

6.15 Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

7 The evolution of Willi Hennig’s phylogenetic considerations

7.1 Walter Zimmermann and phylogenetic systematics

7.2 The positioning of Willi Hennig as a theoretician

7.3 Hennig’s early theoretical papers: 1947–1950

7.4 The recognition of paraphyletic groups

7.5 The fate of taxonomic ranks in Hennig’s writings

7.6 Hennig’s first phylogeny book (Hennig 1950a)

7.7 Developing the theory of phylogenetic systematics...

7.8 Finalizing the procedures of phylogenetic systematics (Hennig 1957)

7.9 Hennig’s 1966 Book

7.10 Fossils and phylogeny reconstruction

7.11 Varia

7.12 Misunderstandings and unjustified criticisms

7.13 Looking backwards in search of the future

Acknowledgements

References

8 What we all learned from Hennig

Acknowledgements

References

9 Semaphoronts: the elements of biological systematics

9.1 Introduction

9.2 Semaphoronts

9.3 Hologenetic relationships

Ontogenetic relationships

Tokogenetic relationships

Phylogenetic relationships

Hologenetic relationships

9.4 Semaphoronts, character, and homology

9.5 Semaphoronts, phylogenetics, and developmental evolution

9.6 Semaphoronts, phylogenetics, and phylogenomics

Acknowledgments

References

10 Why should cladograms be dichotomous?

10.1 Introduction

10.2 The temptation of an empirical foundation

Brundin’s clearly empirical foundation

Hennig’s hesitation

10.3 The principle of dichotomy as a requirement of scientific methodology

Platnick’s Popperian attempt

Nelson and Platnick: the cladogram as an analytic tool

10.4 A third way

Theoretical abnormality

Nomological incommensurability

Epistemology

Homologues, homology, characters, taxa, and cladograms

Consequences

10.5 Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

11 Hennig’s auxiliary principle and reciprocal illumination revisited

11.1 Introduction

11.2 Hennig’s auxiliary principle and reciprocal illumination...

11.3 Changing principles (and their implications)

11.4 Hennig’s auxiliary principle and parsimony

11.5 Congruence and testing

11.6 Hierarchy in characters

11.7 Reversals

11.8 Conclusion

Acknowledgements

References

12 Dispersalism and neodispersalism

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Dispersal and dispersion

12.3 Dispersal as the default explanation in biogeography (1949–1988)

The role of the South Atlantic Basin in biogeography and evolution, New York City, 19493

Mayr’s ‘methodological principle’ or, the immunity of biological conclusions to geological evidence

Pacific Basin Biogeography, Honolulu, Hawai’i, 19616

Biogéographie et liaisons intercontinentales au cours du Mésozoique, Monaco 19729

Biogeography: the 21st Systematics Symposium, Missouri Botanical Garden, 197410

Vicariance Biogeography Symposium, New York City, 197912

Alternative Hypotheses in Biogeography, Seattle, Washington, 198019

Evolution, Time and Space: The Emergence of the Biosphere, London 198120

Dispersal and distribution: An International Symposium, Hamburg 198224

Biogeography of the Tropical Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii, 198225

Symposium on Biogeography and Plate Tectonics in the SW Pacific, Dunedin 198327

Vicariance Biogeography: Theory, Methods and Application New Orleans 198728

National Museum Symposium on the Panbiogeography of New Zealand, Wellington 198829

12.4 Doctrinaire vicariance, doctrinaire dispersal

12.5 Neodispersalism

12.6 Conclusions

Acknowledgements

References

13 Molecular data in systematics: a promise fulfilled, a future beckoning

13.1 Introduction

13.2 Systematics today

13.3 Phylogenomics

13.4 Dating the tree of life

Acknowledgements

References

14 Hennig, Løvtrup, evolution and biology

14.1 Introduction

14.2 Evolution as idea and cosmogony

14.3 On biological antitheses especially preformation and epigenesis

14.4 Hennig: a preformationist?

14.5 Løvtrup: the epigeneticist

14.6 On the nature of organisms: the biological continuity

14.7 On leaving evolutionary materialism behind

14.8 The eternal species problem

14.9 The problem of individuality

14.10 The multiplicity problem

Acknowledgements

References

15 Willi Hennig as philosopher

15.1 Introduction

15.2 Hennig’s major philosophical sources: Bertalanffy and Ziehen

15.3 The mathesis universalis of systematics

15.4 The enkaptic hierarchy

15.5 The cladogram, a Carnapian structure description

15.6 The semaphoront

15.7 Conclusions

Acknowledgments

References

16 Hennig and hierarchies

16.1 Introduction

16.2 Relations and hierarchies

16.3 Relations and division hierarchies

16.4 Woodger

16.5 Division hierarchies pictured

16.6 Gregg, Woodger, and sets

16.7 Phylogenetic systematics

16.8 Conclusions

References

17 Chain, tree, and network: the development of phylogenetic systematics...

17.1 Introduction: pattern and process in object diversity

17.2 Classification and phylogeny in biological systematics...

17.3 Generalized pattern cladistics as a science of trees and networks...

17.4 Phylogeny estimation in manuscript stemmatics...

17.5 Axiomatic methods in systematics: Principia Mathematica and its followers

17.6 Abductive inference in systematics in biology, stemmatics...

Acknowledgments

References

18 The relational view of phylogenetic hypotheses...

18.1 Introduction

18.2 Mathematical concepts

On the symbolism

Relation and relational structure

Function and bijection

Classification and classificatory structure

(Informal) Graph theory

18.3 Evolution, phylogeny, and phylogenetic hypotheses

The explanation of the diversity of life

The intra-LITU/inter-LITU distinction

The principle of phylogenetics

Phylogeny and phylogenetic hypotheses

18.4 Phylogenetics hypotheses: from relations to classifications

Preliminaries

On the concepts of kinship in phylogenetics

On two fundamental mathematical equivalences

Phylogenetic hypotheses as relational structures

Relational properties of the Concepts of Kinship

Simple kinship relationship

Ancestor-descendant relationship

Degree of kinship relationship

Consequences in terms of classification

Simple and degree of kinship relationships

Ancestor-descendant Relationship

18.5 Concerning some consequences and related topics

On the methodology of phylogenetics

Simple kinship relationship and non-polarized characters

Fully ramified undirected n-trees and quaternary relations

18.6 On the degree of kinship relationship

18.7 Conclusion

References

19 This struggle for survival: systematic biology and institutional leadership

19.1 Systematic biology and scientific rigor

19.2 Zombie science

19.3 A challenge to institutional leaders

19.4 Conclusion

References

Index