Evolution and classification : the reformation of cladism / Mark Ridley.

  • Ridley, Mark.
Date:
[1986], ©1986
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Evolution and classification : the reformation of cladism / Mark Ridley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Biologists, since Darwin, have traditionally interpreted the taxonomic groups of plants and animals as evolutionary groups. In this stimulating book Mark Ridley argues persuasively that the relationship between evolution and classi¬ fication is of central importance: the theory of evolution is essential for the classification of species, and is not just an interpretation of it. He strongly attacks the controversial new taxonomic school, 'transformed cladism', which bases its classification on the patterns of nature regardless of the evolutionary processes that produced them, and goes on to show that the theory of evolution, far from being dispensable to cladism, is actually fundamental to it. The first half of the book provides a clear introduction to the different schools of classification, considering all their various merits in order to discover which one makes the best claim to be objective. The latter half reviews in depth how the evidence of classification favours the theory of evolution rather than the separate creation of species. It includes a historical chapter on pre-Darwinian classifications, such as the essentialism of Aristotle, Linneus and Cuvier and the divine idealism of Agassis, and it speculates as to how the theory of natural selection might enrich the repertory of taxonomic techniques. The text should be clear to any reader with only a little prior knowledge of the subject. It will serve both as an introduction for students, and as a research tract for specialists. For a broader audience interested in the problems and controversies of biology, it can be read as a powerful and elegantly written defence of the importance of evolutionary theory in comparative biology. ISBN а-ЗпЕ-ЦЦЧТ?-? ШЩЩ ■H LONGMAN 780582 444973