BioEnv seminar: “The Linnaean revolution – The Natural System”

In his presentation, Magnus will share his thoughts about evolutionary ontology and its relation to taxonomy, focusing on the Natural System with the question if Linnaeus is more modern than Mayr? See more ibeow.

Short summary

A very brief history of the Natural System (NS) is presented, focusing on angiosperms. The account is divided into four parts. The first, “Setting the stage”, gives an outline of my understanding of evolutionary ontology and how this reflects on taxonomy. I emphasise the necessity of an information flow approach (in contrast to an organismic approach) to understand the process shaping the evolutionary tree, and I defend a realistic interpretation of phylogenies. On the other hand, I stress that pattern (clades) is the only viable interpretation of taxa of all ranks including ‘species’. I also list the several criteria I use to judge attempts at the NS. The second (main) part is a history of the NS from 1730 to today’s DNA world. We get acquainted with Linnaeus's pioneering contributions to our conception of the NS, such that natural taxa are individuals that we aim to discover (not define), and the necessity of a synthetic approach to discovery as opposed to the scholastic top-down ‘Logical Division’. Various systematists and systems of the past three centuries are highlighted, such as Adanson, Candolle, Darwin and Hennig. Via the cladistic revolution and the implementation of DNA sequence analysis, we end up with a probabilistic approach to phylogeny reconstruction. The third part, “Linnaeus revisited”, discusses some widespread myths concerning Linnaeus’s systematic philosophy; a few examples of late 20th century allegations of dogmatism and ‘essentialism’ in Linnaeus’s taxonomic thinking are rebutted. 

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