Mikael Härlin – what’s the difference between historical entity and entity?

In his “research project”, associate professor Mikael Härlin at Södertörns högskola (erroneously called Södertörn University) ”is interested in such things as what it means to be a historical entity”. What Mikael means with historical entity is a conceptual confusion of pattern and process (i.e., of the specific with the generic, or of space with time) that goes under the name clade. Mikael is thus interested in “such things” as a conceptual confusion of the specific with the generic (in a generic sense, that is, in such confusions) aiming to understand “what it means to be” such a confusion.

Well, Mikael, I suggest you first clarify for yourself (and for your sponsors, among those me), how you distinguish historical entity from entity, because if you can’t, you have no case.

I can tell the difference between them (and also have done), but this is also the reason why I don’t run a “research project” that is “interested in such things as what it means to be a historical entity”. Why be interested in “such things as what it means to be a historical entity” if one knows “what it means to be a historical entity”?

I suggest that you, Mikael, change the aim of your “research project” to ‘finding out how one can be decieved into an approach (i.e., cladism) that questions with the answers and answers with the questions’. The problem is namely not what a historical entity is, but what a clade is, and the answer is: a conceptual confusion of pattern and process (i.e., of the specific with the generic, or of space with time). Your present “research project” can, as far as I can understand, not reach any other goal than to decieve your sponsors and boost your career to professor: a professor in trying to understand conceptual confusion from the confused aspect. 

My words may appear harsh against a nice guy like Mikael Härlin, but there is only one way of approaching cladism: to confront it with sense. Cladists have a multitude of reasons for adopting this conceptual confusion ranging from believing in it like a religion to simply favouring one’s own career, but its devastating consequences for sense forces the counteraction against it to having to be clear and concise. There’s no neutral ground between cladism and empirical science; they are each others mirror images.

Mikael Härlin – can he ever resolve his own confusion of past and present?

Time only consists of two dimensions: forwards and backwards. It means that presence has no room between past and future, but instead has to include past and future. This leaves a “opinional chair” to confuse past and future into a relative time concept including past, present and future, which today has been occupied by cladists (like Mikael). They thus confuse past, present and future into a single concept they call clade.

Today cladists, including Mikael, are paid to resolve their own confusion, like a paranoic would be paid to resolve his confusion. Does anyone expect that cladists will succeed? Can a paranoic resolve his own confusion by asking questions? Won’t the questions only keep him in his own paranoia? Will he ever ask himself whether his approach is a paranoia? Will Mikael ever ask himself the question whether he’s searching a solution of his own confusion?

Mikael Härlin, his struggle to resolve his confusion of past and present, and Kuhn

In his struggle to resolve his confusion of past and present, Mikael claims that “in a broader perspective our research on nomenclature has led to more general studies on how science develops” (a huge claim without any references) and that ”with biological nomenclature as a model we have contrasted Poppers cumulativism with Kuhns more disruptive view of scientific development”.  If this guy isn’t hyped, who is?

Then he presents the trailer that “at present we are trying to develop Kuhns views at a low theoretical level – the level of taxa. Could it be that taxa can be treated as low level paradigms? (Härlin 2003a)”, seemingly as a forerunner to his major future advances in his attempts to resolve his own confusion of past and present. 

He then adds that “This project is very much in line with our general aim of understanding historical entities and the process of historical inference” thus landing in the reality of his own confusion.

Talking about building castles in the air….

Mikael Härlin and his struggle to resolve his confusion

In this post, I just want to give some examples of which questions Mikael tries to answer in his struggle to resolve his confusion of past and present.

At his site for his (and Yann Bertrand’s) “scientific project”, he explains that questions like:

 ”what do we mean by the same clade under different hypotheses”

and

“how should a nomenclatural system be designed in order to capture reference of taxon names throughout changing views about phylogenetic hypotheses”

are at the heart of their project.

He then adds that “to be able to shed light on these, and similar issues we try to reconcile philosophy of language with history and evolutionary biology”.

These are fancy words expressing that:

1. We don’t know what we mean, and especially not under different historical hypotheses.

2. We wonder how we should we design a nomenclatural system that captures what we try to understand over changing phylogenetic hypotheses.

Adding that ‘to be able to understand what we mean and what the problem is, we try to reconcile philosophy of language with history and evolutionary biology’.

Mikael is  like a kid playing with daddy’s tools. He doesn’t understand what they are good for nor what he’s trying to do with them. His goal is actually to resolve his own confusion of past and present, but these concepts will continue to be confused as long as he confuses them. No “reconciling of philosophy of language with history and evolutionary biology” in the world can help him to resolve this his own confusion.

Talking is possible, but talking to make the impossible possible isn’t possible. Truth is a relative conclusion. 

The Linnean classification is actually The Classification of phylogenies. This is clear as sausage stock for everyone that understands  philosophy of language,  history and evolutionary biology.

Mikael Härlin and the unfittable cladistic puzzle

On his site on Södertörns högskola, Mikael Härlin writes under the heading “Systematics and the historization of biology” and the subheading “Understanding historical entities” that “Ever since Darwin it has become increasingly clear that biology is a historical science. But it is equally clear that we still are puzzled by what it means to be a historical entity”, just as if Mikael speaks for all of us (i.e., we). He doesn’t, I ain’t.  

Mikael is ”puzzled” only because he approaches the problem of conceptualizing and understanding reality (or “reality” as Mikael expresses it) from the wrong side, that is, from the aspect of considering the abstract (i.e., lines illustrating phylogeny) as more real than reality itself. He has lost contact with reality via Hennig’s puerta (i.e., his definition the kinds equal objects), and is now lost in cladism (which he calls “treethinking”).   

I can explain to Mikael “what it means to be a historical entity” in only a couple of lines:

Entities (or objects) can be either present or past (or either living or dead for biological organisms). A present entity is a non-historical entity (i.e., an existing entity), whereas a past entity is a historical entity (i.e., a non-existing entity). ”Being a historical entity thus means” that one is past.

Mikael’s problems to fit this puzzle is due to that he cannot distinguish present and past. The reason for this inability, in turn, is that he believes that concepts (thus also present and past) exist, instead of that it is we that distinguish them. This belief creates a puzzle that can’t be fitted, since it both distinguishes and confuses present and past. Mikael’s problem’s to fit the puzzle does thus reside in his own ambiguity in both distinguishing and confusing the concepts present and past. He creates a puzzle that can’t be fitted but instead have to be “puzzling”.

I have tried to explain this issue for Mikael both in discussions and over e-mail for about 14 years by now, but he obviously refuse to understand instead digging himself deeper into the cladistic trench. I have tried to explain that the problem is in your own head, Mikael. Outside of it, the historical entities themselves have no problems with “what they are”. 

I wouldn’t have cared the least about Mikael’s (and other cladists’) confusion if I hadn’t been forced to pay part of Mikael’s wage with my taxes, and if he hadn’t continued to lure young students into it (thus unwillingly supported by me). The present situation forces me to take a closer look at Mikael’s official statements and reasonings, which I will do in my upcoming posts.

On the similarity and difference between cladistics (i.e., cladistic classification) and science (i.e., the Linnean classification)

The similarity between cladistics (i.e., cladistic classification) and science (i.e., the Linnean classification) is that both classify phylogenies (i.e., dichotomously branching processes).

The difference between them is that cladistics believes that there is a single true classification to be found, whereas science searches the true phylogeny. Cladistics is applied subjectivity believing in a single true subjectivity, whereas science is objectivity trying to find the truth by peeling off lies. The difference is thus that cladistics believes in what science searches for.

This difference is difficult to handle for scientists. The problem is how they shall react towards an opponent of method (i.e., subjectivity and optimization against objectivity and falsification), when the opponent actually believes in what the scientist concludes, whatever it is that he/she concludes. For scientists, cladists are like snot on their forefingers catching whatever comes out from their noses with belief instead of skepticism. Cladists are in one aspect the dream for scientists, but in another aspect a nightmare: if truth can be found (i.e., if subjectivity can be optimized into one truth), then science is a redundant complication, whereas if truth can’t be found, then science appears lost. What science needs is a “close-to-truth” or “almost true” concept to defend itself against cladistics.

The defense can, however, be turned up-side-down into an attack on cladistics. Its method (i.e., subjectivity and optimization) can of course not lead to one truth, since subjectivity can’t be one, and its belief in a single truth is thus irrational. It is analogous to the donkey’s chase for the carrot in front of its nose. It is not only wrong, but also stupid.

The attack leaves science as an approach that can’t reach truth, and also has to attack approaches that claim that it can. Science thus has to deny that it can reach truth at the same time as it attacks the approach that claims it can, which appears counteractive.

The question is, however, not whether truth can be reached or not, but how we shall produce statements that agree with reality. We do not have to be perfectly truthful, but only sensible in a truthful way. Science may lack perfection, but the opposite, i.e., cladistics, lacks both sense, correctness and perfection. In the choice between them, only lacking perfection is a desicive advantage.

Cladistics – on ancestors and descendants

The problem with the concepts ancestor and descendant is that they are relative concepts on single objects. An ancestor is also a descendant (per definition), and a descendant may well become an ancestor. It means that “an ancestor and all its descendants” also applies on a single object, although a single object cannot be both an ancestor and a descendant without confusing the concepts ancestor and descendant. The problem is thus whether it is we that confuse the concepts ancestor and descendant by equalizing them, or the single object that confuses them by existing. The answer is that it is we that either confuse the concepts or do not understand how to distinguish them. Confusing them and not understanding how to distinguish them protrude as the same thing, i.e., not understanding how to distinguish them and therefore confusing them.

Empirical science (i.e., the Linnean classification) distinguishes them by allowing a single thing to be only an ancestor or a descendant in each statement. It means that it does not allow them to be be confused in a single statement, thus not offering any possibility to confuse them.

Cladistics does thus suffer from a consistent confusion of the concepts ancestor and descendant. When it says ancestor, it may well mean descendant, and when it says descendant, it may well mean ancestor. It does not distinguish these concepts. The problem with this confusion is that it excludes change (i.e., process), because change (i.e., process) is a fact. The cladistic confusion does thus cotradict facts, or, in other words, facts falsify the cladistic confusion.

Why clades aren’t natural groups

The reason that clades aren’t natural groups, less so The Only Natural groups, (as Hennig and his successors claim) is that clades include both dead and living members. The problem with this is that it excludes groups consisting of dead or living members, since these  include those that consist of  dead and living members, and that it is impossible to exclude something that is included per definition. If it had been possible, then include would equal exclude, which would exclude include and thus also exclude (that is, itself). The possibility that clades are natural groups thus excludes itself (per definition).

Natural does in this sense mean confusing specifics into generics, and the problem is that not all specifics can be confused into generics, because specific can never become generic. Natural is actually a carrot that hangs in front of many biological systematist’s nose. It’s meaning is, however, like it has been all over history, each of their’s own subjective classification. All of them just want to nail the classification they prefer, obviously believing that it can be reached by optimization of the classes they prefer. It is like believing that we can turn many into one if we optimize optimatically - The Natural Groups will be revealed by optimal optimization (led by captain Steve Farris) – when the truth is that we will only end up with what we started with, and that there are several different possible starting points.

The problem with the belief that “only clades are natural groups” does not reside in the concept clade itself (it is merely a concept that confuses concepts), but in the underlying belief in “natural groups”. The problem is that there are no “natural groups” at all, both per definition and per facts.

On Wikipedia, neutrality and objectivity

The “open encyclopedia” Wikipedia rests on the decisive criterion neutrality, instead of objectivity like other encyclopedias and empirical science, leading to the question what this difference means.

 Objectivity is looking at a typical object of a concept in question (i.e., from the outside), but what is neutrality? Using the same terminology, it must be placing oneself in the middle between all different ways of looking at an object of a concept in question. What, then, does neutrality mean practically: is it a matter of conceptualizing reality or of mediating between different conceptualizations of it? The answer must be the latter. It is not a decisive criterion to distinguish between different definitions of a concept, but rather an aim to mediate between different definitions of the concept. As such, it is useful only to the extent that it is possible to mediate between all possible aspects on an object of a concept in question. Well, is it?

The problem with such a mediation is that space consists of three dimensions (height, width and depth), whereas time only consists of two (forwards and backwards). The problem resides in that it means that “the middle” in space is ambiguous in time, because it means that placing oneself in the middle, that is, “between”, in space is ”ambiguous” in time. The difference between between and ambiguous is difficult both to understand and explain, but the relevance of the fact that placing oneself in the middle in space and time is searching for a position that is both between and ambiguous at the same time means that the search lacks a finding. There simply is no such position to be found. Between cannot be ambiguous, because if it was it wouldn’t be.

Neutrality is thus an impossible position. It means that Wikipedia will create editorial wars about all definitions of concepts that denote phenomena lacking empirical connection (i.e., abstractions) like, for example, the concept clade. These wars can only be solved by accepting one of the different aspects on an object of a concept in question or an inconsistent definition of it, thus actually excluding the objective definition of it. It means that Wikipedia actually excludes objectivity by adopting neutrality as its guiding criterion, instead adopting a criterion that is lethal for encyclopedias, that is, a criterion that is impotent for its purpose. It means that Wikipedia actually dug its own grave by adopting neutrality as its decisive criterion.

How will Wikipedia climb out of this pitfall (caused by the stupidity and ignorance that typifies its editors)? By educating the editors to the level of abandoning neutrality for objectivity?

On the shift from biological systematics to systematic biology

The shift from calling the classification of biological organisms biological systematics to systematic biology marks a fundamental shift in this classification from comprehending classes a a purely mental construct (i.e., nominalism) into comprehending them as existing phenomena (i.e., realism).

Linné constructed the perfect classification for objects participating in phylogenetic processes (i.e., dichotomously branching processes) in a nominalistic approach. Darwin accepted Linné’s classification and added a processual explanation for it in an evolutionary sense (as a nominalist). Hennig (the father of cladism) did, however, confuse Linné’s classification with Darwin’s processual explanation into the classification that is today called cladism, representing a realist approach. Hennig’s confusion does thus compose the shift that has occurred from (or the bridge between) nominalism to (and) realism, and thus the shift from (or the bridge between) biological systematics to (and) systematic biology. The difference between them is thus that nominalism distinguishes pattern and process, whereas realism doesn’t. 

These two approaches has no neutral ground (i.e., no common ground), but exclude each other totally. Pattern and process can’t be both dfistinguished and confused at the same time. Nominalism distinguishes them because confusing them also confuse conceptualization itself, whereas realism confuses them because it is “natural”. The difference does fundamentally reside in how one comprehends a single object: nominalism comprehending it from two different aspects: pattern (i.e., properties) and process (i.e., change), whereas realism comprehending pattern and process as making up the object. Nominalism uses the concepts pattern and process to discuss the object, whereas realism comprehends pattern and process as making up the object. The difference is between being aware of what one is doing and not. Nominalism is aware of the glasses it looks through, whereas realism is its glasses. Nominalism is thus objectivity, whereas realism is subjectivity.

The main problem for a research that aims at classification itself, like biological systematics or systematic biology, is that classification is orthogonal (i.e., that these are classes of classes), because it means that the research can’t reach an unambiguous end. Realism may appear to reach this impossible goal, but it is only an illusion created by adding one ambiguity onto another. This appears to reach the goal by using two wrongs to make one right, when the fact is that it only makes two wrongs. Its class (i.e., clades) is actually consistently inconsistent and thus totally impossible in relation with facts (i.e., rationally). It is consistent on the fundamental assumption (i.e., that pattern and process are equal), but the fact that they are not equal means that it is consistently inconsistent.

This discussion am I extremely surprised that I have to conduct. When I entered biological systematics in the beginning of the 90-ies, I couldn’t even imagine that realism would gain power in it. I am still amazed that seemingly thinking persons are caught in this paranoia obviously without ability to distance themselves from it. In the light of this fact, Darwin’s theory threatens the mental health of humans. Change on different levels is obviously very difficult to understand for many of us, maybe the majority, instead running the risk of melting down into complete stasis for persons that can’t envisage it.