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.