Cladistics (cladism) – the sidetrack into the route of a vain search to define the indefinable

Cladistics (cladism), i.e., partitioning reality into clades, is inconsistent (i.e., self-contradictory). The inconsistency resides in that the assumption that single objects (in this case biological species) exist is incompatible with the assumption that clades exist. If both single objects and clades would exist, then also clades would be single objects, and since groups cannot equal objects, at least some clades or objects must be excluded from existing. 

If one, like Hennig, Farris and Nelson (among other cladists) simply doesn’t give a sh-t about the inconsistency, but instead claims it as a ”self-evident line”, that is, that it is self-evident that both objects and clades exist, then this choice of track does neither lead into a “natural” line of reasoning nor to a “natural” answer to an unformulated question, but instead into a route that lacks an end.

Cladists may comprehend this lack of end as typical for science, but the difference between science and cladism is that science closes up on truth by falsifying lies, whereas cladism is like a drifting ship that can’t find a harbour per definition: inconsistent (i.e., self-contradictory) classification can’t find an unambiguous classification per definition, because it is ambiguous. It is just drifting between just as ambiguous solutions.

Most cladists believe that finding an unambiguous definition of clade is easy, although it is impossible per definition. There is no definition of clade to be found that does not rest on a definition of paraphyletic groups (i.e., all is relative to some, but not the other way around). It is thus just as impossible to define clade (excluding paraphyletic groups) as it is to partition reality into clades. Both of them are impossible per definition.

Cladistics (cladism) is thus a sidetrack in biological systematics that leads into the route of a vain search to define the indefinable (as Darwin called it), or, which I would like to call it, a vain attempt to define objects in only three dimensions, that is, in space. The Linnean system defines them in four dimensions, that is, in time and space, by providing them with two anchor points. Why on earth should we abandon a consistent four-dimensional system for an inconsistent three-dimensional system?  Because we find pleasure in self-torment? This route has no end (per definition).

Ps I’m surprised by mathematicians that enter this route (like Matt Haber). They must have missed the point with mathematics totally. The fundamental point with mathematics, as I comprehend it,  is to keep numbers (like one and many) apart. Am I wrong, Matt ? ds