Cladistics confuses objects (in this case biological species) with classes, thus comprehending classes as objects. The problem with this confusion is that objects and classes are orthogonal and that it thus is contradictory.
Before cladistics, biological systematists searched the consistent solution of the contradiction between object and class, but cladistics turned this problem up-side-down by by confusing object and class (by equalizing properties of objects with the objects), thus turning the question from “what is the consistent fusion of object and class?” to “which is the True Tree of Life?”. This confusion does not, however, mean that cladistics found the consistent solution of the contradiction between object and class, but that it assumed that this problem already was solved, thus instead asking the next question, that is, how shall we find the True Tree of Life.
The fundamental problem of the orthogonality between object and class does, however, remain. Neither the Linnean system nor cladistics solve this problem. The Linnean system just finds the consistent solution of the contradiction between object and class, whereas cladistics just confuses object and class, None of them “solves the problem”.
A solution of this problem (ie, the orthogonality between object and class)requires a definition of what a “solution” is and which problems that can be solved. If the orthogonality between object and class is a problem, then this problem can’t be solved, because ”object” and “class” are orthogonal. If a fact is a problem, then this “problem” can’t be solved, because the “problem” resides in the approach rather than in reality.The problem is that we simply can’t understand reality consistently. Exactly where the problem resides is difficult to say, it appears to be what reality struggles with all the time. If there had been a solution to this problem, then reality would have stopped when finding it. In the meantime, we have to do what we can with what we have.
