Descent with modification

What made evolution flow might also have proved contentious had Darwin not also oiled his way around problems of mechanism. Darwin s sixth edition of Origin ultimately accommodated evolution to Lamarck s principle of psychic anamnesis and the inheritance of acquired characteristics, the laws of nature as prescribed by a deity, and God s eternal wisdom. Darwin only hoped that natural selection would be seen to play some part somewhere along the way of descent with modification . 

In other words, Darwin chose evolution as his masterwork s literal last word on the outcome of descent with modification. Certainly, Darwin displayed a seemly Victorian correctness in using the passive tense of the verb to reflect its etymological subtext from our standpoint in time, the biosphere we encounter has indeed evolved (unfolded) according to the laws of natural selection over four billion years. In other words, hindsight reveals how possibility unfurled into fact, whether or not the pathway followed a predictable trajectory. 

Introduction Pretentiousness notwithstanding, if there is such a thing as a central paradox in biology it is that all organisms resemble one another but at the same time are different. Darwin, of course, recognized the universality of this paradox, and it led him to a theory of descent with modification, the foundation of our modern theory of evolution. 

If Kluge s (2001a, 2001b) notion of descent, with modification (Darwin s two principles) is being used as a universal of some kind in connection with which singular statements could be tested, the universal descent, with modification would have to be applicable to the world of experience. The problem here is that descent, with modification is not a full sentence, but rather a conjunction of two concepts. Because it is not a full sentence, it cannot be applied unequivocally to the world of experience. In order to do justice to the meaning of descent, with modification, and in order to render it a potential universal statement, we must reformulate it. For example, All new species originate by a process of descent, with modification (see also Appendix I). 

However, Kluge (2001a) uses descent, with modification not as a universal law, but as the necessary and sufficient background knowledge for systematics" (but see Sober, 1988). Kluge uses Popper s formula for severity of test to cast cladistics in a falsificationist... 

Conclusion With regard to Darwin s theory of evolution (Darwin, 1859) and phylogenetic parsimony as the method of choice for phylogeny reconstruction, it needs to be shown what exactly the theoretical components of descent, with modification are that mandate parsimony analysis and how the cladogram generated by parsimony analysis connects to decent, with modification. In a Popperian context, this coimection would have to be a deductive one, that is, one rooted in logic. 

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