Explanations in Systematics

Nevertheless, when introducing Popper s ideas into evolutionary and systematic thinking, I was greatly worried about certain aspects of theories in evolutionary biology, although I did not express this disquiet in my talk or published paper. I was aware that not all of 

I welcome the opportunity of being asked to participate in this symposium and to provide a review of explanations in evolutionary biology, especially in classification and phylogeny, and of the role of Popperian concepts in the philosophy of science for methods and explanations in systematics. I thank the organizers for inviting me to take part in the symposium and contribute a paper to the published volume. 

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Malignancies, particularly of neural crest origin, are known to affect brain function adversely through remote (presumably hormonal) effects on neural tissue. For example, ovarian adenocarcinoma can selectively induce a profound cerebellar syndrome caused by the selective death of Purkinje cells (presumably from a neurotoxic hormonal factor). Such phenomena simply illustrate the complicated nature of CNS functioning and the need to be cautious about explanations in the absence of systematic data. 

In addition to the main multiplet lines, one additional weak feature appears systematically several eV above each M/y and My multiplet. Its separation from the main lines (3-5 eV) is too large as compared to the observed separation (1.7 eV) between tetravalent and trivalent 3d94/n+1 final atomic multiplets for any explanation in terms of multiplet splittings. It has been suggested that the weak feature originates from excitation to... 

Since the publication over a quarter of a century ago of my original paper Philosophical Foundations of Classical Evolutionary Classification, I have become increasingly interested in systems of explanation in science and especially in evolutionary biology (see Bock, 1978, 1981, 1988, 1991, 1992, 2000 Szalay and Bock, 1991). This was prompted by concerns in 1974 when I introduced into systematics Popper s ideas that the nature of explanation and the methods of testing theoretical statements in classification and phylogeny do not fit easily or at all into the Popperian mold. 

In passing, it has been suggested that reduction goes together with explanation in the sense of systematization Phenomena of the reduced science are systematized by the reducing science. 

Rosen, D.E. (1978) Vicariant patterns and historical explanation in biogeography. Systematic Zoology, 27 159-188. 

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