Syst. Biol. 48(2):352–364, 1999
Charles Darwin’s Views of Classification in Theory and Practice
KEVIN PADIAN
Department of Integrative Biology and Museum of Paleontology, 1101 VLSB, University of California,
Berkeley, California 94720, USA; E-mail: kpadian@socrates.berkeley.ed u
Abstract.— It has long been argued that Charles Darwin was the founder of the school of “evolutionary taxonomy” of the Modern Synthesis and, accordingly, that he recognized genealogy and similarity as dual, synergistic criteria for classification. This view is based on three questionable interpretations: First, of isolated passages in the 13th chapter of the Origin of Species; second, of one phrase in a letter that Darwin wrote about the work of an author he had partly misunderstood; and third, of his taxonomic practice in the barnacle monographs, which only implicitly embody his philosophy of classification, if at all. These works, seen in fuller context and with the perspective of extensive correspondence, are consistent with the view that Darwin advocated only genealogy as the basis of classification, and that similarity was merely a tool for discovering evolutionary relationships. Darwin was neither a Mayrian taxonomist nor a cladist, and he did not approach systematic issues in the same terms that we do in the late 20th century. [Cladistics; classification; Darwin; systematics.]
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