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  1. When is a cladist not a cladist?Aleta Quinn - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (4):581-598.
    The term “cladist” has distinct meanings in distinct contexts. Communication between philosophers, historians, and biologists has been hindered by different understandings of the term in various contexts. In this paper I trace historical and conceptual connections between several broadly distinct senses of the term “cladist”. I propose seven specific definitions that capture distinct contemporary uses. This serves to disambiguate some cases where the meaning is unclear, and will help resolve apparent disagreements that in fact result from conflicting understandings of the (...)
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  • Homoplasy as an Evolutionary Process: An Optimistic View on the Recurrence of Similarity in Evolution.Marcelo Domingos de Santis - 2024 - Biological Theory 19 (4):267-278.
    In the cladistic literature, there is a recurrent perspective that considers homoplasy as something undesirable. Homoplasy, according to this view, is believed to obscure homologies that may lead to synapomorphies. Some cladists often call homoplasies an ad hoc hypothesis or an “error in our preliminary assignment of homology.” Consequently, homoplasy is generally regarded negatively, hindering further investigations, because it matters little whether a character subject to homoplasy is a convergence, a parallelism, or a reversal, since they all fall within the (...)
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  • What’s wrong with evolutionary biology?John J. Welch - 2017 - Biology and Philosophy 32 (2):263-279.
    There have been periodic claims that evolutionary biology needs urgent reform, and this article tries to account for the volume and persistence of this discontent. It is argued that a few inescapable properties of the field make it prone to criticisms of predictable kinds, whether or not the criticisms have any merit. For example, the variety of living things and the complexity of evolution make it easy to generate data that seem revolutionary, and lead to disappointment with existing explanatory frameworks. (...)
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