Botany picture #137: Lomatia silaifolia

Lomatia silaifolia (Proteaceae), New South Wales, 2014. This final picture from our recent field trip to the Blue Mountains shows a rather small Proteaceae that was in full bloom on a recently logged forest area. The plants were less than 1.5 m in height.

No arguments from authority please, even if it is Charles Darwin

Continuing with my ruminations on Richard Zander's Framework. Another thing that got me when reading the book was how often proponents of paraphyletic taxa claim that Charles Darwin was on their side.

In contrast to Zander, who very openly cites the Origin's chapter on classification for support, many of them do so through code phrases; they will write "evolution is descent with modification" and then assume the matter to be decided in favour of paraphyly. Personally, I don't quite get how that definition is supposed to be an argument against cladism anyway. But they think it is, and they think it will impress people because it is supposedly Darwin's own definition of evolution, and he is the authority, amirite?

Botany picture #136: Persoonia levis

Persoonia levis (Proteaceae), New South Wales, 2014. This species surprised us with its large leaves reminiscent of wattle (Acacia) phyllodes.

Why we don't consider supraspecific taxa as ancestral to others

I am currently reading Richard Zander's recently published book A Framework for a Post-Phylogenetic Systematics. As a cladist, phylogeneticist and regular user of molecular sequence data I would call the work a target rich environment and could write quite a lot about it. The problem is, it comes in at 214 pages and is written in an extremely dense, jargon-laden style. Discussing it in a way that does it justice would require an effort similar to Slacktivist's famous deconstruction of the Left Behind novels or Adam Lee's page-by-page review of Atlas Shrugged.

I am neither willing nor able to invest that amount of time, and surely much fewer people would find such an enterprise interesting enough to follow it than in the above two cases. What I will do, therefore, is limit myself to a few unsystematic discussions of individual topics or arguments encountered while reading the Framework. Today we will explore what appears to be its author's greatest frustration with phylogenetic systematics.

Interestingly, every proponent of paraphyletic taxa in botany has a different main argument. Elvira Hörandl, for example, is convinced that 'evolutionary' classifications have greater information content than phylogenetic systems. The late Richard Brummitt argued that Linnean binary taxonomy and phylogenetic systematics are incompatible when we try to classify ancestors. And Richard Zander finds it simply unacceptable that phylogenetic systematics does not allow the treatment of supraspecific taxa as ancestral to others at the same or higher rank.

Botany picture #135: Persoonia mollis

Persoonia mollis (Proteaceae), New South Wales, 2014. One thing that struck me in the Blue Mountains was how many species of Persoonia there are. Of course, their flowers all look more or less the same but they are very variable vegetatively. Some of their fruits are edible although apparently very astringent.

Are we our bodies?

In a recent discussion on another blog somebody claimed that most people would not identify with their bodies but instead with their consciousness or (if they are inclined to give it a supernatural phrasing) with their souls*:

Alex, I can understand your perspective and there may be a considerable number who consider themselves “their whole body”, but I think most people have the conception that they are the consciousness that inhabits and wills the body.
The illusion of separateness from our body I think is rather strong. You may argue that this is just an illusion and you would be completely correct. But I would respond with the concept of soul which seems to be a popular concept throughout the world, not universal but something quite like it probably is for a majority of the human race. This concept suggests that there is a separate conscious entity that is distinct from the body. Why is this an almost universal concept, well the illusion the illusion that we are a separate homunculus is very strong. So I think those who support the idea of the self being defined as the part of the body/mind that is conscious and self aware have the stronger case.
Another thought experiment that will put this in better perspective. It we were able to perfectly record and make an exact copy of your nervous system and then simulate it in a sufficiently advanced computer-like device, I would argue that the simulation would have an experience and that experience could be labeled “you”. Conversely, If we used an extremely potent general anesthesia that precluded any awareness yet did no damage either to your brain or body would “you” still exist?

 I believe that both the assumption that most people consider themselves to be something immaterial living in the body and, to the degree that some people actually do believe that, the reasons for the belief are wrong.

Botany picture #134: Eucalyptus bicostata

Today I was lucky enough to join a tour of the Australian National Wildlife Collection, one of the country's premier biodiversity research collections. It is particularly renowned for its holdings of bird specimens and of frozen tissue that can be used for DNA extractions but it also features collections of mammal, lizard and amphibian specimens as well as bird eggs and nests.

Between the building and the car park stands this fine tree which a colleague identified as Eucalyptus bicostata (Myrtaceae).

And this is why I decided to post it: this species has the longest leaves of all Eucalypts. Quite impressive already but apparently they can get even longer.