Striking a balance, weighting and Cladistics

[Zdenìk Skála]

Thomas,
you wrote:
[snip]
> ... that evolution has been parsimonious. Parsimony is a criterion applied
to
> evidence, not an assumption about the underlying reality. It is an
> epistemological tool, not an ontological assumption ...
[snip]
Apart from the weighting discussion: the parsimony criterion (in the
cladistic sense) of course *is* an assumption about the underlying reality
as well as methodological principle. Otherwise, phylogenetic analysis could
not even converge to the supposed real phylogenetic tree topology. If the
phylogeny would not be parsimonious, the pattern we are revealing has
nothing to do with the phylogeny.
Best!
Zdenek Skala



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