Talk:Alexander Henry Haliday
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“Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” Friedrich Nietzsche 19th century German philosopher. Haliday on species 1857 Review Zoonomische briefe : allgemeine darstellung der Thierischen Organisation Von Dr. Hermann Burmeister, Professor der Zoologie zu Halle. Ersler und Zweiter Theil 8 vo. Otto Wigand: Leipzig 1856. Natural History Review (Proc.) 4: 69-77. exact translation please
In the year Richard Wagner commenced the three-act opera Tristan and Isolde, a watershed in the history of music concerning the fatal love of the Irish princess Isolde and the Cornish knight Tristan Haliday was hard at work in Dublin.
Properly Introducing one of Burmeister's masterworks, which is, it must be remembered in German, as "Not addressed to the professed zoologist " that is to say intended for an intellectually trained but general readership, Haliday goes on to praise Burmeister's acheivement in matching scholarship and literary style. "The writer's thorough acquaintance with his subject, at once minute and comprehensive, his genuine-even passionate love of nature, and his eminently happy style of painting in words, have qualified him, without renouncing a scientific treatment of his materials, to make out of them two very pleasant volumes". Then, drawing attention to Burmeister's previously attaching too much emphasis to embryology as a phylogenetic (classification based on evolutionary origin) tool, Haliday approves his "riper judgement and experience" in rejecting " the fixed ideas of some extreme devotees of Embyological study." He then begins a diatribe against "The Transcendental School of Natural History" accusing it's adherents of usurping embryology (as a sole basis for classification, and by inference evolution) in the pursuit of a religious belief which is seen as anti-scientific, in the sense that it is not amenable to argument or change. "It might appear too, as if the systematic part of Natural History were thus placed on a more unalterable base, in being referred to certain principles exterior to and independent of the modes of operation of human intellect; as a mere artificial instrument of which classification has sometimes been regarded." The last part of the sentence is the most telling. The attack on the Transcendalists is a preface only. Haliday accuses Burmeister "who has laboured so hard ...to establish a natural classification on philosophic grounds.....almost giving up the objective truths of natural groups in zoology, while he retains them for a method of exposition." (our emphasis). Haliday then quotes Burmeister " The only real existence is the lowest and last division called species; this alone may be seen, felt caught, exhibited in collections; all the other,superior groups are mere conceptions, framed according to the agreement of certain characters, but of which the real existence must be denied." "The fallacy here is so palpable, Haliday protests, that it is hard to imagine how it could, for a moment, have imposed upon a philosopher like Burmeister". "It is clear, continues Haliday, that he {Burmeister] has mystified himself by the use of the term 'real existence '. He [Burmeister] proceeds and now Haliday quotes " Such conceptions, which have no real existence, but can be defined ideally by a certain collection of characters, are called Types of Animal Organisation. Accordingly we speak of the types of Genus, Family, Class &c., and we endeavour to discover by observation the essential properties of each, and to express them in words. These words constitute the character of the group; they convey the definition of the idea, and contain the marks by which the type may be known, and which therefore, are considered as typical of the group"
"This we see", develops Haliday, "is in allusion to, but not quite in accordance with, the doctrine of Linnaeus, that the character does not make the genus, but the reverse". There is a problem here. What Burmeister is saying, that the genus does not exist is not true, however Haliday's insistence that it does, which is true, is then logically undermined by his assertion that knowing what the genus is (by an intuitive process) we can then define it's characters. Burmeister appears to us to be whilst not accepting the reality of the higher groupings is essentially saying the same thing. Neither has made the jump in thinking that Hennig later did later, much later, and amidst much controversy and both are having struggling for a logic. The jump was to analyse the characters, work to a conclusion, however heretical** Note also that Haliday is assuming 1. that Linnaeus had a doctrine and 2. that the doctrine was unassailable. There may be another problem, the German may be confusing and also have the curious dialectical (opposing ideas) of so much German thought.
Interestingly many early authors understood principles of the phylogenetic systematics much better than those who followed them, including many writing today. This is true not only for such evident evolutionists as Lamarck, Darwin, Haeckel or Hennig, but also for Linnaeus, Cuvier and others, who wordily declared anti-evolutionistic ideas, but actually built animal classification on phylogenetic principles.
Digression We must digress here and clarify our position. So much error exists in literature relating to the history of systematics, most of which was written by historians of science unaware of Hennig that an account of Kladistiks in a work such as this is long overdue.
Major Hennigian principles are: (1) Relationships among species are to be interpreted strictly genealogically, as sister-lineages, as clade relations. Empirically, a phylogenetic hypothesis may be determined. (2) Synapomorphies provide the only evidence for identifying relative recency of common ancestry. Synapomorphies are understood to be the shared-derived (evolved, modified) features of organisms. (3) Maximum conformity to evidence is sought (his auxiliary principle). Choice among competing cladistic propositions (cladograms) is decided on the basis of the greatest amount of evidence, the largest number of synapomorphies explainable as homologues. (4) Whenever possible, taxonomy must be logically consistent with the inferred pattern of historical relationships. The rule of monophyly is to be followed, thereby each clade can have its unique place in the hierarchy of taxonomic names.
Hennig suggested that classification should reflect the relative recency of common ancestors. A common point of controversy is the placement of birds among reptiles. There is support for a close descent relationship between birds and crocodiles. According to the overall similarity theory, the crocodiles would be placed with other reptiles, but according to Hennig’s theory, the birds and crocodilians should have a closer classification because of their lineages. “Lineages and histories are real, whereas taxa are human creations that may or may not reflect true relationships.” Monophyletic groups were the only acceptable higher-level taxa to Hennig. A monophyletic group includes an ancestor and all of its descendants. As a consequence, birds would be included under the “reptile” classification. Excluding descendant lineages, like birds, would create a paraphyletic grouping. Proponents of this classification point to prominent features that set a lineage apart from close relatives. In addition to the reptiles, many other traditionally accepted paraphyletic groupings are now rejected as formal taxa by phylogenetic systematics and by a majority of systematists in general. They do not want to abandon paraphyletic relationships, but they want the groupings expanded to reflect Hennig’s theory. How is it that these groups are discovered? Hennig suggested that shared derived characters, homologues, provide evidence of common descent. A derived character that is evidence of a relationship is called an apomorphy and its ancestral form is called a plesiomorphy. If an apomorphy is unique to a species, then is an autapomorphy, and if it is shared by two or more species, it is a synapomorphy. A synapomorphy is evidence that the species with common characteristics also share a common ancestor and can be considered in a monophyletic group.
Today we would say
1.The monophyletic group, say genus, exists and furthermore is the only acceptable group. 2. It is identified by its characters (and not the reverse). 3. Only character states identified as plesiomorphic (ancestral) or apomorphic (derived) can identify monophyletic groups (and the evolutionary history of the group) 4. This analysis may be tested, that is to say a kladistik analysis is in itself a falsifiable theory ie a scientific one. 5. Since apomorphic characters exist so do plesiomorphic characters 6. All characters,except the apomorphies defining species are both plesiomorphic and apomorphic with respect to transition.
A problem remains however. How many species within a monophyletic group constitute a genus?. In this respect the genus is not objectively defined. The same is true of higher level taxa. The nomenclatural genus and higher level taxa remain, then, without any existence in nature. A fascinating parallel to Haliday's unusually forthright comments on "The Transcendental School " is found in the controversy surrounding the introduction of Hennig's cladistic methodology to Britain. Astonishingly the proponents of kladistik were accused of fermenting Marxist revolution; by upsetting the "properly founded" higher groups they were also, it was argued, challenging the rate of evolution. Suggesting, as some did, that evolutionary jumps occurred they were presumed to wish the same for social evolution. Haliday may well have retorted , quoting Schiller " Gegen die Dummheit streben selbst die Goetter vergebens!-Against stupidity even the gods strive in vain.
Species
Haliday next turns to the reality of species. "That very real existence of species, to which Burmeister yet clings- as it seems however not without a wavering faith even as to this- as the last floating straw of a drowning system , is just as truly an abstraction of the mind as any of the higher groups. Define it as we will, the idea of species comprehends some relation which cannot be seen, felt or exhibited corporeally- such as that of continuous development from one stock; or, if we admit that no irrefragable proof has yet been adduced of the necessary descent of all the individuals of a species from one original pair, or parent, then our idea of species must differ still less in kind from that of any higher group. We must be able to conceive, as possible at least, if we do not actually presume as true, the original existence of several individuals and one species, to which they are subordinated not by that peculiar relation of Generation, but by other agreements, of the same sort, and only greater, in number or degree, than, those we recognize among the higher groups, an in the one case, as in the other, coupled with Differences;- whether these be Specific, Generic, or simply Individual, does not materially effect the present question. In this case, whether we trace these correspondences up to Creative Design, or view them simply in reference to our own Modes of Perception, the result is equally that those Relations and Agreements, and, consequently, also, the Groups connoted, or denoted, by the character, have a real existence as truly in the Higher (genus, &c.) as in the Lower (species)- yet not Lowest group so long as some individuals of the Species present fewer differences and more points of agreement amongst themselves (Races, Varieties, &c.) , than others. Again whatever be our Idea of "Species" abstractedly, The Character of any particular species is a collection of marks of a precisely similar nature with those which make up the character of a Genus, or any higher group, differing only in being more numerous and particular , inasmuchas the character of the Species includes the complete character of the Genus, and of every higher group, in direct ascending Series, and something more. In Direct ascending Series- we repeat- for the Character of some genus, in another, ie. Collateral series, may embrace more numerous marks than that of a species not subordinate to it. Practically, too, it is the character that determines the idea of the species, which is then of the same sort as that of genus, &c., and applied in the same way, so that it is hard to tell why the one should be said to have a real existence more than the other."
A fixity of species and classes
A fierce opponent of Darwin, whose Origin of Species was published two years after Zoonomische briefe, Burmeister, like his contemporary Louis Agassiz held on to Baron Cuvier's catastrophy theory according to which species were fixed, and only through great cataclysms (glaciations in Agassiz's 'neptunist', volcanic eruptions in Burmeister's 'vulcanist' hypothesis) was change in nature possible. While Agassiz was to deduce from this model of nature a social theory of racial segregation enthusiastically applauded by US-American and Brazilian slaveholders, and a monarchist theory of class segregation in Europe Burmeister, who in his youth had sympathized with republican radicals and whose decision to emigrate to Argentina may have been informed by the political authoritarianism of Bismark's Prussia, held positions closer to Humboldt's romantic naturalism. Curiously Haliday's political views were not progressive, at least in respect of the American Civil war "Now I am afraid these are as remote as the hope of peace in N. America, while Abraham Lincoln is in place".
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