At 21:19 22-3-2006, you wrote:
>Dear Wormers,
>>Kirk¹s letter promoting his own work represents his opinion and not
>scientific facts.
Dear colleagues,
My mailing program told me that Jim Blakes at
that time still unread mail probably was
offensive. Having met Jim a couple of times,
during which he never gave me the impression that
he had such character traits, I read his mail
with more than usual care. I was not impressed
that Jim did not have the balls to use the
correct translation of cojones, but this is quite
understandable in the light of my previous
observation, and the Spanish word probably the
reason of the two red peppers assigned to his
mail. However, I fully agree with Jim, without
scientific arguments there is no progress.
Only then I read the discussion between Torsten
Struck and Kirk Fitzhugh. I must confess
that Eunicid phylogeny is not something which
keeps me spell-bound, so I had to retrieve the
mails from the trash. I wonder whose starting
sentence is more inflammatory. Gentlemen,
please stick to the scientific argument, and
dont feel personally attacked by an opinion you
dont share. Without even trying to evaluate the
train of thoughts of one as opposed to the other,
I have a few very simple observations, a word of warning.
In both mails there is mention of scientific
fact. I am old enough to have seen a series of
books used in their time as bible of taxonomy,
starting with Mayr, than Hennig and Wiley (and
maybe I am doing Simpson injustice). Professors
working from a too rigid faith in one of these
bibles generally did not survive long in the
halls of systematics. I keep telling my students
that any fact is a product of its time and its
philosophical or theoretical context (as no doubt
Kirk Fitzhugh can better explain than I can). In
short, as a scientist I am not dealing in
certainties, but in uncertainties, not in facts,
but in hypotheses. It should be the concern
of any scientist to give the best possible
hypothesis within its contemporary framework.
That Kirk Fitzhugh is trying to attack that
framework, by a series of scientific papers, may
be annoying for those who in good faith tried to
use the best practice, but the least we have to
do is try to understand his reasoning (which is
not an easy job, at least not to me).
wormly,
dr. Harry A. ten Hove
Zoological Museum
University of Amsterdam
Mauritskade 57
P.O.B. 94766, 1090 GT Amsterdam
the Netherlands
hove at science.uva.nlhttp://www.science.uva.nl/ZMA/invertebrates