Sci & Educ (2012) 21:1535–1544

DOI 10.1007/s11191-012-9438-8

The Systemist Emergentist View of Mahner and Bunge

on ‘Species as Individuals’: What Use for Science
and Education?

Pierre Deleporte

Published online: 21 January 2012

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract The Bungian philosophical system, with its constant focus on the demarcation
between concepts and coherent material systems, is particularly helpful for introducing
scientists and students to the ontology of biological systems. We illustrate this with the case
of the debate about species as individuals, largely a concern for philosophers of biology
rather than biologists themselves, but potentially confusing for the latter when engaging in
philosophical reflection about their conceptions and practice. Bunge attains his goal of
writing efficiently for readers outside the philosophical academic microcosm, and the
Bungian system is worth more promotion for a large audience, particularly for introducing
notions of modern systemist emergentist philosophy in biological scientific training.

This article is written from the point of view of a biologist interested in the possible contri-
bution of philosophy to biological systematics and teaching in this field of scientific research.
Phylogenetic systematics has attracted much attention from philosophers, particularly con-
cerning the ‘species problem’ and its litany of definitions. This question was revived by the
suggestion of the biologist Ghiselin (1975) that species should be considered as some sort of
individuals rather than classes of organisms sharing particular properties. This point of view
was notably adopted and further developed by Hull (1978, 1980) and the view of species as
‘historical individuals’ has become quite popular among philosophers. In this philosophical
debate, Mahner and Bunge (1997; hereafter M&B) took a strong position against the concept
of species as individuals (hereafter: SAI) and clades as individuals (CAI). Has the position of
M&B (1997) some originality and particular interest for science and education in this field?

1 Species as Individuals: An Ongoing Debate

In a recent philosophical reappraisal of the notion of individual (Ludwig and Pradeu 2008),
particular emphasis was put on biological entities and the SAI debate. In this book Pradeu

P. Deleporte (&)
Université Rennes 1, CNRS, UMR 6552 EthoS, Station Biologique de Paimpont,
35380 Paimpont, France
e-mail: pierre.deleporte@univ-rennes1.fr

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(2008), reviews the diversity of concrete biological entities from cells to populations, but
he also clearly supports the views of Hull (1978, 1992) that phylogenetic species should be
considered as ‘individual’ spatio-temporally coherent entities. Pradeu argues that, con-
sidering contemporaneous biological theories, temporal continuity tends to become a
decisive criterion of individuality, to the detriment of spatial cohesion (‘‘au de´triment de la
continuite´ spatiale, ou plutôt de la cohe´sion spatiale’’). To illustrate this, Pradeu takes
argument from Janzen (1977) that the members of a population of dandelions reproducing
asexually, although physically disconnected, are genetically similar, thereby constituting a
set of non-genetically competing organisms, that can be considered as an evolutionary
individual (‘‘individu e´volutionnaire’’) from the point of view of evolutionary biology.
In the same volume Gayon (2008) presents a detailed review of the arguments in the SAI
debate, but with a quite different conclusion. In this chapter, Gayon first values the work of
Hull (1978) as an important philosophical contribution (‘‘une des plus belles contributions à
la philosophie de la biologie contemporaine’’) and he exposes the pro-SAI arguments of Hull
(1978, 1980) and Eldredge (1985) supporting the idea that species and monophyletic taxa are
genealogical entities assimilable to individuals. Nevertheless Gayon recalls that the classical
view in philosophy and biology had long been to consider species as classes of organisms
sharing some similarities, and he underlines some weaknesses of the SAI argument as
follows. He extensively quotes Reydon (2006) to argue that the notion of spatio-temporally
bound entities advocated by Ghiselin and Hull does not correctly apply to phylogenetic
species and other monophyletic lineages: the comparison between a living organism and a
phylogenetic species would be misleading, an organism being alive from its birth to its death
(‘‘est vivant de sa naissance à sa mort’’) while lineages have no comparable temporal identity
because they are living only by the fringe of individuals existing at some given time.
Gayon, a well known specialist of Darwinism, also underlines that Darwin preferred the
metaphor of the coral rather than the tree of life to explain his idea of phylogeny, because
the basis of a coral reef is composed of dead skeletons while only the tips of the branches
are alive. [I think that this coral metaphor can still be misleading in the SAI debate because
the dead part of the coral is physically connected to the living peripheral parts, while the
fossil remnants—if any—of living organisms are far from being physically connected with
their descendants in any way.] Gayon also considers that the ‘spatio-temporal entity’
imagined by Hull can be construed as the class of organisms linked by a relation of
phylogenetic affiliation. According to Gayon, the classes constituting monophyletic taxa,
once defined according to relations of affiliation, are immutable, which raises problems for
considering them as individuals (…leur structure est permanente et e´ternellement vraie…
Dire que ces entite´s sont des individus soule`ve donc de de´licats proble`mes). Gayon further
argues that the individual organisms belonging to a taxon do not evolve ‘as a whole’ by any
conceivable physiological or ecological mechanism: the biological species have no proper
organization because their parts are not synchronously interacting in the space they occupy,
except in the extreme case of species limited to a small local population.
Quite strikingly for a reader familiar with Bunge’s writings, both analyzes by Pradeu
and Gayon make no mention of the extensive development on that topic by M&B, which
we examine below.

2 Mahner and Bunge on ‘Clades as Individuals’

The chapter devoted to Systematics is the longest one in the book Foundations of bio-
philosophy (M&B), hence it can hardly pass unnoticed. The authors present a particularly

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detailed account of philosophies of taxonomy, ways of grouping and classifying, distinc-

tion between a detailed history of the evolution of biopopulations through splitting-fusion
processes and the classificatory signification of the phylogenetic tree, and schools in
biological taxonomy. Among modern species concepts, they analyze those related to what
they call weak bionominalism, i.e. species viewed either as reproductive communities or as
lineages of ancestral-descendant populations (SAI). The authors coin as strong bionomi-
nalism the generalization of the latter view to clades as individuals (CAI) at supra-specific
phylogenetic levels. They reject the former proposition (reproductive communities)
because it applies only to sexually reproducing organisms, while among them only pop-
ulations of effectively—not just potentially—interacting individuals can be considered as
reproductive communities, but not so entire species composed of spatially disconnected
populations. They reject the latter proposition (phylogenetic SAI) because phylogenetic
species do not constitute materially coherent wholes; the dead organisms of a given lineage
do not interact with the alive ones, all of the latter (living organisms) not even interacting
together. Particularly, the property of common descent is not a property of the interaction
between organisms possibly constituting a biological system. The phylogenetic species is a
classificatory construct: the class or kind of organisms sharing at least the property of
descending from an exclusive common ancestor.
The argument of M&B against CAI is briefly exposed early in the book, in the
Philosophical fundamentals part, explicitly against the views of Hull (1987) and Eldredge
(1985) and from a materialist systemist point of view: in short, there is no ‘genealogical
nexus’ or reproduction bounds connecting the organisms of a species into cohesive
‘individuals’. Notably, Mahner and Bunge insist on the processes involved in real
biological systems:
If the histories of ancestors and descendants overlap, then the ancestors do not act on their descendants
qua ancestors but, if at all, qua fellow organisms. The fact that the nomological state space of the
descendant can be accounted for only by reference to its ancestry must not be confused with the
existence of a bonding relation between ancestor(s) and descendant(s). To qualify as a bonding
relation, a relation must alter the state of the relata here and now. (Mahner and Bunge 1997, p. 27)

They further develop this argument different ways, and always with consistent reference
to the fundamental ontological, logical and epistemological concepts and principles
exposed in the first part of the book, e.g.:
Moreover, neither lineages nor clades have emergent properties, and they cannot be said to be in a
certain state at any moment of time. Hence, they can neither change (as alleged wholes), nor can they
undergo any processes (as alleged wholes). In particular, they cannot be selected and they cannot
evolve. Thus, taxa, whether species or clades, are not material systems, hence no real individuals, and
there is no part-whole relation among organisms, species, and higher taxa. (Mahner and Bunge 1997,
p. 262)

The authors also want to account for the evolutionary process by defining monophyletic
taxa as what they name biological kinds—still classes anyway—of organisms (M&B, pp.
229–230). They define a taxon by a conjunction of predicates of the form: an organism
(of that taxon) possesses a given property(-ies), or it descends from an ancestor organism
that possessed that same property(-ies). This is proposed to accommodate the very general
but poorly informative phylogenetic criterion of exclusive common descent while adding
some explicit content (shared properties) and allowing for further evolution, hence vari-
ation, of the considered properties inside the monophyletic clade (e.g. like snakes being
‘legless tetrapods’ descending from four-legged ancestors).
This notion of biological kinds can be simplified as follows. If the propositions of M&B
are logically equivalent to the following ones:

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1. the members of a taxon descend from an exclusive common ancestor that possessed
properties P, Q…;
2. and the members of that taxon may possess (or not possess) properties P, Q… that
were possessed by their exclusive common ancestor;
then the second proposition may be discarded as non informative (to have or have not) and
the first proposition is sufficient, implicitly allowing descendants to retain (or not) part or all
of the specific properties of their common ancestor. Anyway, according to this definition, any
monophyletic taxon remains a class of organisms sharing the ‘historical’ (or phylogenetic)
property of exclusive common descent, while the specific ‘character’ properties (set of
apomorphies) attributed to their exclusive common ancestor serve as a classificatory
criterion for ‘slicing the tree of life’ at some convenient ‘level’ (or ‘distance’ in similarity).
Even this metaphor ‘slicing the tree of life’ is ambiguous in that it could carry the
illusion that the tree in question and its branches have any material coherence. While the
history of macroevolution can be sketchily represented by a bifurcating graph drawn with
ink on paper, and some parts of this drawing can be ostensively ‘pointed at’ or cut off with
a pair of scissors, all what ‘connects’ the branches of this symbolic graph is the plausibility
of the scenario told by the phylogenetician, i.e. the history of speciation and biological
diversification. The realist view of clades as classes of descendants limited by convenient
classificatory criteria should prevent from any reification of species and lineages as indi-
vidual entities (as also briefly stated as an illustrative example below the reification entry
in Bunge 2003, p. 247).
I am not completely convinced by all the arguments exposed in Foundations of
philosophy; e.g. the authors note that the so-called ‘evolutionary’ (a.k.a. eclecticist) school
of taxonomy uses arbitrary decisions for accepting some paraphyletic groupings (incom-
plete clades based on similarity criteria, i.e. excluding from a taxonomic group the
descendants possessing some properties different from those P, Q… of the common
ancestor of the clade, like defining dinosaurs excluding birds or teleostean fishes excluding
tetrapods). This charge of arbitrariness is a classic stance of the ‘strict cladistic’ school of
taxonomy. But, as seen above, the properties P, Q… retained for delimiting a monophy-
letic clade in the first place are also a classificatory decision, not imposed by ‘Nature’.
Even if necessary for avoiding ‘‘empty descentism’’ (M&B, p. 268), the decision of con-
sidering some properties P, Q… as sufficiently different qualities for delimiting a clade
belongs to the classifier. So, a so-called ‘evolutionary’ classification can be taxed of
eclecticism (making use of a mixture of monophyletic and paraphyletic groupings) but
otherwise some arbitrariness seems to be inherent to any biological classification.
This comes at no surprise if one considers that classifications are constructs devised
(hopefully) for convenience of analysis and communication in a particular context of use.
I see no fundamental objection to the possible use of a paraphyletic group whenever
convenient for communication among biologists, provided that its paraphyletic nature is
explicitly labeled as such. I think that much tension among bioclassifiers comes from the
illusory search for a unique, universal and optimal classification fitting all purposes. The
international codes of botanical and zoological nomenclature impose rules favoring
unambiguous naming of taxa (notably, linking every species name to a specimen deposited
in a museum, and applying rules of precedence to avoid synonymy), but wisely enough the
codes don’t impose rules for classification, hence allowing a diversity of classificatory
options. I rather see the future of biosystematics and taxonomy as constituting a general
data base of biological characters carried by different organisms, and offering the possi-
bility of ‘extracting’ classifications according to diverse concepts and criteria.

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The Systemist Emergentist View of Mahner and Bunge 1539

However convenient a strictly phylogenetic classification may be for purposes of

macroevolutionary biology, some biologists may want to class organisms different ways,
e.g. ecologists according to the roles of organisms in ecosystems (guilds) because they are
mostly concerned by effective interactions here and now than by classes based on historical
properties of common descent. The search for some holy grail of a unique, universal, all-
purposes and optimal classification is illusory, while we can conceive diverse classifica-
tions optimal for different uses. The logical approach would then become:
1. consider if one needs any sophisticated classification at all for some purpose, and list
the argumentative series of its desired qualities, i.e. its specification (cahier des
charges, Deleporte 2005);
2. on that basis, choose an available optimal (or at least convenient) classification, or
devise a new one if necessary or useful. Such an approach would drop the objection
that some predicates for class membership are intuitive rather than explicit in eclectic
classifications (M&B, p. 252).
In other words, I don’t expect from biological classifications that they would be
intrinsically ‘scientific’, whatever this could mean, simply that they would be explicitly
meaningful and convenient for the scientist. Phylogeny inference should be as scientific as
can be, while classifying is a contextual practical concern, i.e. classifications are systems of
taxa definitions, hence conventions (M&B, p. 247) even if possibly fitting some scientific
purpose in some theoretical context, like phylogenetic classification for evolutionary
biologists.
Anyway even such a multi-classification perspective goes clearly against the radically
empiricist view of some ‘pattern cladists’ (Beatty 1982; Brower 2000) who consider that
they can observe theory-free systematic patterns, which was correctly criticized by M&B
(p. 250) as either naive or wrong like all empiricism. Arbitrary formalist classifications are
at risk of finding no users, while no argumentative classification is theory-free. Ridley
(1983) wrote an easily accessible criticism of the ‘philosophy-free’ classificatory endeavor
of such transformed cladism; the same way Hull considered that theory-free classifications
are undesirable:
Des classifications libres ou indifférentes à toute théorie ne sont guère possibles. Et, même si elles
étaient possibles, elles ne seraient pas souhaitables. (Hull 1986, p. 190)

In the same vein M&B (p. 243) underline that evolutionary assumptions about processes
of evolutionary change are required for inferring a phylogenetic classification, the mere
general notion of ‘descent with modification’ being just a rudimentary starting point. They
stop short of analyzing the contemporaneous trends on this question, globally inviting to
read specialized journals like Systematic Biology and Cladistics. In my view, at least one
debate is worth been considered in this respect, i.e. the polemic between the partisans of
maximal parsimony algorithms and those of the maximum likelihoodist school explicitly
implementing models of character evolution in their probabilistic approaches, particularly
for molecular-based phylogeny inference. Sober (1985, 1988) developed a philosophical
analysis of the arguments in this controversy, stressing that:
The task of clearly stating one’s methods has been carried out with admirable success. But the
problem of justification has lagged behind. […] there can be no hope of establishing a method of
phylogenetic inference that is legitimate no matter the details of the evolutionary process happen to
be. (Sober 1988, pp. 238–239)

A further contribution to this debate, and a decisive one in my view, came unsurpris-
ingly from applied mathematics: Tuffley and Steel (1997) rigorously demonstrated the

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suggestion of Sober (1985) that parsimony and maximum likelihood algorithms were not
philosophically incompatible in that they could produce the same optimal results when
implementing a given evolutionary model; their Theorem 5 states:
Maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood estimates with no common mechanism are equivalent
in the sense that both choose the same tree or trees. (Tuffley and Steel 1997, p. 599)

See also Steel and Penny (2000) for a general and more accessible account, and the
recent mathematical reappraisal by Fischer and Thatte (2010). The No Common Mecha-
nism evolutionary model in question (hereafter NCM) is the basic model classically
implemented in standard maximum parsimony approaches; it assumes no concerted evo-
lution either among characters or among lineages, but it is generally implicit rather than
explicit in cladistic writings (beyond the necessary but logically insufficient reference to
the general process of descent with modification, see also Sober (1988) on this point). This
clarification from pure logic comes fortunately to reinforce the idea that the biological
assumptions supporting phylogeny inference matter first, and that the choice of an oper-
ational optimization procedure should be a secondary decision for convenience (Deleporte
2004a).
Symptomatically Tuffley and Steel (1997) did not recommend to try and implement the
NCM model with maximum likelihood algorithms, be it just for practical reasons of
escaping a computing nightmare. Anyway I rejoin the general recommendation of M&B:
We submit that a refinement of classification should be possible when we additionally make use of all
available knowledge in biology. (Mahner and Bunge 1997, p. 243)

This is quite evocative of the requirement of using total relevant evidence (in the sense
of relevant knowledge) for scientific explanation (Carnap 1950; Lecointre and Deleporte
2005). While inviting to put biological considerations before operationalism and tracing a
route for further improvement, this recommendation also leads to consider realistically the
extend of our present ignorance of general evolutionary processes, if any, as already
noticed by Sober (1988).
I have presented these brief considerations about evolutionary models to stress that the
phylogenetic reference underlying the SAI debate is far from being a simple matter of
empirical discovery. Back to the SAI concept: once fashionable among philosophers of
science and some biologists, it has now been subjected to repeated criticisms, notably the
detailed argument of M&B, and more recent philosophical developments of the same vein
like Reydon (2006) and Gayon (2008). This may be of some importance for the academic
community of philosophers of science, but should biologists be really concerned as
scientists and teachers?

3 If SAI is a Myth, What is its Importance for Biologists?

Except some early proponents like Ghiselin and Eldredge, it appears that most biologists
interested in systematics simply don’t make great case of the notion of SAI. This is not for
want of being concerned by philosophy, as testified by the quite impressive diversity of
philosophical references used by biologists interested in phylogenetic systematics. Out of a
prolific literature, we can mention some outstanding explicit philosophical references:
Popper for the scientific status of evolutionary systematics (Bock 1973); Popper for the
scientific status of cladistic systematics (Wiley 1975; Platnick and Gaffney 1978); Carnap
and the notion of total evidence for phylogeny inference through character congruence

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(Kluge 1989; see also Ruse 1979 for inductive logic in systematics); Sober and abduction
for phylogeny inference (Kluge and Wolf 1993); Popperian testing and Lakatosian
sophisticated falsification for phylogeny inference (Kluge 1997); Popper for axiomatiza-
tion of pattern cladistics (Brower 2000); Peirce and abduction for phylogeny viewed as
historical explanation (Fitzhugh 2006, 2009); Baker and anti-superfluity principle for an
idiographic approach to phylogeny inference (Grant and Kluge 2004; Kluge and Grant
2006); against Popperian hypothetico-deductivism for phylogenetic systematics (Fitzhugh
2006; Rieppel et al. 2006)—this without pretending to exhaustiveness. But none of these
authors referred explicitly to any notion of SAI to support his views.
Arguably, the biologists most susceptible to try and rely on SAI should belong to the
above mentioned school of pattern cladistics (a.k.a. transformed cladistics), i.e. the pro-
ponents of the theory-free discovery of a natural classificatory pattern. Such empiricists
could be seduced by a philosophical notion of taxa as coherent individual entities fitting
their program of discovery in taxonomy. Platnick (1985), an eminent founder of pattern
cladistics, explicitly discussed the topic in a dedicated Classes and individuals chapter; his
position was somewhat ambiguous but far from enthusiastic, notably:
…I was the first cladist to point out the compatibility of Ghiselin’s views with cladistic practice […]
I also reject the view that biological taxa must be either individuals or classes. […] Correctly defined
biological taxa are believed to be real entities; classes and individuals are philosophical notions. If
such notions happen to fit those phenomena we believe to be real, fine; if not, so much the worse for
the notions. […] It should be noted that although the concept of species as individuals creates no
difficulty for cladistics, cladistics may create a difficulty for the concept, in that most known species
do in fact have autapomorphies (i.e., defining characters). Perhaps neither species nor groups are
purely ‘‘individuals’’ or purely ‘‘classes’’, as those notions are currently viewed. (Platnick 1985,
pp. 90–91)

Symptomatically, in a recent extensive argument in favor of pattern cladistics, Brower

(2000) makes simply no mention of SAI. It appears that the empiricist pattern cladists
pretend to be discovering a self-evident hierarchy or pattern of relationships in character
distribution among organisms, rather than directly discovering taxa as consistent individu-
als—perhaps merely because, as trained biologists, they experienced the fact that no
materially coherent supra-populational taxon is directly accessible to scientific investigation.
Now, if biologists are not so much concerned by the SAI philosophical debate, what
difference can a Bungian appraisal make after all? In the SAI debate Bunge chooses to
restrict the notion of individuals to coherent material systems. Understandably a material
system cannot have just temporal coherence (pace Pradeu) without spatial (directly
interactive) coherence; effective interactive coherence is necessary for constituting a
material system, not just the property of potential interactivity, which could only support
the construct of a class, nor the property of common ancestry, supporting another class
concept. This choice is consistent with the Bungian permanent vigilance regarding the
clear distinction between material systems and concepts, with no possibility of a hybrid
notion. However, in his philosophical dictionary, Bunge states that individuals can be
either constructs or concrete things (Bunge 2003, p. 142), and gives for examples of the
former: the element of a set, or this individual set if considered in another context or at
another level.
At first sight this could seem contradictory with the rejection of SAI, except that this is
just a re-statement of the general idea that all sets are constructs possibly treated as wholes,
i.e. individuals, notably in the Algebra of classes: the branch of logic that handles sets as
wholes (individuals)… (see the class entry in Bunge 2003, p. 42). Hence the limited set of
descendants composing a taxonomic class would be considered as a ‘conceptual

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individual’ qua being a set, just like any conceivable set, but not for particular properties of
biological kinds; and such a view of taxa as ‘individual classes’ gives no handle for raising
a problem of their being either classes or individuals: they are trivially individual con-
ceptual classes, and they are non existing as individual material systems. By strictly
confining the SAI debate to questions of effective material interactions in concrete bio-
logical systems, the Bungian approach explicitly preserves a non ambiguous materialist
monism, while any hybrid notion confounding material systems with concepts could only
tend to obscure the demarcation between materialist monism and diverse forms of mind-
matter dualism or parallelism.
In my view this explicit philosophical systemism makes all the interest of the Bungian
approach and its major difference with other, more fragmentary philosophical consider-
ations for rejecting SAI. Hence I preferentially use M&B for introductory lectures in
systematics concerning the SAI debate, be it only to help students to make the economy of
a detailed analysis of the academic history of this philosophical curio.
The same way, when introducing students to comparative ethology and psychology, I
refer primarily to the Bungian systemic, emergentist treatment of the mind–body problem
(e.g. in Bunge 1981, 2008, 2010), to begin with the remarkable concise development in
Philosophical dictionary (Bunge 2003, pp. 181–184). Again this may dispense with going
through the detailed analysis of concepts like supervenience (In vogue in the philosophy of
mind, but unknown to scientists, and a mushy version of the exact concept of emergence;
Bunge 2003, p. 279) to finally end up with an emergentist view (e.g. Kim 1978, 1998; in
the French version of the latter, Kim 2006, only a well advised note of the translators
mentions Bunge 1981 as a recommendable reference for an introduction to contempora-
neous materialist emergentism).
Even if not entirely original, and if admittedly incomplete, as mentioned above con-
cerning the philosophy of phylogenetic systematics, I think that the Bungian materialist
emergentist philosophical system is helpful as a general introduction to modern science-
friendly materialism, a basis of coherent concepts and methods for tackling further
questions and a guide for useful complementary reading, with particular warning against
philosophical versatility and possible intellectual imposture hidden behind obscure writing
(Bunge 1996, 2001). This was the explicit purpose of M&B:
By introducing some ontological, semantical, and epistemological fundamentals we hope to be of
service to those biologists who, though interested in philosophical questions, have been justifiably
bewildered by the multiplicity of conflicting philosophical views and who therefore may have missed
a unified science-oriented philosophical outlook. (Mahner and Bunge 1997, p. 377)

Like echoing this statement, Brower (2000) protested against what he resented as a state
of confusion and incoherence in the philosophical arguments of some systematicians:
Philosophy is central to the advance of theoretical systematics, but when inconsistently invoked as a
weapon of convenience, the label of ‘‘mumbo jumbo’’ may indeed be apt. Bewildering one’s
opponents with kaleidoscopic tirades of philosophical arcana is an intimidating rhetorical device, but
the rhetoric is ultimately self-defeating if there is no coherent and defensible basis for the ideas
espoused. (Brower 2000, p. 152)

Brower himself briefly invoked Popper who ‘‘…urged scientists to strive for the rigor of
axiomatized systems—description of their science reduced to minimally necessary and
sufficient logical terms’’. But beyond this general appeal to axiomatization, and despite his
claim that ‘‘Since the demise of logical positivism … no philosopher of science has tried to
defend pure empiricism as a plausible methodology’’, Brower provided no particular
philosophical reference in support of his own particular axiomatic system, namely:

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observing character differences among taxa as evidentiary basis, using a bifurcating

hierarchy to represent relationships among taxa and using parsimony as the guiding
epistemological principle of the systematic endeavor, while explicitly rejecting any ref-
erence to the evolutionary process of descent with modification [the notion of relationships
remaining notably undefined].
My point here is simply that Brower (2000) could take argument of some ‘kaleido-
scopic’ confusion in philosophical arguments in the systematic literature to cover his
position and pass his own empiricism without philosophical justification. In my view this
clearly illustrates that the concern of M&B (op. cit.) for improved philosophical clarifi-
cation and coherence is quite a serious one, and that philosophical systemism is well worth
being promoted, as also stressed in their concluding remarks:
…biophilosophical problems should be approached systematically rather than in a piecemeal fash-
ion… biophilosophical questions must be related to one another rather than be tackled in isolation.
(Mahner and Bunge 1997, p. 377)

Bunge’s work can be usefully supplemented with some positive advertisement for
his views, notably through introductory papers (e.g. Deleporte 2004b, 2011), translations
in different languages to increase accessibility for the non-academic-philosopher reader
(e.g. Bunge 2008, translated from Bunge 1981) and promoting the Philosophical dictio-
nary (Bunge 2003) as an efficient vade mecum for basic concepts and mini-papers on
controversial topics. Because Philosophy should lighten, not burden; and enlighten, not
obscure (Bunge 2003, p. 5).

Acknowledgments I thank Michael Matthews, Guillaume Lecointre and two anonymous reviewers for
helpful comments on this and earlier versions of this manuscript.

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