Darwin-L Message Log 6:17 (February 1994)

Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.

Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.

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<6:17>From mahaffy@dordt.edu  Fri Feb  4 10:18:45 1994

Subject: Whittaker's 5 kingdom; was Re: Peter Stevens, Quinarianism
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 1994 10:21:57 -0600 (CST)
From: James Mahaffy <mahaffy@dordt.edu>

Finn N. Rasmussen wrote:>
>   - A number of rather recent authors  have promoted the idea of viewing
> life as organized into "5 kingdoms". Evidently, at least 3 kingdoms are para-
> phyletic and thus not admissable in a phylogenetic classification. Is the
> "5-kingdom view" a kind of neo-quinarianism - a ghost from Victorian
> taxonomy?

	I doubt if Whittaker was influenced by ghosts from the past. There
are only so many major groups you can subdivide living taxa into and if
you are a bit of a splitter, five kingdoms seems to be more reflective
of the major morphological kinds then another number of kingdoms.
Remember this split predated the popularity of cladistics based on molecular
data.

--
James F. Mahaffy                   e-mail: mahaffy@dordt.edu
Biology Department                 phone: 712 722-6279
Dordt College                      FAX 712 722-1198
Sioux Center, Iowa 51250

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