Kearney Maureen, Rieppel Olivier
Departments of Zoology.
Geology, Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605, USA.
Cladistics. 2006 Aug;22(4):369-377. doi: 10.1111/j.1096-0031.2006.00110.x.
How morphology and systematics come together through morphological analysis, homology hypotheses and phylogenetic analysis is a topic of continuing debate. Some contemporary approaches reject biological evaluation of morphological characters and fall back on an atheoretical and putatively objective (but, in fact, phenetic) approach that defers to the test of congruence for homology assessment. We note persistent trends toward an uncritical empiricism (where evidence is believed to be immediately "given" in putatively theory-free observation) and instrumentalism (where hypotheses of primary homology become mere instruments with little or no empirical foundation for choosing among competing phylogenetic hypotheses). We suggest that this situation is partly a consequence of the fact that the test of congruence and the related concept of total evidence have been inappropriately tied to a Popperian philosophy in modern systematics. Total evidence is a classical principle of inductive inference and does not imply a deductive test of homology. The test of congruence by itself is based philosophically on a coherence theory of truth (coherentism in epistemology), which is unconcerned with empirical foundation. We therefore argue that coherence of character statements (congruence of characters) is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition to support or refute hypotheses of homology or phylogenetic relationship. There should be at least some causal grounding for homology hypotheses beyond mere congruence. Such causal grounding may be achieved, for example, through empirical investigations of comparative anatomy, developmental biology, functional morphology and secondary structure.
形态学与系统学如何通过形态分析、同源性假设和系统发育分析结合在一起，是一个持续争论的话题。一些当代方法拒绝从生物学角度评估形态特征，转而采用一种无理论且假定客观（但实际上是表型的）方法，这种方法依赖于通过一致性检验来进行同源性评估。我们注意到存在一些持续的趋势，即不加批判的经验主义（认为证据在假定无理论的观察中直接“给定”）和工具主义（其中主要同源性假设仅仅成为在相互竞争的系统发育假设中进行选择时几乎没有或根本没有经验基础的工具）。我们认为这种情况部分是由于这样一个事实，即在现代系统学中，一致性检验和相关的全证据概念与波普尔哲学不适当地联系在一起。全证据是归纳推理的一个经典原则，并不意味着对同源性的演绎检验。一致性检验本身在哲学上基于真理连贯论（认识论中的连贯主义），它与经验基础无关。因此，我们认为特征陈述的一致性（特征的一致性）是支持或反驳同源性或系统发育关系假设的必要但非充分条件。除了单纯的一致性之外，同源性假设至少应该有一些因果基础。例如，通过对比较解剖学、发育生物学、功能形态学和二级结构的实证研究可以实现这种因果基础。
