Milestones in Systematics

Abstract

David M. Williams, Peter L. Forey, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 2004, 290 pp., $99.95 (hardcover), ISBN 041528032X George Santayana once stated, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Although he was not speaking of the history of science, his observation holds true for systematics. The systematics literature today deals with many of the same issues as it did a century ago: choice of models, dealing with noise (homoplasy) versus signal (synapomorphy), and its underlying philosophy. Discussion of any of these issues will result in heated debate between camps of systematists. These debates seem to cycle every decade or so, essentially repeating arguments without yielding fruitful outcomes. Williams and Forey present a view of the past century in systematics through publishing the proceedings of their symposium, “Milestones in Systematics,” convened at the 3rd Systematics Association Biennial Meeting, September 2001. The contributed chapters can be divided into four themes: the history of systematics, the philosophy of systematics, systematic methods, and applications of systematics to evolutionary study. These themes encompass both the systematics in the narrow sense, classification of life, and in the broad sense, understanding life’s diversity. Within the four areas of the book, contributors track the foundations of systematics and challenges to its future; however, there are some missing milestones.

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