Concept Paper
Version 1
Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed
An Outline of a Conceptual Framework for Contemporary Biological Systematics
Version 1
: Received: 6 June 2023 / Approved: 8 June 2023 / Online: 8 June 2023 (03:51:46 CEST)
How to cite: Pavlinov, I. Y. An Outline of a Conceptual Framework for Contemporary Biological Systematics. Preprints 2023, 2023060578. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.0578.v1 Pavlinov, I. Y. An Outline of a Conceptual Framework for Contemporary Biological Systematics. Preprints 2023, 2023060578. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202306.0578.v1
Abstract
Biological systematics, exploring the structure of taxonomic diversity (TD), needs a proper conceptualization that would (a) make it complying with certain universal criteria of scientificity and (b) take into account specificity of its studied object. This article outlines a possible conceptual framework for this natural science discipline based on the ideas of contemporary conceptualism. One of the most fundamental of them includes a concept of cognitive situation shaped by three interrelated basic components—ontic, epistemic, and subjective. Its core position is taken by a taxonomic theory (TT) being a conceptual construct resulted from a “summative” effect of all three components and designed for studying TD. The general TT is shown to be composed by a hierarchically arranged array of partial TTs of various levels of generality, and this construct serves as a conceptual justification of taxonomic pluralism. Several kinds of partial TTs are suggested to recognise, viz., ontology- and epistemology-oriented, aspect- and object-based, etc. The aspect-based TTs are of special importance as the conceptual foundations of particular research programs in systematics. The object-based partial TTs are shown to be implemented by concepts of species and homology. A large-scale relation between taxonomic theory and nomenclature is briefly considered.
Keywords
contemporary conceptualism; cognitive situation; biological systematics; philosophy of systematics; taxonomic theory; taxonomic monism & pluralism; taxonomic nomenclature
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Other
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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