The circular definition of populations and its implications for biological sampling

Application of population-based theoretical models to the study of real world populations requires the relationship between the real and theoretical populations to be defined. Otherwise, it is not possible to take a representative field sample or census of a population. I demonstrate that the concept of a biological population is based on a circular definition and is logically untenable. A population is composed of a number of individuals whose membership of the population is determined by their relationship to the rest of the population. This has serious implications for common practice in a range of ecological and evolutionary disciplines.     

Anthropology and politics: The logic of their interrelationship

Conclusion The thesis of value neutrality is logically untenable and anthropologically naive. It is logically untenable because it does not attend to contextual (i.e. historical, sociological and political) meaning. It is anthropologically naive because it does not take into account that values are culturally mediated and historically situated, i.e. it assumes that values are the result of arbitrary choices. And, one must add, it is morally objectionable because it eliminates the notion of responsibility, though it pretends to defend it.Rather than attacking the thesis of value neutrality by following the more usual procedure of unmasking specific substantive theories, I have dismantled the logic of value neutrality itself by concentrating on the insurmountable formal contradictions of the fact-value dichotomy. In neglecting social, economic and cultural constraints, while stressing the freedom of the individual, the thesis of value neutrality emerges as liberal ideology. Whatever the liberating effect of decisionism may have been, it has de facto become the ideology of a scientific establishment which was conditioned to sell its services to the highest bidder. Decisionism has promoted a division of labor between those who determine the ends and those who supply the technical means without being concerned about their application . Thus it supports the status quo, and becomes a means of repression and exploitation .Decisionism is an inherent aspect of positivism . The subjectivity of ethics is the counterpart of the objectivity of science. Both are the result of a subjective idealism which takes the individual subject as point of departure. It is the individual subject who constructs his world on the basis of sensory impressions and his reason and who chooses his values. This implies not only the autonomy of ethics vis-à-vis science, but also an autonomy of facts vis-à-vis theory, and an autonomy of both science and ethics vis-à-vis history. This epistemological position is, therefore, elementaristic, individualistic and ahistorical.A radical alternative has to take as point of departure that cognition in its diverse manifestations (scientific and epistemological paradigms, logic, etc.) and value systems are interrelated historical products. It has to reject the compartmentalization of fact and value, fact and theory , subject and object, and it must place these relations in a truly dialectical perspective. Such a perspective does not provide us with unshakable moral and political precepts, but — since it does not take what is historically given for the eternally valid nor confound history with mere arbitrariness — it does point to the possibility and necessity of transformation and emancipation, i.e., the historically ly possible.Cornelis J.J. Vermeulen is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam.

---

     

Descriptive and explanatory markedness

The wide empirical coverage of two number features, [??singular] and [??augmented], is used to show that (Greenbergian) category-internal markedness, (geometric) feature markedness, and value markedness are, respectively, epiphenomenal, untenable, and too simplistically formulated to be currently evaluated.     

Is the medium the message? Biological traits and their regulation

Much about the nature of biological processes is logically necessary but functionally arbitrary. What does this mean about biology?     

Problems with the use of cladistic analysis in palaeoanthropology

Cladistic analysis is a popular method for reconstructing evolutionary relationships on the human lineage. However, it has limitations and hidden assumptions that are often not considered by palaeoanthropologists. Some researchers who are opposed to its use regard cladistics as the preferred method for taxonomic «splitters» and claim it has lead to a revitalisation of typology. Typology remains a part of human evolutionary studies, regardless of the acceptance or use of cladistics. The assumption/preference for «splitting» over «lumping» in cladistics (alpha) taxonomy and the general failure to evaluate (post-hoc) such taxonomies have served to reinforce this assertion.

Researchers have also adopted a number of practices that are logically untenable or introduce considerable error. The evolutionary trend of human encephalisation, apparently isometric with body size, and concurrent reduction in the gut and masticatory apparatus, suggests continuous cladistic characters are biased by problems of body size.

The method suffers a logical weakness, or circularity, leading to bias when characters with multiple states are used. Coding of such characters can only be done using prior criteria, and this is usually done using an existing phylogenetic scheme. Another problem with coding character states is the handling of variation within species. While this form of variation is usually ignored by palaeoanthropologists, when characters are recognised as varying, their treatment as a separate state adds considerable error to cladograms.

The genetic proximity of humans, chimpanzees and gorillas has important implications for cladistic analyses. It is argued that chimpanzees and gorillas should be treated as ingroup taxa and an alternative outgroup such as orangutans should be used, or an (hypothetical) ancestral body plan developed. Making chimpanzees and gorillas ingroup taxa would considerably enhance the biological utility of anthropological cladograms.

All published human cladograms fail to meet standard quality criteria indicating that none of them may be considered reliable. The continuing uncertainty over the number and composition of fossil human species is the largest single source of error for cladistics and human phylogenetic reconstruction.     

东喜马拉雅地区雀儿豆属的修订

本文依据形态特征对分布于东喜马拉雅地区的雀区豆属植物进行了研究,认为荚果圆柱形,长圆形并且果皮具海绵状结构非该类植物所特有;垫状生活型则是植物对高山带,荒砾质带生态适应的结果。     

Clarification of studies on the origin of thymic lymphocytes.

The thesis that lymphocytes originate in situ by the direct transformation of epithelial cells within the thymic primordium in anurous frogs is untenable. On the contrary, in both the leopard frog and the African clawed toad, the lymphocytes that first appear in the embryonic thymus are derived from extrathymic lymphopoietic cells that invaded the developing organ. The exact source of origin of the invading lymphopoietic cells remains problematic.     

On the antiperiplanar lone pair hypothesis and its application to catalysis by glycosidases.

The idea that sp3 lone pairs of electrons on a heteroatom direct the departure of a leaving group from an adjacent tetrahedral carbon centre is shown to be untenable as a general principle, and the permissive evidence in favour of it to be accounted for by the principle of least nuclear motion. The application of the idea to the majority of glycopyranosidases, which work by a double-displacement mechanism, is shown to require implausible contortions of the pyranose ring.     

Resource limited and equilibrium models of populations

Summary The logistic equation has been used as the basis of two distinct models of population dynamics, a resource limited model and an equilibrium model. It is argued that although the two models are very different, the distinction between them has been obscured by the use of the same terminology for the parameters of both. It is further argued that the simple equilibrium model developed from the logistic equation has inconsistencies which make it untenable as a population model.     

Getting rid of interventions

According to James Woodward’s influential interventionist account of causation, X is a cause of Y iff, roughly, there is a possible intervention on X that changes Y. Woodward requires that interventions be merely logically possible. I will argue for two claims against this modal character of interventions: First, merely logically possible interventions are dispensable for the semantic project of providing an account of the meaning of causal statements. If interventions are indeed dispensable, the interventionist theory collapses into (some sort of) a counterfactual theory of causation. Thus, the interventionist theory is not tenable as a theory of causation in its own right. Second, if one maintains that merely logically possible interventions are indispensable, then interventions with this modal character lead to the fatal result that interventionist counterfactuals are evaluated inadequately. Consequently, interventionists offer an inadequate theory of causation. I suggest that if we are concerned with explicating causal concepts and stating the truth-conditions of causal claims we best get rid of Woodwardian interventions.     

A taxonomic revision of the genus Pachyrhizus (Fabaceae -Phaseoleae)

The genus Pachyrhizus is revised in order to establish the distribution of the species and their variation. Three species in cultivation ( P. erosus, P. tuberosus and P. ahipa ) and two species only occurring in the wild ( P. ferrugineus and P. panamensis ) are recognized. P. strigosus is considered conspecific with P. erosus . All the infraspecific taxa proposed by Clausen are considered untenable. The new combination P. ferrugineus is made for what was previously know as P. vernalis .     

Disturbance regimes in North Queensland rainforests: A re-evaluation of their relationship to species richness and diversity

Changes in tree species richness and diversity after logging and natural disturbance on small rainforest plots in north Queensland were studied by Nicholson et al. (1988). They found logging had enhanced richness and diversity, which declined in its absence. A re-evaluation of their data, especially those on the predisturbance condition of these plots, indicates that their conclusions are untenable.     

Studies on the velocity distribution of the protoplasmic streaming in the myxomycete plasmodium

Summary It was shown that the velocity distribution of the intracapillary streaming of protoplasm in a plasmodium ofPhysarum polycephalum is the same no matter whether the flow is spontaneous or whether it is induced artificially by external local air pressure applied to the plasmodium. Thus we conclude that the protoplasmic flow in the plasmodium is caused by local difference in endoplasm pressure. The view that the seat of the motive force responsible for the flow is located in the streaming protoplasm itself is untenable for this type of streaming.     

Explosions and hot spots in supertree methods

In phylogenetic systematics a problem of great practical and theoretical interest is to construct one or more large phylogenies (evolutionary trees), i.e., supertrees, from a given set of small phylogenies with overlapping sets of leaf labels. Although the methods being used to solve this problem are usually given plausible biological or theoretical justifications, occasionally it is possible to see that the result of a supertree method (SM) is explosive, and therefore logically meaningless, in the sense that it has been inferred from logical propositions that are contradictory. This paper presents the basic ideas and issues of how explosions affect the inference of rooted trees by SMs. We define the relevant concepts, give examples, and show how sometimes it is possible to identify hot spots in the input from which an SM may make explosive inferences that cannot be logically justified.     

Medicalization, Medical Necessity, and Feminist Medicine

New and proposed medical technologies continually challenge our vision of what constitutes appropriate medical treatment. As scholars and consumers grapple with the meaning of innovation, one common critical theme to surface is that it constitutes undesirable medicalization. But we are embodied creatures who can often benefit from medical knowledge; in addition, rejection of medicalization may be in some cases based on an untenable appeal to nature. Harnessing the power of medicine for women's welfare requires us to rethink the goals of medicine as well as implement fundamental reforms.     

Theories of Social Honor

The approaches used in studying status systems (or systems of prestige or social honor) can be classified as either materialist or nonmaterialist, and the essential differences between them reflect differences in assumptions about human motivations. It is argued that the materialist approach is untenable. The nonmaterialist approaches also differ among themselves in motivational assumptions, and these differences in turn lead to very different views about the nature of status systems. Three nonmaterialist approaches are analyzed, and it is suggested that one of them is more compelling than the others.     

Alkaloids of the rutaceae: their distribution and systematic significance

The biosynthesis of the alkaloids of the Rutaceae and its relevance to their systematic value is discussed. The alkaloids are divided into groups of potential systematic significance and their distribution reviewed and analysed with respect to presently accepted taxonomic classifications for the family. It is shown that, from the alkaloid data available, Engler's classification of the major sub-families Rutoideae and Toddalioideae is untenable. An hypothesis for the phylogeny of the Rutales, based on the distribution of alkaloids and other secondary metabolites, is proposed.     

Du réflexe à l’inconscient

This article describes, from a historical point of view, how the scientific environment of the nineteenth century explains the appearance of the Freudian unconscious at the end of the century, particularly the discovery of the reflex arc several decades before. Since then, relegating psychological functioning to the domination of the conscious will has become untenable; rather, a psychophysiological model prevails. The unconscious is a conjectural concept, but also consists of components contributed by clinical observation, hypnosis and heredity.     

Bacterial and fungal growth in total parenteral nutrition solutions

The most serious complication of prolonged intravenous infusion of hypertonic dextrose and amino acids is infection. Frequently, the etiology is fungal rather than bacterial. Previous authors have suggested that bacterial survival and growth in the solutions is suppressed by (a) high dextrose concentration, (b) high osmolality, or (c) low pH. This paper presents evidence that proposals (a) and (b) are untenable and (c) is only partly responsible. We call attention to the presence of a factor that is antibacterial but not antifungal; namely, a high concentration of glycine.