Abstract
Taxonomists now seem to embrace the conclusion that natural classification not based on phylogeny is impossible in principle. Classification in physics suggests, however, that a natural classification of objects is possible when there are two disparate levels of their description. This is the essence of classification based on the renormalization-group (RG) philosophy, and the resultant classification scheme is regarded sufficiently objective. Thus, we can argue that it is still premature to conclude that biological classification is objective only when it is based on molecular phylogeny. The analogy to RG suggests the developmental taxonomy dependent solely on ontogeny.
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Oono, Y. Renormalization and Taxonomy. Journal of Statistical Physics 110, 1369–1374 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022117515284
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022117515284