Talk:Thomas Cavalier-Smith

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Untitled[edit]

Have added short, factual temporary page with full list of author's publications and links to other relevant Wikipedia entries.

Temporary page updated, expanded, and set to main page. Evolver 01:32, 7 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Have added POV tag for now. The page is *very* complimentary and glosses over the fact that many of Cavalier-Smith's claims are not widely accepted. I think it's fine to include positive summaries of accomplishments, but this page is downright sentimental at present.

Revised to possible copyright problems. This is a simple verbatim replication of his International Prize for Biology write-up from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. This makes it decidedly NOT neutral AND possibly a copyright issue.

Know where I can get his autograph? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.118.191.48 (talk) 07:34, 10 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Image copyright problem with File:Robert Whittaker.PNG[edit]

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History of n-kingdom models[edit]

It seems to me there is entirely too much lead-in material describing the early classifications Cavalier-Smith builds on. While context is important, most of this material belongs, and is found, under Kingdom_(biology) and could just as well be referenced (and merged if necessary) --Dmh (talk) 06:01, 28 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly agree. Ceolas (talk) 18:28, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Controversy[edit]

To cite the controversy of his claims, I wrote on Bacterial taxonomy

The higher taxa proposed by Cavalier-Smith (viz. [1]) are highly controversial and generally disregarded by molecular biology community (c.f. reviewers' comments on [2], e.g. Eric Bapteste is "agnostic" regarding the conclusions) and are often not even mention in reviews (e.g. [3]).

Can this statement be re-used here? --Squidonius (talk) 21:47, 8 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

An additional reference for the controversial nature of his views is recorded as Judicial Opinion 79: ^[1] Judicial Commission of the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes; XIIth International (IUMS) Congress of Bacteriology and Applied Microbiology. Minutes of the meeting, 3, 4, and 6. August 2008, Istanbul, Turkey. From Minute 22: "(iii) It was agreed unanimously that all names listed by Cavalier-Smith (2002) should be rejected." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.157.198.118 (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted comment by 137.205.183.114. BLP applies to Talk pages as well as to Articles. Mike Spathaky (talk) 19:54, 30 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ doi:10.1099/ijs.0.037366-0

Complete box and data[edit]

I think that the box and his data are incomplete. Where was he born? It isn't written. Should be all data to increase the quality of the article. Thanks.--179.37.136.248 (talk) 23:53, 15 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Death[edit]

Now deceased as of 3/19/21 - Looking for something I can cite publicly — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.189.190.227 (talk) 00:00, 21 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Where did you get this information? Microtubules (talk) 13:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw it announced in twitter, they link this as source -> https://www.protistology.org.uk/t-c-s . I edited the page (I hope I did it correctly). --Feministo (talk) 22:16, 30 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Surname Cavalier-Smith[edit]

Recent edits have referred to Tom as "Smith". He has been known as Cavalier-Smith throughout his education and professional career as that is his surname. I propose to edit accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spathaky (talk • contribs) 11:14, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Section: Four major influences[edit]

This section seems very SYNTH-y to me. While it may very well articulate important guiding principles of the subject, this isn't supported by the text or the sourcing. Instead, the sources that are present are specific to the topics discussed here but with no reference to the subject of this article. I'd prefer the text to be improved to include clear sources that link these topics to the subject of this article, but will otherwise delete it as synthesis. PLUMBAGO 09:34, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Section removed from article. Pasted below for posterity. PLUMBAGO 09:34, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Four major influences

Thomas Cavalier-Smith worked at a time when there was a pervasive presumption that classification should reflect evolutionary pathways. How this should be done had four major influences, as described in the following subsections.

Prior representation

First, was a residue of the 'traditional' approach that admitted speculation and which lacked any explicit rigor as to how a particular evolutionary insight should be translated into the arrangement and ranks of taxa. Inherent to this approach were narratives about character evolution and classifications that included paraphyletic taxa, and in which degree of difference would influence the rank assigned to taxa.

Popperian philosophy of science

The second influence was the philosophy as to how scientific progress was made. It had been articulated by K. Popper^[1]^[2] and had shifted the emphasis from verification of ideas to the falsification of hypotheses.

Popper saw that science progressed by a process that eliminated unsound hypotheses, so whittling down of the array of possible explanations leading towards the explanations which were more likely correct. To fit into this process, hypotheses needed to be falsifiable.

Cladistics

The third influence was cladistics – an explicit way of presenting (and then "falsifying", although see^[3]) evolutionary hypotheses. This was initially articulated by Willi Hennig,^[4] and was increasingly (but not universally^[5]) accepted by many as how taxonomy should be done.^[6]^[7] The justification of the cladistic approach in terms of Popperian hypothetico-deductivism was popular in the 1970s and 1980s but is no longer considered defensible (see Sober^[8] and reviewed in Rieppel^[3]).

Genetic sequencing

Fourthly, technical advances in sequencing technology led to a massive growth of hypotheses about evolutionary relationships based on the similarities among sequences of compared organisms. Algorithms were used to analyse sequence data, with the results being usually presented in the form of dendrograms.

References

^ Popper, K. (1959) [1934]. Logik der Forschung [The Logic of Scientific Discovery] (English translation ed.). Psychology Press. ISBN 0-415-27844-9.
^ Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04318-2.
^ ^a ^b Rieppel, Olivier (2008). "Hypothetico-deductivism in systematics: fact or fiction?". Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia. 48 (23): 263–273. doi:10.1590/S0031-10492008002300001. ISSN 1807-0205.
^ Hennig, W. (1966). Phylogenetic Systematics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
^ Cite error: The named reference ReferenceA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Wiley, E.O. (1981). Phylogenetics: The theory and practice of phylogenetic systematics. Wiley.
^ Eldredge, N.; Cracraft, J. (1981) [1980]. Phylogenetic Patterns and the Evolutionary Process. Method and Theory in Comparative Biology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-03802-X.
^ Sober, Elliott (1988). Reconstructing the past : parsimony, evolution, and inference. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-19273-X. OCLC 17803724.

[1] :10.1099/ijs.0.037366-0

[2] Popper, K. (1959) [1934]. Logik der Forschung [The Logic of Scientific Discovery] (English translation ed.). Psychology Press. ISBN 0-415-27844-9.

[3] Popper, K. (1963). Conjectures and Refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-04318-2.

[:2-4] Rieppel, Olivier (2008). "Hypothetico-deductivism in systematics: fact or fiction?". Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia. 48 (23): 263–273. doi:10.1590/S0031-10492008002300001. ISSN 1807-0205.

[5] Hennig, W. (1966). Phylogenetic Systematics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

[ReferenceA-6] Cite error: The named reference ReferenceA was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[7] Wiley, E.O. (1981). Phylogenetics: The theory and practice of phylogenetic systematics. Wiley.

[8] Eldredge, N.; Cracraft, J. (1981) [1980]. Phylogenetic Patterns and the Evolutionary Process. Method and Theory in Comparative Biology. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-03802-X.

[9] Sober, Elliott (1988). Reconstructing the past : parsimony, evolution, and inference. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-19273-X. OCLC 17803724.

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