Both art and science open up new ways to see the world in which we live. The author would be delighted if readers of this philosophical work come to view some old and significant questions of biological inquiry in a new light. The basic constructs of biology were, and are, those of organism and species. However, up until today, biology has not found a way to define them precisely, and thus it has failed to form a solid theoretical foundation for a confluent system of defining natural laws. How we view systematics as a fundamental biological discipline and how we will address its basic questions depend on the further development of biology as a scientific discipline. Such questions as: What is a species? Do current taxonomic categories represent real entities or are they just conventional constructs of our mind? Is our world lawfully organized and if so, how do we determine the natural law of its organization? ... are eternal scientific questions and scientists will return to them again and again to give science a new vision and a new spin. Once you see a new vision of the world it will stay with you forever.
- Systematics as a scientific discipline: its role in scientific
- Knowledge
- Classification and biology
- What is a ‘natural system’ of classification?
- Classification and phylogeny
- Typology
- Essence of classification or classification of essences?
- Form: its meaning and value for classification
- 'Pure' and biological forms
- Archetype
- Species
- Reality of universal categories
- Reality of taxonomic categories
- Individuality
- Architectonics of a natural system
- Foundations of the general theory of a system
- Typology and typological space
Conclusions
References