1999/12/01 by Arnold G. Kluge · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Arts and Humanities · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Philosophy and History of Science #Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies #Cladogram #Synapomorphy #Homology (biology) #Biology #Phylogenetic tree #Evolutionary biology #Inference #Universality (dynamical systems) #Cladistics #Operationalization #Epistemology #Genetics #Philosophy #Clade
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.1999.tb00279.x
openalex publication_date 1999/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
When the concept of homology is operationalized with synapomorphy and tested with character congruence, homology and homoplasy are treated as a complement relation, a and not-a, respectively. This leaves homoplasy to be defined nominally, something like operational 'error' in the inference of homology. In choosing the most severely tested and least disconfirmed cladogram, those errors are minimized, and the power of that cladogram to explain synapomorphies, as inherited from the same common ancestral condition, is correspondingly maximized. Tests of predictions of homoplasy can lead to the elimination of those kinds of error. The complementary relationship between homology and homoplasy is considered one of reciprocal clarification, not epistemological dependence.