Multilevel Lineages and Multidimensional Trees: The Levels of Lineage and Phylogeny Reconstruction

Abstract

The relation among method, concept, and theory in science is complicated. I seek to shed light on that relation by considering an instance of it in systematics: the additional challenges phylogeneticists face when reconstructing phylogeny not at a single level but simultaneously at multiple levels of the hierarchy. How does this complicate the task of phylogenetic inference, and how might it inform and shape the conceptual foundations of phylogenetics? This offers a lens through which the interplay of method, theory, and concepts may be understood in systematics, which, in turn, provides data for a more general account.