Principios de Taxonomia

If the species concept is, or even has to be, pluralistic, then species cannot exist in
reality. This is because pluralism is an expression of different human viewpoints
being evaluated differently, which leads to artificial species concepts in every case.
The fact that several different species concepts are used concurrently even today
(Mayden, 1997) means that only one of the concepts can be true, or that there are
no species in nature, or that the word species represents several things simultaneously.
The last case would mean that a species does not have a distinct ontological
structure because its existence traces back to different biological processes
(Ereshefsky, 1999).
Many taxonomists and biophilosophers are currently of the opinion that species do
not actually exist in nature (summarized in Wilson, 1999), whereas others consider
species to be real (e.g., Mayr, 2000 4643; Ghiselin, 1997). Dissension reigns. Whether
taxa such as Homo sapiens or Drosophila melanogaster exist in reality is certainly a
justifiable question.
2.5
The Reality of Species: Ernst Mayr vs. Charles Darwin
2.5 The Reality of Species: Ernst Mayr vs. Charles Darwinj19
Those who consider that species do not exist reapproach the position that Darwin had
assumed more than a century and a half ago. Darwin considered that species were not
real, representing a figment that we had created solely for the sake of our own
convenience. However, the founders of the synthetic theory of evolution in the
1930s and early 1940s (also referred to as the modern synthesis ), including
Theodosius Dobzhansky, Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr, Bernhard Rensch and George
Gaylord Simpson, considered species to exist in reality (Mayr, 1982).
Darwin (1859) wrote in On the Origin of Species in 1859 Hence, in determining
whether a form should be ranked as a species or a variety, the opinion of naturalists
having sound judgment and wide experience seems the only guide to follow. Darwin
goes on to say ...I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of
convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not
essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more
fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual
differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience s sake. ...Varieties have the
same general traits as species, for they cannot be distinguished from species ...
There is no real or natural line of difference between species and permanent or
discernible variety ...nor do there exist any features on which reliance can be placed
to pronounce whether two plants are distinguishable as species or varieties (cited in
Mayr, 1982).
Darwin therefore treated species as the higher taxa (genera, families, orders and
classes) that, according to current general consensus, are only artificial groupings
constructed for the sake of convenience. In a letter to Hooker Darwin writes 1856,
It is really laughable to see what different ideas are prominent in various naturalists
minds, when they speak of species ; in some, resemblance is everything and descent
of little weight - in some, resemblance seems to go for nothing, and creation the