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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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Introduction. In his study of evolution, or arrange-
ment of organisms into taxa, the systematic biologist
makes continual use of the concepts of homology and
analogy. The historical development and current
meanings of these concepts are of interest both because
they help show how the science of systematics is done,
and because of the intriguing frequency with which
philosophically mistaken arguments have intruded into
the science.

The fundamental aim of taxonomy is to classify
organisms into groups in a biologically meaningful way.
The Linnean hierarchy, built along lines formally pro-
posed by Aristotle, is the familiar result. A major pur-
pose of evolutionary biology is to discover the actual
diverging sequences of organisms, commonly described
by phylogenetic trees, and the causes of those diver-
gences.