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Philosophy of Sciences

2014 year, number 3

The structure of biological diversity

A. A. Pozdnyakov
Institute of Systematics and Ecology of Animals of the Siberian Branch of the RAS, Novosibirsk
Keywords: Biodiversity, repeatability, similarity, Willis’ rule, self-similarity, fractal, explanation, Cartesianism, Newtonianism

Abstract

The paper describes two ways used to explain the order in biological diversity: the Cartesian and Newtonian ones. The order in biodiversity shows itself by repeatability of phenomena: similarity of taxa series (recorded in periodic tables), mimicry, cryptic species, similarity of taxa morphological variability (reflected in Vavilov’s law of homologous series), and parallelism of individual traits. Ratio of the number of taxa and their volume is represented by a concave curve (Willis’ rule). Self-similarity is a characteristic feature of biodiversity. We show that solving the problem of the structure of biodiversity in compliance with scientific standards is possible only by the use of the Newtonian approach.