BIC wrote:
"The dichotomous cladograms are only an operational way to visualize sister relationships and are in no way an assumption or constraint about how things must evolve. This has been explicated numerous times in the literature."

Me:
Yes I understand that Hennig and his followers have admitted that his assumption of splitting is only a "convention." That is of course why Mayr said that the cladistic practice of disqualifying paraphyletic taxa is scientifically untenable. What you seem to be telling me is that even though the cladists know that paraphyletic groups are the inevitable result of the process of evolution, such knowledge has not persuaded the cladists to abandon their continuing crusade to eliminate paraphyletic taxa. I know that too.

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