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This book focuses on plant systematics and evolution, with special interest on the history and philosophy of botanical classification. Tracing the history of how humans have dealt with ordering the plant world is very much a glimpse of how human culture and science have progressed over the past 2000 years. The objective in this book is to present ideas on plant classification beginning with classical Greek and Roman scholars, through the Middle Ages, into the Renaissance, and finally to the modern 21st century. Significant quantitative methods in classification have originated within the past 70 years, which have never before been integrated with previous historical perspectives. Most textbooks of systematic botany contain an historical introduction or perhaps a chapter on the history of classification, but this book presents much greater detail on the classifications themselves and the cultural dimensions of the different time periods. Biographical detail is also provided to give a better appreciation of the individual botanists who have contributed new ideas in the search for maximally predictive systems.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Chapter 1 Classification as a portrait of reality.- Chapter 2 Observing the natural world.- Chapter 3 Keeping ancient knowledge alive.- Chapter 4 Utility of plants for humans.- Chapter 5 Early efforts toward formal classification.- Chapter 6 A stable and convenient system emerges.- Chapter 7 Improving predictive quality.- Chapter 8 Development of evolutionary thinking.- Chapter 9 Phylogenetic/evolutionary classification systems: European influences.- Chapter 10 Phylogenetic/evolutionary classification systems: American and other Influences.- Chapter 11 The populational revolution.- Chapter 12 Explanation and quantification in classification.- Chapter 13 Putting descent into quantitative classification.- Chapter 14 Phylogenetic analysis and its influence on classification.- Chapter 15 Quantitative evolutionary phylogenetics.- Chapter 16 Horizons.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Tod F. Stuessy is Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University and the University of Vienna. His research involves systematics, evolution, and biogeography of flowering plants, especially Asteraceae. He has published over 300 articles and 17 books dealing with different aspects of systematics including monography, phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses, and population genetic investigations. He has been interested in the evolution of plants of oceanic archipelagoes, especially in the Robinson Crusoe Islands, Chile. He has been President of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists (ASPT) and Secretary-General of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT). For lifetime achievement in plant systematics, he has received the Asa Gray Award from the ASPT and the Engler Medal in Gold from the IAPT.
