Stratigramy - Biological Classifications Through Spontaneous Self-Assembly

Abstract

Biological taxonomy is a phenetic process of spontaneous self-assembly because of the intrinsic structural and developmental correlation of organic nature. It is, therefore, independent of any evolutionary- phylogenetic input, and involves six stages. The first three, constituting stratigramy, are procedural and essential, the last three are theoretical and optional, thus: (1) conceptually identical morphological structures, homologues, or equivalent blocks of non-morphological data, are identified in different organisms, and (2) divided into distinct states, here called homolostrata, which supply characters used (3) to progressively group organisms by matching identical individuals and then taxa of increasing character spread to spontaneously reveal the previously concealed phenetic hierarchical array as a stratigram, from which diagnostic characters, branching points, and taxa in relative hierarchies can be read directly. Because the sequences across a stratigram are fortuitous they can: (4) be re-ordered in extrinsically determined, chronological sequences, chronograms, at each hierarchical level, from which (5) a cladogram can be derived by re-ordering taxa from the highest level downwards, so illustrating the minimum number of historical events implied by the pattern of contemporary organisms, following which (6) a phylogenetic tree, with an essential explanatory statement, can be derived. The first three steps in this process are inevitable in all multi-character biological taxonomy, in spite of evolutionary theorizing, because organic nature is intrinsically hierarchical and its components are inherently correlated.