First, I'm new to the site (or more correctly, a very rare visitor). Please excuse any clumsiness, or posting in inappropriate places, etc.
My question, relating to the philosophy of biological systematics, is something like this: If proponents of the traditional school of systematics called *evolutionary taxonomy (*Mayr, Simpson, et al) were still alive, is it plausible they'd still be excluding humans from the ape family, as they did in the previous century? Given new discoveries, techniques, etc. in recent decades, would they still have reasonable grounds for excluding humans from apes, birds from dinosaurs, and so on for analogous cases?
Of course, given the facts of evolution and genealogy, and combining those facts with the methods of the currently dominant school of cladistics, one is compelled to the taxonomical conclusion that humans must be nested within the larger ape family: Humans are apes (birds are dinosaurs, etc.). I do not dispute this.
It's something of a truism nowadays, perhaps even a dogma, that humans are apes, though I find many people who perpetuate this "dogma" (if I may), do not understand the issues very well.
Before cladistics rose to dominance a few decades ago, presumably as many readers will be aware, the previously dominant school was known as evolutionary taxonomy. The evolutionary taxonomists did not classify humans as apes (nor birds as dinosaurs, etc.).
Now, when I bring this up, a typical reaction is something like this: "Well, science has moved on. Modern science has corrected the mistakes of previous generations. These guys were just confused about the genealogical relations which obtain between ourselves, the chimps, orangutans, etc. We've cleared that up now. Humans are apes, and that's that. To suggest otherwise is just to show an ignorance of science."
Science has indeed moved on, of course, but it's not at all clear to me that people such as Ernst Mayr would concede that his "mistakes" have been "corrected." Contra my responders above, it's clear in the writings of Mayr et al that they were fully aware of, and acknowledged, the same evolutionary and genealogical facts we acknowledge today (e.g. we evolved from apes, chimps are our closest relative, etc.). The reason the evolutionary taxonomists excluded ourselves from the apes (ditto for analogous cases), as readers may already be aware, is evolutionary divergence. Yes, we evolved from apes, and we're similar in many ways, but we are also very different from our apish relatives, it is deemed, therefore humans are raised out of the ape family altogether.
Cladists use a different methodology, of course. It's not that they deny the abovementioned evolutionary divergence, but rather, they simply ignore it as a matter of methodological fiat. This divergence, even if conceded, is simply not relevant to them.
So, I feel there's a great deal of misunderstanding over these issues. Any systematists out there? (I'm merely an interested layperson). Yes, yes, we keep being told of how DNA analysis (or whatever) shows how incredibly similar we are to the chimps, but I suspect this simply misses the point. The evolutionary taxonomists already admitted our propinquity to the chimps. What distinguishes them from the cladists is their insistence that divergence must also be taken into consideration in a sensible classification.
So, if Ernst Mayr (say) were still around, do you think he'd still be arguing that it's absurd -- as he did say -- to lump us in with the apes? Or would recent advances cause him to reconsider? I wonder whether the reason "humans are apes" is such a truism nowadays has nothing at all to do with new advances and new empirical discoveries. I wonder whether it's simply a matter of one school of systematics being replaced by another, and all those naysayers who would classify otherwise are now simply dead!
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.