Parsimony and History

Parsimony and explanatory power

Parsimony can be related to explanatory power, either by noting that each additional requirement for a separate origin of a feature reduces the number of observed similarities that can be explained as inheritance from a common ancestor; or else by applying Popper s formula for explanatory power together with the fact that parsimony yields maximum likelihood trees under No Common Mechanism (NCM)...

Parsimony, likelihood, and simplicity

The latest charge against parsimony in phylogenetic inference is that it involves estimating too many parameters. The charge is derived from the fact that, when each character is allowed a branch length vector of its own (instead of the homogeneous branch lengths assumed in current likelihood models), the results for likelihood and parsimony are identical. Parsimony, however, can also be derive...

Ideological parsimony

The theoretical virtue of parsimony values the minimizing of theoretical commitments, but theoretical commitments come in two kinds: ontological and ideological. While the ontological commitments of a theory are the entities it posits, a theory’s ideological commitments are the primitive concepts it employs. Here, I show how we can extend the distinction between quantitative and qualitative par...

Parsimony, Hierarchy, and Biological Implications

When constructing a cladogram from a data set a researcher will, as a matter of course, select the shortest possible branching diagram that will represent the data, thus minimizing the number of appearances of any character on the cladogram. This “parsimony program” is usually adopted without comment, but when arguments defending or questioning its use are put forward, they almost universally d...

Phylogenetic inference and parsimony analysis.