Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Patterns of Classification -- The scala naturae -- The Linnean hierarchy and the Tree of Porphyry -- Quinarian circles and family trees -- Grades, phenograms, and cladograms -- Patterns of Phylogeny -- The scala naturae as phylogeny -- Family trees -- Stufenreihen and cladograms -- Reticulate phylogeny -- Homology and the Evidence for Evolution -- Homology -- The classification of homology -- Vestigial organs -- Ontogeny and molecular biology -- Geological and Geographical Evidence -- The fossil record -- Fossils and transmutation -- Biogeography -- Methods of Classification: The Development of Taxonomy -- The method of logical division -- Linnean taxonomy -- Post-Linnean taxonomy -- "Evolutionary classification" -- Conclusions: The historical basis of taxonomy -- Methods of Classification: Phenetics and Cladistics -- Phenetics -- Phenetic clustering -- Cladistics -- Cladistics and fossils -- Methods of Classification: the Current Debate -- "The transformation of cladistics" -- Out-groups or ontogeny -- Parsimony -- Classification and the Reconstruction of Phylogeny -- The reconstruction of phylogeny -- Molecular distance -- Sequence data -- Is Systematics Independent? -- Distances, parsimony, compatibility, or likelihood? -- The hierarchy -- Cladograms, trees, and scenarios -- Mechanisms of Evolution: Darwinism and Its Rivals -- Lamarck and "Lamarckism" -- Natural Selection: Darwin and Wallace -- Post-Origin theories -- Mechanisms of Evolution: the Synthetic Theory -- "The Modern Synthesis."

Historically, naturalists who proposed theories of evolution, including Darwin and Wallace, did so in order to explain the apparent relationship of natural classification. This book begins by exploring the intimate historical relationship between patterns of classification and patterns of phylogeny. However, it is a circular argument to use the data for classification. Alec Panchen presents other evidence for evolution in the form of a historically based but rigorously logical argument. This is followed by a history of methods of classification and phylogeny reconstruction including current mathematical and molecular techniques. The author makes the important claim that if the hierarchical pattern of classification is a real phenomenon, then biology is unique as a science in making taxonomic statements. This conclusion is reached by way of historical reviews of theories of evolutionary mechanism and the philosophy of science as applied to biology. The book is addressed to biologists, particularly taxonomists, concerned with the history and philosophy of their subject, and to philosophers of science concerned with biology. It is also an important source book on methods of classification and the logic of evolutionary theory for students, professional biologists, and paleontologists.