Method
While the method has its greatest value when extant species are used for bracketing, the method itself does not not require that both bracketing groups have extant members, nor that the species or group to be bracketed is extinct. The only real requisite is that the two bracketing species/groups be better known, with regard to the trait in question, than the species to be bracketed is.
Read more about this topic: Phylogenetic Bracketing
Famous quotes containing the word method:
“I do not know a method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“Unlike Descartes, we own and use our beliefs of the moment, even in the midst of philosophizing, until by what is vaguely called scientific method we change them here and there for the better. Within our own total evolving doctrine, we can judge truth as earnestly and absolutely as can be, subject to correction, but that goes without saying.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.”
—Isaiah Berlin (b. 1909)