The virtual extinction of the doctrinally phenetic school in biological systematics has left two principal competitors on the battlefield: adherents of the synthetic (‘evolutionary’) approach argue for classifications based on all available (reconstructed pattern of evolutionary development as well as its observed genetic/phenetic results) evidence, whereas according to the advocates of cladistic (‘phylogenetic’) principles taxonomy should exactly mirror the phylogenetic branching pattern, with no regard to anything else. The debate, often vehement and harsh, lasts already for half a century, but mostly without mutual understanding: the concrete biological arguments posed by synthetists are typically being left unaddressed by cladists who, instead, respond with some preconceived philosophical concepts or formally technical divagations. This paper is an attempt to turn the discussion back to biology by replying specifically, one by one, to the points raised in some recent, very typical of cladists' attitude, papers by Zachos (2011, 2014) and Schmidt-Lebuhn (2012, 2014), and evaluating their claims in light of observable or deducible biological facts.

Keywords: taxonomy, classification, cladistics, synthetic approach, paraphyly, holophyly, predicting power, information content

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