Reflections on the teaching of taxonomy and phylogenetic systematics and the development of abstract thought

Abstract

The  present  work  aims  to  expose  preliminary results  of  reflections  on  the  teaching  of  living things     classification     systems     (addressing taxonomy  and  phylogenetic  systematics)  and the    development    of    the    psychic    function “thought”,    focusing    on    empirical    abstract thought  and  theoretical  abstract  thought.  In order  to  achieve  the  mentioned  objective,  we take  as  a  reference  the  proposals  of  Vygotsky and Davidov on the development of conceptual thought     as     well     as     key     elements     of phylogenetic    systematics    systematized    by Mayr     and     Amorim.     We     conducted     a bibliographic  research  through  which  it  was possible   to   identify   elements   of   empirical science  and  formal  logic  in  taxonomy,  as  well as    elements    of    theoretical    science    and dialectical  logic  in  phylogenetic  systematics. We   discuss   the   relationship   between   the teaching  of  these  classification  systems  and the development of strictly abstract thought. It deserves attention to the fact that, unfortunately, systematics is not a constituent element  of  the  biology  teaching  of  elementary and high school.