 A number of authors have discussed the rise of mathematical thinking and computational tools in systematics—especially in connection with numerical taxonomy and phenetic classification (e.g., Hagen 2001; Sterner &amp; Lidgard 2014, 2018). Here we focus on the rise of statistical methods for inferring phylogenies and later  (§2)  we discuss the philosophical debates that arose regarding the use of these methods. Good and more thorough textbook introductions for phylogenetic methods include Felsenstein (2004), Lemey et al. (2009) and Baum &amp; Smith (2013). Yang and Rannala (2012) provide a helpful recent review in the context of molecular phylogenetics.)