51 February 2002 11 26 Stevens Why do we name organisms turies Since our ideas of nature have changed dramati Why do we name organisms Some reminders from the past Peter F Stevens Department of Biology University of Missouri at St Louis 8001 Natural Bridge Road St Louis Missouri 63121 and M issouri Botanical Garden P O Box 299 St Louis Missouri 63166 U S A E mail peter stevens mobot org The naming systems of Linnaeus and Bentham in particular are examined to clarify the relationships between naming and ideas of relationships Linnaean binomials were adopted largely for practical reasons Furthermore Linnaeus proposed his names in the context of system putting organisms in groups of 10 This allowed botanists of moderate capabilities to know at least the genera Although binomials are names of taxa of the two lowest levels of a rank hierarchy much of Linnaeus work does not fit easily in the currently widely accepted view of Linnaeus as a hard bitten essentialist Neither Lamarck nor the later Bentham believed in a rank hierarchy although to name organisms both used what is here called a flagged hierarchy name terminations indicating only a set of inclusion relationships not ranks of nature implied by a rank hierarchy Bentham was clear that the adoption of a flagged hierarchy with groups of a particular size in the Genera plantarum was to facilitate botanists understanding of the system as a whole Systematists like Bentham and Linnaeus managed information and presented classification systems simultaneously I conclude that the lower level of Linnaeus hierarchy is a special case of the noun adjective combination that pervade folk classifications in particular and human language in general Linking essentialism and Linnaean nomenclature is at best a red herring thus few nineteenth century botanists believed in a fully developed rank hierarchy Naming hierarchies are mostly such that at each level mem bers belong to only one group and this is at a higher level most such hierarchies are fairly shallow Historically uninom ials have seemed more attractive when generic limits were in flux but suboptimal when relationships were more stable Naming systems in general incorporate a substantial element of convention emphasizing particular numbers of groups and groups of particular size this facilitates comprehension and comm unication Similar conventions will be needed whatever naming system is used KEYWORDS Bentham convention flagged hierarchy informal hierarchy Linnaeus nomenclature phylogeny rank hierarchy There are also Idols arising from the dealings or assoc iations of men with one another which I call idols of the Marketplace For speech is the means of association am ong men and in consequence a wrong and inappro priate application of words obstructs the mind to a remarkable extent Bacon But unfortunate ly a unique stable num bering system probabl y won t ever happen as the community will not suppo rt such it isn t num bers that is the requirem ent for unique stable It is the com munity acceptanc e of a system to make anything unique stable Zoolog ical Nom enclature is an International Standa rd which should give you unique stable identifier keys etc but it fails because peop le will not follow it nor allow its modification to better provide the unique stable etc Set up a registration system like the Bacteria people did and you get unique names Stable fails because of taxonom ic progress and classification paradi gms Christian Thompson taxacom usobi o rg INTRODUCTION Much is made of the fact that systematists have been using a Linnaean hierarchy for the last two and half cen cally over that period it is suggested that how we go about naming organisms should change as well e g Pennisi 2001 Linnaeus believed that the species he 11 Stevens Why do we name organisms described and named had fixed essences did he not His ideas and his names surely are in conflict with evolution based naming systems of the twenty first century and so his names should go To help clarify the issues involved I examine some aspects of the relationship between names classifications and nature I ask two questions What were those who named groups trying to do What in consequence might we learn about the role naming plays in systematics These questions seem na ve and their answers self evident yet I will show that neither is as simple as it seems I focus on vascular plants but any principles we can derive will be generally applicable However it is no purpose of this article to criticise or defend in detail either proposals for a PhyloCode or the so called Linnaean hierarchy I look very briefly at some 18th and 19th century classifications focusing mainly on Linnaeus and George Bentham I shall suggest that the details of the hierarchy that Linnaeus used owe much to his belief that almost all plants had been discovered and to his desire that the system as a whole should be easy to grasp The oft repeated claims that Linnaeus was an essentialist and that essentialistic thought pervades his work turn out to be questionable When we look at other 18th and 19th century systematists and at George Bentham in particular we find hierarchies being used by systematists whose understanding of nature was very different from that of Linnaeus Again concerns with essences are not at all obvious and the desire that the system as a whole be easy to grasp shapes its structure My conclusions are two fold Firstly even if one thinks that Linnaeus was a essentialist this is surely tangential to the general issue of the use of hierarchical naming systems in biology Hierarchical naming systems pervade our whole language and thought and from this point of view the Linnaean hierarchy is simply one such system Secondly there is a recurring tension between the need to communicate and the apparent implications of a natural classification of whatever stripe for the naming system used The naming systems I discuss undeniably successful were conceived as conventions in which emphasis was placed on the structure of the hierarchy on particular levels in it and on taxa of a particular size Making systems easy to memorise or more generally to comprehend by the average botanist was an important goal Linnaeus and Bentham were as much managing information as naming or classifying nature and it is wise not to forget this Before going further terminological clarification is in order I distinguish between three kinds of hierarchies In informal hierarchies names suggest
View Full Document
Unlocking...