Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World

[XemaSab]

One spring when I was a graduate student, I would go each Monday down into the bowels of the entomology building. There I would meet Prof. Jack Franclemont, an elderly gentleman always with little dog in tow, to be tutored in the ordering and naming of life — the science of taxonomy.

Professor Franclemont, a famed moth specialist, was perfectly old school, wearing coat and tie to give the day’s lecture even though I was the only member of the audience. Quaintly distracted, he never quite got my name right, sometimes calling me Miss Loon or Miss Voon. After the talk, I would identify moths using a guide written in 1923, in silence or listening to stories of his dog’s latest antics. I enjoyed the meditative pleasure of those hours, despite the fact that as the lone (and not terribly proficient) student of an aging teacher, I could not help feeling that taxonomy might be dying, which, in fact, it is.

Despite the field’s now blatant modernity, with practitioners using DNA sequences, sophisticated evolutionary theory and supercomputers to order and name all of life, jobs for taxonomists continue to be in steady decline. The natural history collections crucial to the work are closeted or tossed.

Outside taxonomy, no one is much up in arms about this, but perhaps we should be, because the ordering and naming of life is no esoteric science. The past few decades have seen a stream of studies that show that sorting and naming the natural world is a universal, deep-seated and fundamental human activity, one we cannot afford to lose because it is essential to understanding the living world, and our place in it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11naming.html

[phantom power]

1. When I am designing a system of data structures and algorithms....

I cannot proceed (happily) until their names feel right to me. When I'm having trouble coming up with a good name for something, that is a clue that either I don't understand it yet, or that it's not cleanly factorable. Which is maybe the same thing.

Nomen est numen

[Terry in Austin]

2. From the Confucian tradition

There's the adage that "good government begins with calling things by their right names."

Names matter.

[Fotoware58]

3. Collateral damage

The war between the "lumpers" and the "splitters" rages on in the taxonomic world, with many casualties. Some seek the glory of naming a new species for themselves, while others prefer a more scientifically ordered grouping of very similar organisms. Should a plant be its very own species, solely because its flower is a different color than its more common relative? You'd think that with all the new technology, they could revamp to taxonomic system to more closely match what happens in genetic nature.

[phantom power]

7. Actually, that is exactly what is happening.

DNA analysis is being used to check the existing structure-based taxonomy. Unsurprisingly, the structure-based taxonomy has mapped on reasonably well, but there have been some definite curve-balls. Things have gotten really interesting with the advent of evo/devo and analysis of genetic drift in the developmental toolkit genes.

[Odin2005]

8. As a Dino enthusiast I am annoyed by the splitter tendency in dinosaur taxonomy

IMO there are many dinosaur species that are put in separate genera for no justifiable reason. An example is the two Tyrannosaur species Daspletosaurus torosus and Tarbosaurus Bataar, close relatives of T. rex that IMO should themselves be in the genus Tyrannosaurus.

[pscot]

4. Naming of parts

To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.

This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.

This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.


Henry Reed

[XemaSab]

5. One of my favorite poems

:)

[The2ndWheel]

6. Labeling the World

http://www.ascentofhumanity.com/chapter2-3.php

As a separate human realm coalesced around the technologies of fire and stone, another even more powerful technology grew alongside them—the technology of mind we call language. Consisting of symbols that are connected only arbitrarily to the objects, attributes, and processes they name, language is indeed a separate human realm, a human-created map or representation of reality.

Language is prior to any technology requiring the accumulation of knowledge and the coordination of human activity. Anything human civilization has ever created, from the pyramids to the space station, rests ultimately upon a foundation of symbols. Without blueprints, instructions, specifications, guidelines, computer programs, money, science texts, laws, contracts, schedules, and databases, could anyone build a microchip, a hydrogen bomb, or a radio telescope? Could anyone operate an airport or a concentration camp?

Referring to technology, I asked in the Introduction, "Can the gift be separated from the curse?" As the above examples make clear, we might ask the same of language. Language is the foundation of the separate human realm, and from the very beginning it has borne a destructive as well as a creative power.

The destructive potential of language is contained within the very nature of representation. Words, particularly nouns, force an infinity of unique objects and processes into a finite number of categories. Words deny the uniqueness of each moment and each experience, reducing it to a "this" or a "that". They grant us the power to manipulate and control (with logic) the things they refer to, but at the price of immediacy. Something is lost, the essence of a thing. By generalizing particulars into categories, words render invisible the differences among them. By labeling both A and B a tree, and conditioning ourselves to that label, we become blind to the differences between A and B. The label affects our perception of reality and the way we interact with it.