Botanical Code Article 71

[Leonard Krishtalka]

        I will get into trouble for this, but what the hell.  Subscribers have
been complaining that this listserv does not discuss any interesting biological
issues.  Here goes.

        Forget Article 71.  As a matter of fact, let's forget the entire
Botanical Code AND the Zoo Code.  The Linnaean system of nomenclature is a
static one devised for a natural world thought to be static, typological and
atemporal.  As such, that nomenclatural system cannot reflect evolutionary
flux across space or through time, and is thus ill-suited for modern neontology
or paleontology.  Its inadequacies have caused terrible confusion of
anagenetic and cladogenetic processes and products ("phyletic species" and
cladogenetic species) in paleontology.  Nature is not organized around "types".
Neither should our system of describing it.

        Krishtalka