Article 71

[Hendrik Segers]

On Thu, 16 Mar 1995, Richard H. Zander wrote:

> Regarding the evils of present nomenclature, one might accuse
> binomialism as a root cause of much trouble. If we gave each basic unit
> of taxonomy a number instead of a name that required a decision about
> what group it belonged to, we could decouple nomenclature and changes in
> classification due to advances in phylogenetic systematics.
> For instance, conservationists, ecologists and lawyers would applaud our
> giving the tomato a scientific uninomial, say 453456798, that would not
> change with regrouping from Lycopersicon to Solanum and back again. With
> computerization, why, we could even do it!
>
> Richard Zander
> Buffalo Museum of Science
> visbms at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
>
Ever gone through species lists? Almost any of these contains
orthographic or printing errors. One can make out what name is
actually meant when it's a list of Latin names, but imagine the fun if
such lists would consist of nothing but numbers....

Yours, Hendrik Segers.
ÿÿ    Re: Article 71                                                         R