Article 71

[Richard H. Zander]

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