Fwd: Re: rankless nomenclature

[Curtis Clark]

At 06:39 AM 10/13/00, Richard Jensen wrote:
>Phil Cantino has been very gracious and has provided clear responses to
>most questions posed (he seems to be the only PhyloCode proponent doing
>so).

I would not characterize myself as a Phylocode proponent, but I am
certainly not an opponent. (I'm guilty, also, of starting this thread.) I
think a bit of historical perspective is in order. A century ago, botanists
were fighting over the competing views of Europeans and Americans about
such things as priority, homonymy, and valid publication. Although the
Phylocode controversy may seem bigger to us now, to the proponents of the
American Code and the European Code, the issue was the future of plant
taxonomy. The situation took about a quarter of a century to fully resolve.

There are still some real issues with Phylocode, but there is plenty of
time to solve them.



--
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department             Voice: (909) 869-4062
California State Polytechnic University      FAX: (909) 869-4078
Pomona CA 91768-4032  USA                  jcclark at csupomona.edu