rankless nomenclature

[Zdenek Skala]

Curtis Clark wrote:
> At 12:18 PM 10/16/00, Ken Kinman wrote:
> >I do agree with Zdenek's last statement below, that to promote
> >stability, we should *decouple* classification and nomenclature from any
> >one ideology as much as possible, thus making it "compatible with
> >different taxonomic practices."
>
> I wonder what would have happened if the chemists had rejected Mendeleev's
> periodic table, because it was too wedded to a specific "ideology"?
>
Could you be more explicit? Mendeleev's table of course has
nothing to do with names - many of them are inherited from the
days of alchemy or even older. *I* wonder what would have
happened if the element names would change when alchemy was
replaced by iatrochemy, iatrochemy by early atomic thinking, then
by Bohr atomic model, quantum atomic model etc. Strange idea,
isn't it?  ;-)
On the other hand - Mendeelev's table is a good example of how
good phenetic system works: (1) it is based on observable features
instead of untestable hypotheses; (2) it decouples names (like
sulphur or prometheum) from the position of the element in the
system. This is the reason why it survived so many paradigm shifts
IMO.
Best!
Zdenek

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] Zdenek Skala
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