Fwd: Re: rankless nomenclature

[Philip Cantino]

>   > 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."


Curtis Clark wrote;

>   >
>   > I wonder what would have happened if the chemists had rejected Mendeleev's
>   > periodic table, because it was too wedded to a specific "ideology"?
>   >

Zdenek Skala wrote:
>
>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?  ;-)

Sorry to repeat myself, but since Zdenek is making an analogy between
name changes in chemistry and those in biological taxonomy, I have to
point out once again that phylogenetic nomenclature will not
generally change the names of taxa unless a name is currently used
differently under different codes.  I explained this more fully in my
earlier postings.



>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.


Property (2) is precisely the advantage of phylogenetic nomenclature.
It decouples clade (and eventually species) names from classification
(ranking) to a greater extent than traditional biological
nomenclature does.

On the other hand, based on Zdenek's earlier posting, I may be
interpreting his statement (copied above) too narrowly.   In an
earlier message he said: "The purpose of the Code is to set
principles of naming things, not to decide what these things are."  I
agree that a nomenclatural code should not decide which things to
name, but a code may be established explicitly to name certain kinds
of things that people want to name.  This is the case with the
PhyloCode.  It doesn't tell biologists that clades are the things
they should be naming; rather it starts with the assumption that some
biologists want to name clades and then provides a mechanism
specifically designed for this purpose.  If clades are NOT want you
want to name, then the PhyloCode will definitely not meet your needs.
More broadly, if the community of biologists eventually decides that
the methodological problems and undertainties that various people
have stressed are so serious that we should give up on naming clades,
then the PhyloCode will fall by the wayside.  If, on the other hand,
the optimism that others of you have expressed about future advances
in phylogenetic inference proves to be well founded, the PhyloCode
may eventually be embraced by all biologists as an ideal system of
nomenclature.

Phil


Philip D. Cantino
Professor and Chair
Department of Environmental and Plant Biology
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701-2979
U.S.A.

Phone: (740) 593-1128; 593-1126
Fax: (740) 593-1130
e-mail: cantino at ohio.edu