Ereshefsky post-Linnaean book

[Peter Stevens]

The book is clearly written, and can handle readers who are not
systematists - the principles of the three main schools of systenmatics are
explained, for the most part fairly clearly.  E. is a strong pluralist,
that is, he does not only allow that different criteria may ybe used to
reccognise species, but that there are quite different ways of carving up
the world, all of which may entail naming systems, I suppose.  He allows
that we may continue to use the word species for pragmatic reasons, but
believes a new naming system is needed.  He thinks that the "Linnaean"
naming system now in use is necessarily associated with essentialism, but
his extensive discussion of this point is largely incorrect.  However, that
does not affect his overall thesis, even if allowing the possibility of
binomials - which surely are simply noun + adjective combinations in latin
form, and noun + adjective combinations are the basis of much human
communication - might allow him more flexibility in the suggestions he
offers.

P.