[Taxacom] Fundamental pupose of names (was Phylocode...)

[Dick Jensen]

As I understand what Linnaeus did (see David Campbells' comment below), the fundamental purpose of his binomials was to both tell us what organism was being discussed AND something about that organism.  After all, his binomials were shortened forms of his polynomials, which were descriptive statements about the taxon in question.  And, the names serve another purpose - they provide definitions of the taxa: knowing a species belongs to the genus Quercus allows one to know a great many things about that species, both character data and phylogeny.  

Dick J
----- Original Message -----
From: David Campbell <pleuronaia at gmail.com>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:48:34 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Phylocode vs Linnean nomenclature, again.


The fundamental purpose of taxonomic names is to tell us what organism
someone is talking about, not to tell us its phylogeny.  Phylogenetic
information is great, but not if I can't tell what organisms it refers
to.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
The Paleontological Research Institution
1259 Trumansburg Road
Ithaca NY 14850

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