[Taxacom] the vision of taxonomy in the biodiversity crisis

[Donat Agosti]

>From the corridors of the GBIC meeting in Copenhagen.

 

In a sense, this is one of the most important take a way message that I got
from the  recent GBIC in Copenhagen, which had as a goal to define GBIF's
vision of the further development of biodiversity informatics. It is on the
frontispiece of "A Vast Machine"
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12080>
&tid=12080, a book that has been several times referred to.

 

Just replace the "meteorologist" with either taxonomist or biodiversity
scientist, and "atmosphere" with biodiversity

 

The meteorologist is impotent if alone; his observations are useless; for
they are made upon a point, while the speculations to be derived from them
must be on space. (.) The Meteorological Society, therefore, has been
formed, not for a city, nor for a kingdom, but for the world. It wishes to
be the central point, the moving power of a vast machine, and it feels that
unless it can be this, it must be powerless; if it cannot do all, it can do
nothing. It desires to have at its command, at stated periods, perfect
systems of methodical and simultaneous observations,--it wishes its
influence and its power to be omnipotent over the globe, so that it may be
able to know, at any given instant, the state of the atmosphere at every
point on its surface. (John Ruskin (1839)
http://www.readbookonline.net/read/18521/53694/

Donat