[Taxacom] We are cataloguing hypotheses & not real things -- I hope everyone appreciates the implications of this. Was Global species lists ....
Wulf Schleip
webmaster at leiopython.de
Sun Sep 1 02:48:55 CDT 2013
Dear Michael, dear list,
yes, nomenclature and taxonomy are two different things. While nomenclature
is simply a tool for taxonomy, both canot exist without each other. What use
would nomenclature do without anything to name? And what chaos would we have
if we differntiate or classify things without making them clearly
identifiable (e.g., by names or numbers)?
So, in nomenclature we have names, but these names are usually represented
by a typ species (generic) or specimen (specific and subspecific). There is
a concept (maybe a hypothesis) behind each scientific name. Therefore, we
use the name as an alias for 1) a label for the type specimen itself, 2) for
the type specimen as an objective reference with characters on which the
concept/hypothesis usually is based on, and 3) for the taxon differentiated
from others by the concept/hypothesis.
A name, therefore, is more than just a name and a catalogue is more than a
list of names.
Cheers,
Wulf
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] Im Auftrag von Ohl, Michael
Gesendet: Freitag, 30. August 2013 13:26
An: 'Ashley Nicholas'; 'taxacom taxacom'
Betreff: Re: [Taxacom] We are cataloguing hypotheses & not real things -- I
hope everyone appreciates the implications of this. Was Global species lists
....
I disagree. We are cataloging neither hypotheses nor real things, but
linguistic items that may or may not be proper names in a linguistic sense
and that may or may not label hypotheses on the existence of natural things
beyond the human mind. Opinions differ on both. This is an important
difference, which has been repeatedly been discussed as the difference
between nomenclature and taxonomy. Names have no other function than to
label information, and cataloging these linguistic labels is important in
order to optimize access to the underlying information. The questions of the
reality and nature of species, whether they are biological species,
individuals, relations, or even non-existent, are important, but are not a
matter of names as linguistic elements, which denote concepts. So catalogues
are not catalogues of species hypotheses but of names.
Cheers, Michael
PD Dr. Michael Ohl
Curator // Head of Entomological Collections Museum fuer Naturkunde
Leibniz-Institut fuer Evolutions- und Biodiversitaetsforschung Invalidenstr.
43
D-10115 Berlin, Germany
Tel: ++49-30-2093-8507
Fax: ++49-30-2093-8868
E-Mail: michael.ohl(at)mfn-berlin.de
URL: http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/institution/mitarbeiter/ohl-micha
el/
Geschäftsführer der Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik (GfBS) Managing
Editor Arthropoda von Zoosystematics and Evolution
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] Im Auftrag von Ashley Nicholas
Gesendet: Freitag, 30. August 2013 12:32
An: taxacom taxacom
Betreff: [Taxacom] We are cataloguing hypotheses & not real things -- I hope
everyone appreciates the implications of this. Was Global species lists ....
Dear All,
I just hope that people doing these digital catalogues appreciate that all
they are doing is cataloguing hypotheses -- in this case species hypotheses
(species are not real entities -- Popper's World 2)? We measure specimens
and populations (Popper's World 1). We extrapolate this limited data to
hypothesise species. If a researcher can claim to have measured every
specimen and population of a species (maybe possible for species confined to
small areas esp. islands [maybe this is why vicariance is so easily
demonstrated in island situation?]). Only then can s/he claim to have
objectified a species. However, even then this will only hold true for that
instance because as the gene pool changes over time s/he can no longer claim
to have objectified that species.
These catalogues are catalogues of species hypotheses. Hypotheses are not
the "truth" they are suppositions that remain to be verified (a shaky
premise) or falsified (a better premise). So who is someone doing a
catalogue to say that one species hypothesis is the correct one -- and
include it, while rejecting all others? As an empirical scientist that makes
me feel very uncomfortable.
However, I can see that something needs to be produced for conservationists
etc. to use. I have no answer. Taxonomy was originally both a science and a
service (to societies) and we still need to fulfil this role. I was called
in to identify a plant that had poisoned two young children recently -- and
thanked my orthodox training because I had the skill to select the one
"species" in our province from the other 6500 that also occur here in order
to save their lives. However, the scientist in me also understands the fact
that we cannot have a dictatorial system that selects some species
hypotheses over others; science should not be dictatorial -- and these
catalogues often are.
Regards
Ashley
-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Dave Roberts
Sent: 29 August 2013 15:21
To: taxacom taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] global species lists and taxonomy ( was Re: Draft
Checklist ...)
Dear all,
I fear that the comparatively greater complexity of the animals will make
such an approach a considerable amount of work, or more bluntly, will be
significantly hard.
With the list of names, on which so many people are labouring without, as
Rich says, sufficient coordination, we also need a classification bank, a
simple way to find in how many arrangements a given taxon has been placed.
That was one of the priorities identified in the Biodiversity Informatics
Decadal Vision [1].
The EU's funding programme H2020 is an opportunity to create a large
consortium to do exactly that level of coordination. The problem, though,
is to link it in some way to either job creation or policy making at an EU
scale. The advantage is that international collaboration (i.e. outside
Europe) is likely to be more tractable in H2020.
Next week's meeting in Rome [2] is a starting point for that kind of
discussion.
Cheers, Dave
[1] Hardisty, Alex, Dave Roberts, and The Biodiversity Informatics
Community. "A Decadal View of Biodiversity Informatics: Challenges and
Priorities." BMC Ecology 13 (2013): 16. doi:10.1186/1472-6785-13-16.
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6785/13/16
[2] http://conference.lifewatch.unisalento.it/index.php/EBIC/BIH2013/
--
On 29 Aug 2013, at 13:08, nicky nicolson <nicky.nicolson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Karen, yes this is what we are working on in botany and
> mycology - we are using the nomenclators (IPNI and IF) to provide the
> fundamental units (names and the objective relationships between them)
> and then supporting multiple overlapping - even contradictory -
> classifications to be built using these same fundamental units. We are
> storing enough data on the relationships which form the taxonomic
> classifications to do the kind of assessments that Fred suggests -
> e.g. to take into account how recently the hypothesis was published,
> who published it and where (e.g. was it a regional treatment or a
globally-scoped monograph).
> I did quite a general talk about this at the Natural History Museum in
> London recently, video here:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynFB6DWCBjc and slides here:
> http://www.slideshare.net/nickyn/nicolson-namesbackbonenhm
> We've a funded project to rebuild Kew's taxonomic systems in this
> environment, and we are working on incorporating the World Checklist
> system at the moment, although our communications standard is TCS so
> we should be able to import / export data from many different sources.
> cheers,
> Nicky
>
> PS: I'll be at TDWG along with a few people from the Kew team if
> anybody is interested in having a closer look.
>
>
> On 29 August 2013 12:18, Karen Cranston <karen.cranston at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It is not too hard to implement this type of system. Both IPNI and
>> Open Tree of Life are currently implementing a relatively new graph
>> database model (database called neo4j) to load and store multiple
>> hierarchies in the same data structure. Then, you can traverse the
>> graph (which contains all of the nodes and edges, and therefore all
>> of the conflict) in various ways in order to summarize / resolve
>> conflicts / find interesting patterns. You could use algorithmic and
>> / or human-curated approaches to annotate or resolve parts of the
>> hierarchy, while still keeping all of the information from the
>> sources. Visualization libraries like d3 make it easy to create images or
interactive tools to explore the data in the graph.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 7:03 AM, Erik Rijkers <er at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, August 29, 2013 12:31, Fred Schueler wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Maybe we want to take a lesson from the physicists' ideas of
>>>> infinite parallel universes, and program systems where all
>>>> published classifications are represented, but with some sort of
>>>> combined voting or weighting by the recency of publication, and
>>>> wiki-style comments and discussion, to show users which
>>>> classifications are more currently approved and used.
>>>>
>>>
>>> hear, hear!
>>>
>>> IMHO, this is the only possible way to get usefully stable global lists.
>>>
>>> It amounts to the realisation that the classification business is
>>> producing opinions (however obnoxious this may sound to the
>>> taxonomist).
>>>
>>> So databases should amass these opinions with plenty factual detail
>>> but without implicitly endowing any classification-opinion with the
>>> distinction of being "fact".
>>>
>>> It would seem this obvious way of doing taxonomical databases is not
>>> too hard to implement but I have never seen it done , or even
>>> acknowledged as necessary.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Erikjan Rijkers
--
Dr D.McL. Roberts, Tel: +44 (0)20 7942 5086
ViBRANT Project Manager,
Dept. Life Sciences,
The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road,
London SW7 5BD
Great Britain Email: dmr at nomencurator dot org
Web page: http://vbrant.eu
Web page: http://scratchpads.eu
Web page: http://www.editwebrevisions.info/
--
"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try and give it to
them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." [Steve
Jobs, quoted in The Guardian, Technology Section, 25 June 09].
--
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