[Taxacom] Binomial Nomenclature - was: "cataloguing hypotheses & not real things"

[Dan Lahr]

Thanks Curtis, accidental is a great explanation.

As for not doing something just because the dino people do it, come on,
they cant be wrong on everything!


On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 2:17 AM, Curtis Clark <lists at curtisclark.org> wrote:

> On 2013-09-01 2:58 AM, Dan Lahr wrote:
> > Not to mention how arbitrary it is. "Let's use two names. Not three, not
> > four, two. Just because." In my short experience I have never come
> across a
> > justification, if someone knows of it, I would love to hear it.
>
> That part is easy. Linnaeus started out with descriptive phrases, which
> were almost always polynomial. These consisted of the genus and a
> differentia, distinguishing that species from all the rest in the genus.
> This was effectively a diagnosis. As a mnemonic, Linnaeus put a
> single-word epithet in the margin. Others started using the genus and
> epithet, avoiding the long differentia, so that Linnaeus unintentionally
> created binomial nomenclature.
>
> --
> Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
> Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4140
> Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
> Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom
>
> The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
> methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>
> Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
>



-- 
___________________
Daniel J. G. Lahr, PhD
Assist. Prof., Dept of Zoology,
Univ. of Sao Paulo, Brazil
+ 55 (11) 3091 0948