Taxacom: Removals of offending scientific names

Wed Jun 21 23:23:25 CDT 2023

One of the problems in this debate, which I acknowledge is difficult to
control, is that whenever the debate is started on a specific issue, eg
colonialism, it gets expanded to include all other groups who feel they
have a gripe against some issue. The pulled in issues may be very real I
acknowledge that but they are not necessarily related to the original
debate. By attempting to umbrella all the issues under one attempt to get
rid of any name that may be offensive to someone achieves two things, it
dilutes the points of the original debate, and creates more negative
kickback against it. This just makes it more contentious and in all honesty
less likely to achieve anything. I liked Neal`s point on left handedness, I
am assuming it was tongue in cheek, but it shows how you can find anything
that someone will dislike and attempt to attach it to another debate to try
for a majority view, this usually backfires as I said, it only attracts
more negativity to the original argument. It's basically a me-too approach
from a philosophical perspective. I am not referring to the Me-Too movement
there, it's another issue. The philosophical me too approach to a debate is
the same as the whataboutism approach and the weakest debating techniques,
it is doomed to failure. So to those who present these papers calling for
this they are all making the same mistake, they are not constraining the
argument and excluding the addition of other unrelated issues. To win a
debate like this they must take control of the discussion and not allow the
possibility of the me too philosophy as an answer, by addressing this and
ruling it out in their initial paper, that failure to control the debate
dooms their argument every time.

In past discussions of this I have said I have no issue if we as a
community draw a line in the sand and say no more patronyms for example,
but it cannot be retroactive. Making it retroactive interferes with the
primary aim of the code which is stability.

I made this argument, among others against the renaming of the journal
Copeia, I warned them that changing the name would cost them in their
traction as a publishing entity. No doubt Edward Drinker Cope was not a
good person in modern terms, but his name had little to do with the
traction the journal had received after decades of usage, changing the name
has cost the journal and to draw an analogy to nomenclature, it lost
stability.

The majority of end users of taxonomy do not care why a species has a
particular name, they just want it to be stable.

Cheers Scott

Em qui., 22 de jun. de 2023 às 00:12, Stephen Thorpe via Taxacom <
taxacom at lists.ku.edu> escreveu:

>  I'm not sure how replacement of such names generates "justice"? It just
> makes people feel better who dislike the person the name was named after.
> Again, Roger Waters is a good example. He has 3 patronyms strongly
> connected with him (Pink Floyd). To some people, he is a human rights
> advocate. To others, he is an antisemite/Nazi. The existence of a few clear
> cases, like Hitler, for example, hides the fact that most cases are not at
> all clear cut. Of course the people who dislike Waters will claim that it
> is absolutely clear in his case, so then it becomes a heated debate about
> whether of not it is clear cut, with some people saying yes and others no.
> Do we really want biological nomenclature to be influenced by such complex
> and subjective sociopolitical debates? I think not!Stephen
>     On Thursday, 22 June 2023 at 03:01:31 pm NZST, Neal Evenhuis via
> Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
>  You’ve got to remove them to replace them. Pure logic. 😉
>
>
> On Stardate 6/21/23, 4:56 PM, "Taxacom" <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu>
> wrote:
>
> No one said anything about removing any names. Just replacing them.
>
> Guys, you made and you make the rules. No one stops you from changing them.
> You have made worse changes in the rules from a taxonomic and nomenclatural
> point of view than that in order to serve other interests and agendas.
>
> Whatever change you do in the rules there is always going to be the same
> number of people who are going to object.
>
> The truth is that the Commission does not really care about those issues on
> offensive names, as they said in their recent publication.
>
> In the end, it is always the same battle, everywhere: the struggle between
> conservatism and progress, justice or injustice. And that same struggle has
> always been resolved in the same way, sooner or later.
>
> But if we are not going to resolve injustice in our little fictional world
> that no one cares about, where we have all the power to do whatever we
> want, how we can expect to do the same in the real world where it matters?
>
> At least Roger Waters was able to create a Wall that made sense. Maybe he
> deserves an eponym because of that.
>
> Sincerely,
> Evan
>
> On Wed, Jun 21, 2023, 19:00 Frederick W. Schueler via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
> > On 21-Jun-23 5:30 p.m., Neal Evenhuis via Taxacom wrote:
> > > but what got me really ticked off is that no one has yet spoken up for
> > another oppressed minority – us left-handers. We are apparently the
> silent
> > oppressed. We are only 10% of the world’s population and as such are
> forced
> > to live in a right-handed world. There are loads of derogatory words for
> > left-handedness such as corrie-fisted, southpaw, wrong-hander, maladroit,
> > dubious, awkward, clumsy, and insincere.
> >
> > * but you can see from the fact that we're on TAXACOM that we're the
> > covert intellectual elite, controlling the world by inserting sinister
> > ideas into public discourse!
> >
> > fred.
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> >          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
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-- 
Scott Thomson

Centro de Estudos dos Quelônios da Amazônia - CEQUA
Petrópolis, Manaus
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