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Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:35:07 -0600 (CST)
From: znc14@TTACS.TTU.EDU
To: Philip Cantino <cantino@ohiou.edu>
Cc: PhyloCode@ouvaxa.cats.ohiou.edu
Subject: An invitation to free your Code [was: Re: Fwd: Re: Fwd: Re: Codes]
Ladies and Gentlemen, I think the discussion of which method is "better" is, as both David and Dr. Cantino have agreed, making little progress. I think it behooves us to consider alternatives which do not hinge on the asserted superiority of one idealogy (if you will) or the other. I invite everyone all to release themselves from the mindset of former codes. The ICZN Code, and I assume other codes as well, is a formalized system designed to govern the NAMES people place on groups, not to govern the groups (be they real entities or not). It is an engine designed to assure priority of a word, not an idea or an hypothesis. As such, it is very legalistic, and hypersensitive to issues of spelling and what is and isn't a proper way to use an "avaliable" name. This is why a causal misspelling or a random latin binomial in a journal can create new "taxa" where no one intended to. Honored persons, we do not *need* this perspective. For a group of people who are challenging the very fabric of biological nomenclature, we should all be aware that the ICZN is this way, and has the power to enforce this philosophy, only because *we* allow it. We sell ourselves short if we suggest that without the order the ICZN brings, there would be chaos. We bring the order through our tacit consent, and if we give our consent to a new way of taxonomic though, it can bring order in a differnet way. While it is good to have rules, our rules can allow for same degree of "fuzzy logic" that our phylogenies, and indeed our science calls for. Just as the boundaries between species can be distinct and yet intangible, so perhaps can the boundaries of their names. I propose to you that we can tear down some of the walls of the box in which the ICZN Code, and others like it, have confined our thinking. Many of us are used to thinking beyond our nomenclature to the reality of the groups we describe. I see no reason to allow a similarly circumspect approach to our nomenclature. We do not have to be bound by ONE PROPER WAY, or one "official form" to spell a species name... Crocodilus niloticus, Crocodilus-niloticus, -niloticus, niloticus, Reptilia niloticus, Reptilia-niloticus can ALL be valid ways of writing the name of the same species. Not "options," each IS the species name, just in a different form (the title of the entity John Paul II is also Pope, Pontiff, Mister, Vicar of Christ on Earth, for example). None of them is necessarily any better than the other. You may think this promotes chaos, or you simply may be uncomfortable with the apparent ambiguity here. Look at it this way: all of these forms have a common element, a species epithet (if you will). This could be the official registered sequence of roman characters, without having to be the "real" name... it could even be called the "registered name," "core name," or "root name." This is the string of characters to which the definition is attached. This string of characters is not, by itself unique, but is uniquely identified by a registration number, and there are numerous options for making it unique, either operationally in a paper, or officially. It can be made unique by the appending of a registration number (Method M), the traditional ICZN author and year (me), or maybe some other symbolic identifier. In this way you could formulate your speces usage to be as close to, or as far from, the current Codes' formats as possible without any fear of repercussions from your PhyloCoding friends. The effect this has on the validity of your work in other codes is your own concern. So, some might ask, if we subscribe to such a "loose" idea of the species name, how do we know when someone is actually naming a new species? That is the beauty of REGISTRY: you can't just go around looking for random misspellings and unampilifed binomials (as has been done for dinosaurs, take a gander at George Olshevsky's list of non-avian dinosaur genera someday), they *must* be intentionally named and registered. I hope no one find this post offensive. It is certainly not menat to be pedantic or arrogant. As with Dr. Cantino, I am pressed for time, and I may have risked a little impertinence for the sake of (relative) brevity. Sincerely, Jonathan