FutureNomenclature

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After monitoring the "code" discussion for the past week or so it seems
clear that just about everyone has something they positively detest about
the nomenclatural situation.  Perhaps even more importantly though, Rich
Lane is right.  Not only does our ever changing nomenclatural system make
life complicated for us, it doesn't make us look very professional to
others.  Think of how you would feel if you walked into a business (e.g., a
bookstore or an auto repair shop), asked a question of the clerks behind
the counter and then had to listen to them argue about the name of the item
you were interested in for the next hour or so.  Not the sort of situation
that leaves customers with a sense of confidence.  But, the way forward is
obviously not found by constructing long lists of the nomenclatural
system's deficiencies.  Nothing is going to change overnight.
Nevertheless, out here in the cyberspace we have an opportunity to
collectively imagine what it might be like to start nomenclature all over
again.  So, in a perfect world what would we want biotic nomenclature to do
for us?  What types of information (or changes in information) should it
respond to?  What should be its underlying organizational principle(s).  I
assume everyone wants some sort of hierarchic system.  But how that system
is structured depends on what sort of information you want to recover from
it.  Should its primary function be to represent the current state of
phylogenetic knowledge?  Or should it be designed only to capture the broad
outlines of the phylogeny while, at the same time being used for verbal and
written communication between people (as opposed to communication between
machines that have absolutely no problem handling n-dimensional
classification systems)?  Or perhaps we need multiple classification
systems that capture the different aspects of our science (e.g.,
phylogenetic, morphologic, ecologic)?  Let's get creative.  Who knows?  It
might even be fun.


Norm MacLeod



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Norman MacLeod
Senior Research Fellow
N.MacLeod@nhm.ac.uk (Internet)
N.MacLeod@uk.ac.nhm (Janet)

Address: Dept. of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum,
                     Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD

Office Phone: 071-938-9006
Dept. FAX:  071-938-9277
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