Of elephants and errors: naming and identity in Linnaean taxonomy
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Of elephants and errors: naming and identity in Linnaean taxonomy Joeri Witteveen1 · Staffan Müller‑Wille2
Received: 25 May 2020 / Accepted: 4 September 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract What is it to make an error in the identification of a named taxonomic group? In this article we argue that the conditions for being in error about the identity of taxonomic groups through their names have a history, and that the possibility of committing such errors is contingent on the regime of institutions and conventions governing taxonomy and nomenclature at any given point in time. More specifically, we claim that taxonomists today can be in error about the identity of taxonomic groups in a way that Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), who is routinely cited as the “founder” of modern taxonomy and nomenclature, simply could not be. Starting from a remarkable recent study into Linnaeus’s naming of Elephas maximus that led to the (putative) discovery of a (putative) nomenclatural error by him, we reconsider what it could mean to discover that Linnaeus misidentified a biological taxon in applying his taxon names. Through a further case study in Linnaean botany, we show that his practices of (re)applying names in taxonomic revisions reveal a take on determining “which taxon is which” that is strikingly different from that of contemporary taxonomists. Linnaeus, we argue, adopted a practice-based, hands-on concept of taxa as “nominal spaces” that could continue to represent the same taxon even if all its former members had been reallocated to other taxa. Keywords Taxonomy · Nomenclature · Classification · Linnaeus · Error · Identity
* Joeri Witteveen [email protected] Staffan Müller‑Wille [email protected] 1
Section for History and Philosophy of Science, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
2
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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J. Witteveen, S. Müller‑Wille
1 Introduction What is it to make an error in the identification of a named taxonomic group? In this article we argue that the conditions for being in error about identifying taxonomic groups through their names have a history, and that the meaning and possibility of committing such errors are contingent on the regime of institutions and conventions governing taxonomy and nomenclature at any given point in time. Taxonomists today, we claim more specifically, can be in error about the identity of taxonomic groups in a way that Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), who is routinely cited as the “founder” of modern taxonomy and nomenclature, simply could not be, since he did not operate under the conceptual and procedural regime that governs presentday taxonomy. The question of what it means to be in error about taxonomic identity was prompted for us by a research effort from a few years ago that attracted a lot of media attention. In November 2013, Nature, The New York Times, and other (science) news media reported with much fanfare on a
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