Viruses are real, virus species are man-made, taxonomic constructions
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Viruses are real, virus species are man-made, taxonomic constructions∗ M. H. V. Van Regenmortel Ecole Sup´erieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg, CNRS, Illkirch, France Received September 8, 2003; accepted October 2, 2003 c Springer-Verlag 2003 Published online December 2, 2003
Scientists are committed to the study of real, tangible objects and tend to rely on facts rather than on speculation. This steadfast commitment to the real world partly explains the reluctance of some scientists to become involved in classifying the objects they study. Classifications tend to be perceived as purely conceptual constructions of the mind, useful for bringing some semblance of order into the bewildering variety of natural phenomena, but essentially arbitrary and unworthy of serious attention by scientists engaged in the study of nature. As stated by Milne [22] many are bored by taxonomy because they think it means spending a lifetime on whether a certain kind of beetle has five hairs on its bottom or seven – and then splitting the hairs. To many virologists, the current debate [2–5, 31, 33] on the appropriate way of writing the names of virus species may seem equally abstruse and boring, especially if they have never given a thought to the reason why virus species were introduced in viral taxonomy in the first place [30].
Concrete objects and abstract concepts should not be confused Virologists need to refer in their publications to the viruses they study and they are obliged to follow the rules of typography and orthography of virus names edicted by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), a body empowered by the International Union of Microbiological Societies to have authority on matters of virus classification and nomenclature [20]. Since the names of viruses and virus species are written differently, it is in fact necessary to appreciate that viruses and virus species belong to two different logical categories, i.e. the concrete and the abstract. Viruses are intracellular parasites and are tangible, concrete entities, located in space and time, that can be handled experimentally. Virus species, on the other hand, are abstractions that exist only in the mind; like other taxonomic categories
∗ Editor’s footnote: Professor Van Regenmortel is a former President of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) and has had seminal influences on the taxonomic thinking in virology during recent years. Nonetheless the views expressed in this article are his and not necessarily those of the Executive Committee of ICTV. These will be published at the end of an on-going consultation exercise.
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(families, genera) they cannot be encountered physically and cannot be centrifuged, purified or visualized in an electron microscope. As virus diseases became recognized, the causative viruses were given names in different languages that often reflected the symptoms of the corresponding diseases as well as the hosts or organs that become infected. These common names of viruses wer
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