From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: objective environment? (was Save the Planet)
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 93 08:36:54 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1993Jan03.181812.2818@watson.ibm.com> andrewt@watson.ibm.com writes:

 > I only understand the basic issues involved with taxonomy and I don't have
 > access to relevant literature but I'll try to do your questions/claims
 > justice.  I've paraphrased them in [].
 >  
 > [ Only museum curators can understand Linnaean classification ]
 >  
 > Nonsense.  For example, Edward Wilson's "Diversity of Life" contains a
 > nice explanation which requires no technical background.
 >  
 > [ Linnaean classification is not useful to laypersons ]
 >  
 > Laypeople are presumably far more interested in the fruits of biologists'
 > labour rather than how they accomplish them.  Nonetheless its incorrect to say
 > laypeople can not use Linnaean classifications.  For example, my mum, a keen
 > gardener, talks about plant genera and families and their characteristics.

Well, none of this by any remote stretching of the imagination can be
regarded as paraphrasing. Who is on a misinformation trip here?

The citation referred to the fact that "taxonomic characteristics are
wherever possible *STRUCTURAL*, since physiological and behavioral
criteria are of little use to the museum taxonomist who normally has
to handle dead specimens." My question arising from that situation was
"concerned with managing a living system". Please do read the post. I
cannot possibly have edited it, so it plainly stands as written.

Perhaps because we deal with living human communities the structural/
functional analysis has long been abandoned in anthropology (apart
from a few die-hards whose field data we yet await), and I remain very
interested indeed in what progress biologists might be making along
these lines. Again, I regard it as an extremely important area for
further development.

My further concerns were quite plainly stated with respect to the
situation where if we were to together deal with living systems, in
which specimens simply persist in complying with other relationships
than those mapped by Linnaean taxonomy, is the answer to make the
taxonomic "hierarchy more and more complex, and so more and more
inaccessible to the laity out there?". I have made no comment about
whether your Mum may be incapable of talking about plant genera.

Now, are biologists pursuing dynamic models as we anthropologists are
doing, ready to accept an idea that the relationship between a human
pig farmer and his pigs is far more substantial than that between pigs
and whales, that we might *reorder* the taxonomy? Or perhaps finally
abandon it in favour of more practical and reliable models of reality
which inform us in not too technical jargon about what is actually
happening in a particular local environment?

 > [ Taxonomists might place pigs and whales in the one taxon which would be
 >   irrelevant to pig farmers and people who have never seen whales ]
 >  
 > Yes, the high level taxa that pigs are placed in are likely irrelevant to these
 > people (whether whales are placed in the same taxa or not). This is a problem?

Your response here causes me to wonder further why research funds would
be directed to structuring taxa in such a way that the relationships so
determined are irrelevant.

 > [ Taxonomists make classifications on the basis of dead specimens ]
 >  
 > For taxonomic decisions based on fundamental anatomic characters, dead
 > specimens are presumably sufficient.  In many other cases, observations of
 > of live specimens are unavailable.  I know behaviour is often used for
 > low-level
 > taxonomic decisions in some groups.  DNA-analysis is now providing a wealth of
 > information for taxonomic decisions.

Acknowledged.

 > [ Linnaean classification obstructs analysis of ecosystems containing people ]
 >  
 > As far I can see, it facilitates study of all ecosystems.

I have made no statement about any obstruction whatsoever. Is there
some reason for this misinformation campaign?

 > [ Biologists pickle human heads in jars and won't give them back. ]
 >  
 > I thought it was ethnologists and anthropologists that did this.

Oh, tut tut. Perhaps some of the physical anthropologists over there
in human biology might be interested in such things, but a severed
head is unable to speak and so would provide little in the way of
information relevant to a social or cultural anthropologist. We are
more concerned about the grief still being experienced by a community
that their grandparents are not returned to them for a decent burial,
in the name of "science".

It causes a great deal of anger and frustration which still has to be
managed, when it is quite unnecessary to start with.

 > [ Biologists disrupt traditional beliefs and hence cause ecological catastrophe
 >  
 >   and juvenile delinquency ]

Not necessarily. I was rather interested in observing your response to
a hypothetical situation which is certainly valid. Sadly, I am somewhat
disappointed.

 > Biologists no doubt commit many sins,  I expect this one is rare (and
 > irrelevant to taxonomy).

And certainly irrelevant to the matter at hand, where biologists might
well see their way clear toward working more with the anthropologists
and others to our mutual edification and advancement, instead of our
getting bogged down in all this bullshit politics.

Oh well, please yourself.

Gil