num_pages: 352
description: Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereTwo hundred and fifty years ago the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus set out to order and name the entire living world and ended up founding a science: the field of scientific classification or taxonomy. Yet in spite of Linnaeuss pioneering work and the genius of those who followed him from Darwin to E. O. Wilson taxonomy went from being revered as one of the most significant of intellectual pursuits to being largely ignored. Today taxonomy is viewed by many as an outdated field one nearly irrelevant to the rest of science and of even less interest to the rest of the world.Now as Carol Kaesuk Yoon biologist and longtime science writer for the New York Times reminds us in Naming Nature taxonomy is critically important because it turns out to be much more than mere science. It is also the latest incarnation of a long-unrecognized human practice that has gone on across the globe in every culture in every language since before time: the deeply human act of ordering and naming the living world.In Naming Nature Yoon takes us on a guided tour of sciences brilliant if sometimes misguided attempts to order and name the overwhelming diversity of earths living things. We follow a trail of scattered clues that reveals taxonomys real origins in humanitys distant past. Yoons journey brings us from New Guinea tribesmen who call a giant bird a mammal to the trials and tribulations of patients with a curious form of brain damage that causes them to be unable to distinguish among living things.Finally Yoon shows us how the reclaiming of taxonomya renewed interest in learning the kinds and names of things around uswill rekindle humanitys dwindling connection with wild nature. Naming Nature has much to tell us not only about how scientists create a science but also about how the progress of science can alter the expression of our own human nature.
language: English
title: Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company