We are, all of us, abandoning taxonomy, the ordering and naming of life. We are willfully becoming poor J.B.R., losing the ability to order and name and therefore losing a connection to and a place in the living world.
No wonder so few of us can really see what is out there. Even when scads of insistent wildlife appear with a flourish right in front of us, and there is such life always — hawks migrating over the parking lot, great colorful moths banging up against the window at night — we barely seem to notice. We are so disconnected from the living world that we can live in the midst of a mass extinction, of the rapid invasion everywhere of new and noxious species, entirely unaware that anything is happening. Happily, changing all this turns out to be easy. Just find an organism, any organism, small, large, gaudy, subtle — anywhere, and they are everywhere — and get a sense of it, its shape, color, size, feel, smell, sound… meditate, luxuriate in its beetle-ness, its daffodility. Then find a name for it. Learn science’s name, one of countless folk names, or make up your own. To do so is to change everything, including yourself. Because once you start noticing organisms, once you have a name for particular beasts, birds and flowers, you can’t help seeing life and the order in it, just where it has always been, all around you.
From Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World, Carol Kaesuk Yoon, an excerpt from her new book Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science
1 comment on "Abandoning Taxonomy"
Thanks for posting these links. A few of my biologist friends work with slugs, snails, unionids, crayfish, millipedes, etc.. Until quite recently, there has been an incredible lack of interest in these creatures. That said, one thing I’ve noticed over the past two or three years is that, since the recent leap in macro capabilities of affordable digital cameras, there appears to have been an exponential growth of interest in invertebrates on the part of many photographers. I’ve noticed a real upswing in participation on sites such as BugGuide.net, and at a personal level, find many people going through my pbase invertebrate galleries trying to ID their caterpillars, moths, wasps and such. I see that as encouraging. Maybe people just have to learn, or be taught, to try to see the world in a different way.