From Sherborn to ZooBank: Moving to the interconnected digital nomenclature of the future
Thursday, January 7, 2016 - 18:33
in Psychology & Sociology
From the outside, it can seem that taxonomy has a commitment issue with scientific names. They shift for reasons that seem obscure and unnecessarily wonkish to people who simply want to use names to refer to a consistent, knowable taxon such as species, genus or family. However, the relationship between nomenclature and taxonomy, as two quite separate but mutually dependent systems, is a sophisticated way of balancing what we know and what is open to further interpretation.