Viewing post #719239 by KentPfeiffer

Unfortunately, Tiffany, your argument is founded on some inaccurate assumptions.

purpleinopp said:

Until geneticists involved themselves in binomial nomenclature of plants, AFAIK, they were only renamed if it was discovered that a same plant had been given more than 1 name. (Someone visiting a location in April, for example, would see plants in a quite different state than someone who visits in September.) So this has happened with many plants over the past 260 years, since Linnaeus invented his system. The name first published is given the status of preferred, with any names published later called synonyms. But! This isn't renaming a plant. It's reconciling a same plant with 2 names, one of which it was given by accident. Since a name works best if it is unique and stable, this is a necessary, positive, helpful, *good* thing to do.

Scientific names have never been stable. When I was in graduate school, at a time when working with DNA was relatively new and far too expensive to apply to plants on any kind of scale, I couldn't understand why the old professors insisted on using obsolete names for plants. I have more empathy for them now than I did then, but they were dealing with the same issue you are. The names changed and they didn't like it. The names didn't change just because of the "mistakes" you mentioned. They largely changed for the same reason they do now. Research revealed new information that altered our understanding of how organisms are related to each other (which is really what taxonomy is about).

I'm not even sure the pace of change is much faster now than it was then. It's certainly easier to find out about changes now, though. You used to have to sit in a university library, flipping through index journals, hoping to come across the relevant reference. Now, it takes a fraction of a second with Google Scholar.

purpleinopp said:
Since a name works best if it is unique and stable, this is a necessary, positive, helpful, *good* thing to do.

Unique, yes. Stable, absolutely not. The only way for the names to be stable is for scientists to quit studying plants. That would be a tragedy infinitely greater than occasionally asking people to learn new names. Look at it this way, whales were once classified as fish. Should we be stuck with what we know now to be a ludicrous idea in the name of stability?

The RULES regarding how names are given or changed need to be stable, and they largely have been for over two centuries. The names themselves CAN'T be.

purpleinopp said:


A name need only be unique and stable, to serve its' purpose. Once we know what a plant is, (which can only be done by giving it a name that no other plant has, that others also use to indicate that particular plant,) any particular knowledge sought about it can be reliably attached to the name. Many botanical epithets translate into someone's name, a color, an aspect of the plant such as fuzzy, reference to leaf shape. The notion of connecting genetics to binomial nomenclature is new, and the implications of doing it are not taken seriously enough, IMVHO/E.

There seems to be no stopping the idea that binomial nomenclature must somehow indicate some kind of genetic info, and/or be 'genetically correct,' so I hope whatever changes are made are indeed correct. I don't see any reason to connect the specific info called genetics to a plant name, and don't consider such renaming of plants to be progress (which implies a change for the *better*.)

Binomial nomenclature is just a a basic element of taxonomy. Taxonomy, at its most fundamental level, is the study of how organisms are related to each other. It would, frankly, be insane to not use genetics to further that study. I guarantee you the people involved in it take the work seriously. They devote a significant chunk of their lives to it.