Objectivity, Historicity, Taxonomy

Abstract

In Objectivity (2007), Daston and Galison argue that scientific objectivity has a history. Objectivity emerged as a distinct nineteenth-century ''epistemic virtue,'' flanked in time by other epistemic virtues. The authors trace the origins of scientific objectivity by identifying changes in images from scientific atlases from different periods, but they emphasize that the same history could be narrated using different sorts of scientific objects. One could, for example, focus on the changing uses of ''type specimens'' in biological taxonomy. Daston (Crit Inq 31(1): 2004) indeed provides a detailed account of the history of the type specimen which purports to show this. I argue that this attempt hinges on a conceptual confusion and therefore fails. I show that the actual history of the type specimen does not reinforce the account of epistemic virtues from Objectivity, but rather threatens to subvert it.

Linnaeus, the essentialism story, and the question of types

“…If an established genus needs to be split up into several […] then the original genus name should be kept to the plant that is the most common and medicinally important (vulgatissimae et officinali). (Linnaeus, 1751, §246) In a previous article (Witteveen, 2018), I have followed others in paraphrasing Linnaeus as prescribing that in a genus split the original name should be applied to the new genus that is the most "typical" part of the former whole. Lidén takes issue with this rendering of Linnaeus's aphorism and claims that "there is nothing here about typical species, or indeed anything begging for a taxonomists [sic] attestation".…”

“…In a welcome call for more interaction and engagement between taxonomists, historians, and philosophers, Lidén encourages readers of Taxon to consult some of these papers: “Taxonomists could learn from it.” However, Lidén also points out that these reappraisals of Linnaeus's taxonomic principles and practice fail to fully execute their task, as they continue to attribute to Linnaeus a form of typological thinking that he in fact steered clear of. Lidén highlights two of my articles (Witteveen, 2016b, 2018) that in his discussion “stand in for several earlier authors […] [who] got Linnaeus wrong” (p. 214). The problem, he argues, is that these articles claim that Linnaeus relied on a concept of types that he in fact had no truck with.…”

The history and philosophy of taxonomy as an information science

“…Witteveen's research in the history and philosophy of taxonomy has centered on the nature and development of systems of taxonomic naming and reference. For example, he has shown how key principles that underpin contemporary naming practices were articulated in the nineteenth century in a context of marked changes in taxonomic tools, methods and practioners, intense institutional politics, and lengthy debates about the logic of reference (Witteveen 2016(Witteveen , 2018. These historical studies are both informed by and inform Witteveen's research on the philosophical foundations of contemporary principles and procedures of naming taxa (Witteveen 2015).…”

§193 and §246 of Philosophia botanica do not support that Linnaeus was a “typologist”

“…However, I will argue that our reappraisal of Linnaeus is incomplete, and that he is still read (if at all) with coloured glasses. For example, there is widespread agreement, according to Witteveen (2016Witteveen ( , 2018, that Linnaeus considered each genus to have a most "typical" species, i.e., that he introduced the "Method of Type" or the "classification type" that took various forms during the Romantic era. The concept is aptly articulated by Whewell:…”