The history and philosophy of taxonomy as an information science

Abstract

We undeniably live in an information age-as, indeed, did those who lived before us. After all, as the cultural historian Robert Darnton pointed out: 'every age was an age of information, each in its own way' (Darnton 2000: 1). Darnton was referring to the news media, but his insight surely also applies to the sciences. The practices of acquiring, storing, labeling, organizing, retrieving, mobilizing, and integrating data about the natural world has always been an enabling aspect of scientific work. Natural history and its descendant discipline of biological taxonomy are prime examples of sciences dedicated to creating and managing systems of ordering data. In some sense, the idea of biological taxonomy as an information science is commonplace. Perhaps it is because of its self-evidence that the information science perspective on taxonomy has not been a major theme in the history and philosophy of science. The botanist Vernon Heywood once pointed out that historians of biology, in their 'preoccupation with the development of the sciences of botany and zoology … [have] diverted attention from the role of taxonomy as an information science' (Heywood 1985: 11). More specifically, he argued that historians had failed Catherine Kendig and Joeri Witteveen have contributed equally to this paper and are listed in alphabetical order.

On the impossibilities of advancing racial justice in higher education research through reliance on the campus climate heuristic.

“…This ontological problem limits possibilities for racial justice because, inherently, the perceptions and behaviors of those individuals responsible for creating the environment (effectively a reverse or cyclical causal path) are either amorphous or completely unspecified in today's predominant conceptual frameworks for campus environment (Ledesma, 2016). The climate heuristic obfuscates how human beings coconstruct and experience the world through their racialized bodies in situated, temporal, and place-bound personal interactions (Kendig, 2011;Sundstrom, 2003;Tuck & McKenzie, 2015) and therefore reinforces, rather than challenges, whatever conditions might exist in a person's environment. At best, such ontological limitations invite observations of, say, white supremacy, rather than interrogations of how white supremacy operates, and at worst, they obscure the nature of white supremacy while perpetuating the epistemic erasure of the very bodies from whom data were collected.…”

An updated classification of meditation methods using principles of taxonomy and systematics

“…There has been, and continues to be, much debate between scientists and philosophers as to which approach is most efficacious, and this has resulted in the promulgation of several well-respected theories and schools of taxonomy. Textbooks on this subject could fill an entire section of the library (for example, see Mayr, 1969 ; Ereshefsky, 2000 ; Kendig and Witteveen, 2020 ).…”

“…Our initial review of the Philosophy of Taxonomy literature ( Lubischew, 1969 ; Mayr, 1969 ; Ereshefsky, 2000 ) provided the theoretical and operational principles that informed our 2013 taxonomic approach. Further review for this iteration ( Walsh, 2006 ; Ereshefsky, 2007 ; Austin, 2017 ; Kendig and Witteveen, 2020 ) indicated that it would be beneficial to have a criterion-based set of standards for constructing meditation classification proposals. The following Four Criteria Model was developed to facilitate a standardized and compartmentalized explanandum for our new Three Tier Classification System presented in this paper; and as a potentially useful method for evaluating the relative efficacy of various other classification proposals.…”

Towards a global list of accepted species I. Why taxonomists sometimes disagree, and why this matters

“…Better analogies are available for taxonomy, free from the tensions caused when it is forced into a hypotheticodeductive straitjacket with an over-emphasis on apparent objectivity. One is taxonomy as an information science (see Kendig & Witteveen, 2020, and references cited therein). Another is taxonomy as map-making (see also Kitcher, 1984Kitcher, , 2001O'Hara, 1993).…”