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The Shame of Botany’s Botched Names Bad Plant Names or Divinely Ordained Labels?
Summary of Column • This lively and funny interchange of email opinions concerns mistakes committed by botanists in their naming of plant species due to their sloppy knowledge of scientific Latin and their airy habit of changing Latin grammar to cover up older mistakes in naming plants. • You’ll learn how Latin-deficient botanists therefore “balls up” some plant names. • It contains a new essay on why the eponym should be banned from all scientific naming procedures. • You’ll see Casselman “get taken to the cleaners” for his ignorance of botanical naming customs. • This column began as a letter of objection to me from Michael Plotkin, Assistant Professor of Biology at Mount San Jacinto College in Riverside County, California . Its two main campuses are in San Jacinto and Menifee, with a facility in Temecula, California as well. • This is a long column, more than 10,000 words, but well worth the reading. If you don’t finish it in one reading, please return tomorrow. Since it is the equivalent of 10 columns, it will remain on this page for several weeks. Please email me any reactions, addenda, corrigenda et alia.
pomegranate
Are Botanical Names Messed Up? The Plotkin/Casselman Correspondence
Tuesday, July 22, 2008 Bill: I just found the pomegranate page on your website and love it. I am a botanist and am directing some of my students in a course I am currently teaching to your page, just for fun. Michael Plotkin Assistant Professor of Biology, Mount San Jacinto College, Riverside County, California
Casselman notes will appear in blue: Here I, Bill Casselman, insert the relevant passage from my column on the word pomegranate. You can read my entire pomegranate column by clicking here. But the excerpt that follows below is sufficient to understand our discussion. bc The Botanical Name of the Pomegranate The pomegranate fruit is technically the fleshy, scarlet berry of an African and Asiatic tree, Punica granatum. One of the tree’s names in Latin was arbor punica, ‘the Carthaginian tree.’ Although the tree grows from southeast Europe right over to the Himalayas, the Romans first encountered it growing in vast groves in northern Africa in the Phoenician colony of Carthage, a city and an empire against whom the Romans were to wage three great wars, beginning with the First Punic War (264-241 BCE) when Rome won and captured Sicily. In the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE), the famous Hannibal and his elephants lumbered down the Alps to defeat. In the Third Punic War (149-146 BCE), the once mighty city of Carthage was obliterated from the sands of time. The great cry in the Roman Senate was “Cartago delenda est!” ‘ Carthage must be destroyed!’ And so it was, utterly. The Little Mistake Repeated Around the World But the term for the pomegranate tree that finally influenced botanists when they came to name it was its description in the writings of Pliny the Elder, a Roman encyclopedist who termed the tree malum punicum ‘the Carthaginian apple.’ Somehow early botanists shortened this to punica, which is the feminine of the Latin adjective punicus ‘Carthaginian.’ Then granatum was added as the specific name of the shrub-like tree. Granatum means ‘seedy, abounding in seed,’ but it is a neuter form of the adjective granatus, whereas the generic word punica is grammatically feminine. Even in present-day international botany, Latin nouns must agree in gender and number, as they did for millennia when Latin was a living, spoken tongue. But this does not happen in Punica granatum. Here is a case where scientists screwed up and will not correct their mistake. The botanical name of the pomegranate tree should be Punica granata, not what it is in every botanical text on earth, namely Punica granatum. But the mistake is sanctioned by long use, and botanists will not change it. Granted, granatum is a small mistake, but it is not alone in botanical nomenclature where thousands of clumsy fumblings in bad Latin word-making clutter otherwise pristine texts. I know I'm a fussbudget to say so, but scientists ought to correct their most easily seen errors. bc
pomegranate
Professor Michael Plotkin continues. . . I agree with you about the problems with botanical Latin and agreement of gender and case, along with other problems. It can seem like a mess! One common oak here in California is named Quercus agrifolia. The specific epithet agrifolia is a nice sounding name, but when you think about it, it makes no sense. It is nonsense. As far as anyone can figure, this name represents a typographical error, from a day when texts were copied by hand. It is thought the author of the name meant to call it aquifolia which makes more sense as Aquifoliaceae refers to hollies, some which are spiny leaved like the oak. (so that the specific epithet might have been intended to mean a ‘holly-leaved’ oak). As for pomegranate, although it persistently vexes Latin scholars, the rules of botanical nomenclature are not always the rules of good Latin.
Bill Casselman adds: To the disaster of botanical nomenclature! Botanical names should be sound Latin, the reasons for which follow throughout this exchange. Read later nightmare examples from the history of botched botanical names. bc The species epithet can be one of three types of words: they can be adjectives modifying the Genus noun, in which case they must agree with the Genus word in case, number and gender. They can also be genitives, in which case they take the genitive case no matter what the case of the Genus. That last sentence verges on being a moronic axiom. It is clear you have no command at all of the structure of Latin. If ever there existed a verbal truth, so blatantly self-evident as to need no exposition, in the syntax of languages where nouns are declined, it is this: In Latin, as in many western Indo-European languages, the grammatical gender of the thing possessed, that is, the word in the possessive or genitive case, has no bearing on the grammatical gender of the possessor. My only response to such twaddle is that of Homer Simpson: Duhhhhhh. bc
Professor Michael Plotkin continues . . . And, finally, they can be "words in apposition" in which case they need not agree with the genus in any way. It is actually more complicated than this. Check out Chapter VII of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature: Orthography and Gender of Names — http://www.bgbm.org/iapt/nomenclature/code/ SaintLouis/0067Ch7OaGoNSec2a62.htm
No, Michael, botanical names, over the centuries, have been more royally screwed up than in any other science. The ICBN pages to which you direct us comprise a dense skein of excusatory bafflegab, designed to disguise centuries of messy naming procedures by scientists not even half-literate in botanical Latin, never mind clear Latin. The ICBN excuse rules do no service to clarity of plant identification. bc
You say that: "Even in present-day international botany, Latin nouns must agree in gender and number, as they did for millennia when Latin was a living, spoken tongue." This is the basis of your calling the lack of agreement in the scientific name of pomegranate a mistake. However the section of the ICBN begins with the proclamation: "A generic name retains the gender assigned by botanical tradition, irrespective of classical usage or the author's original usage. A generic name without a botanical tradition retains the gender assigned by its author." This means, I believe, that despite the presence of a particular suffix a Genus may be treated as any gender the author decides, that is within the rules, of course. This seems like a way to wiggle out of any Latin rule the author of the name decided not to follow, but that is how we botanists do it. An outrageous admission of stumblebum labeling! That last paragraph is semantic insanity. It is like saying, “As the author of this treatise on plums, I prefer and propose hereinafter in this document to refer to anything purple as “pale yellow.” Thus, when the next Outer Mongolian botanist struggling through this treatise reads “pale yellow plum,” he must understand that the true referent is to a purple plum. Put simply, Michael, that is nuts! That way lies the psycho-ward gurney with the felted straps. That way linguistic sloppiness is excused by constantly revising the rules of naming. Of what use is Latin as a normative labeling code if each individual author is permitted to change the meaning of words, the gender of nouns, at his own whim? None. bc
Umbrella pines “crowd into a shade” on the Caelian Hill in Rome.
Michael Plotkin continues . . . Look at names of trees in particular. Many of the Genera are nominative masculine Latin words, but many of the species epithets are feminine. E.g. Quercus agrifolia, Q. alba, Alnus rubra, etc. This is explained by the ICBN in Chapter VII: "Although their ending suggests masculine gender, Cedrus Trew and Fagus L., like most other classical tree names, were traditionally treated as feminine and thus retain that gender; similarly, Rhamnus L. is feminine, despite the fact that Linnaeus assigned it masculine gender. Phyteuma L. (n), Sicyos L. (m), and Erigeron L. (m) are other names for which botanical tradition has reestablished the classical gender despite another choice by Linnaeus." So I guess the issue is whether these departures from classical Latin are really mistakes if they are sanctioned by our code of nomenclature. I am interested in your perspective on this. Thanks, Michael Plotkin Assistant Professor, Biology Mt. San Jacinto College
BEHOLD YE THE SINS OF THE NAME BOARD !
Michael – Masculine is feminine. Singular is sometimes plural. Red is white. Mom is Dad. Leaf is stem. Linnaeus sang castrato in a choir of Swedish trannies. To hell with logic and facts! What cringing, lickspittle worship of ordained ICBN code on your part! Is that how science has advanced? Playing slavish adulation to erroneous orthodoxy? I don’t think so. My perspective on these solemnly enunciated rules is simple: ICBN code is deficient and dishonest. Read ten pages of the preposterous Code language. It is a pathetic attemept to validate the errors of earlier botanists by stating that the mistakes they made in their Latin and Greek plant names are now permissible. How does ICBN code slither through that one? Simple. Change the rules of Latin every time it needs to! Physics does not advance by defending Newton until the quarks come home. Medicine does not improve itself by clinging to a medieval theory of humors. “Mrs. Smith, your depression is caused by a melancholic excess. Too much black bile coursing through your arteries and veins.”
Why do you think error is turned by ICBN decree into truth? 1. To save the botanical asses of past scientists who fumbled when it came time to name their discoveries. 2. To prevent all previous botanical literature from having to be corrected. 3. To spare begraggled and put-upon botanists the mental expense of keeping accurate the ongoing naming processes of botany.
Seriously, Michael, can you think of worse scientific procedure than to say: all previous mistakes were not mistakes? Such is the state of botanical naming today. Orthonomically yours, Bill Casselman
botanical illustration of Justicia carnea
My email reply to Michael’s first letter above now follows: Michael: In every other realm of your "science" of botany, there are rules. If you were examining, for new-species-status, a microtome on a slide of some newly discovered plant stem, you would not even dare to suggest that this tissue does not follow some commonplace of structure, so — tra-la-la — we'll permit here a total violation of the rules of botanical evidence. Just let it pass. Sneak it in. Yet you blithely acquiesce to enshrining all the collective mistakes of the hundreds of botanists throughout history who had so little Latin they could not get the grammatical gender of tree words correct! Listen to yourself in that email you sent me. Is that the voice of science speaking. Seek what may be true? No, it is a man making excuses for generations of error. Science does not seek to excuse its mistakes. It corrects them. Unless, apparently, the blatant goofs are the present glutinous muddle of botanical binomials, afroth with "special cases" and foolishnesses like "feminine nouns treated as masculine." Ha! The ICBN is a giant piece of pseudo-authoratative duct tape designed to shroud error and stuck over an open, bleeding linguistic wound. Verbal gangrene is sure to follow. THAT is my perspective.
shaking the wagging finger of disapproval, I remain Bill Casselman
Leucospermum cuneiforme or common wart-stemmed pincushion Protea
From: Michael Plotkin" To: "Bill Casselman" Subject: botanical buffoonery Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Bill: Thanks for the perspective. I am taking the liberty of forwarding it to some of my botanist friends who I am sure will get a big kick out of it. It is drearily rare to find someone so avidly anti-botany. Rather refreshing, actually. The quotation marks around science as it refers to botany is the best! While it is exceptionally amusing to find someone so eager to cast aspersions (and full points for the heights to which you hoist your invective), I can see some serious flaws in your argument, a few of which I can hardly resist mentioning. First, science is not a search for truth in the sense that we are not engaged in collecting facts as if they were precious stones scattered about, waiting to be picked up. Science is the creation of models of an inscrutable reality.
Inscrutable? I think a scientist named Albert Einstein was more accurate than you. Einstein wrote: Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber bösehaft ist er nicht. “God is clever, but he is not perverse.” Although much of the cosmos will reveal itself to our scrutiny, it is probable that some filaments of the universal tapestry will resist our picks and needles of inquiry. But they must, or what is science for? bc
All of these models remain to some significant degree inaccurate. As such, science is perhaps best described by Karl Popper's quip that it is really nothing but "a style of quarreling". I mention this because you seem to think that the arbitrary and fully fanciful erection of scientific names is analogous to the delineation of some aspect of, in your example, vascular tissue. You are right, one cannot simply change the "rules" to accommodate an aberration. However, if I found an anomalous vascular structure, I would report it as a fact and then the arguing about what it might mean would commence. Science corrects its mistakes, as you note, but the facts don't change as a result. If I found what looked to me like a vessel in pine tree, I would have contradicted the wisdom that pine trees don't have vessels. I might, in light of my discovery, suggest we correct that notion. But some might argue what I have found are not vessels. What if they fit most of the criteria for vessels, but not quite all. Whether or not these things I found are homologous to vessels in flowering plants would be an important question. If they were, I might argue they are vessels despite not being exactly like other known vessels. This is where the quarreling comes in. So there is no simple fact that pine trees have vessels. The fact is pine trees would have been discovered to have something we could describe, but how we named this something would reveal what we thought it meant. I might be wrong about what I think the anomalies mean, but they still exist as facts. Science is, in a word, not as straightforward as a set of linguistic rules.
Michael, that is one of the reasons we seek to normalize the labels of science. bc
This photo bears no appreciable relation to the topics under discussion. But the Casselman Board of Tedium Abatement deemed its insertion oinky but appropriate.
Michael Plotkin continues . . . I propose there is a fundamental difference between finding something in nature and the language we use to represent nature. Language is a human creation, which is dynamic and functional. Languages change over time to suit the needs of those who use them. I take it you are a prescriptivist when it comes to understanding the rules of a language?
Bill Casselman replies: As my 11 books on language and words testify, as my 400-page web site attests, I am a descriptivist. A living language changes hourly; a dead language does not. Please read my special web essay: Why I am not a Word Cop Science decided to use Latin and Greek because they do NOT change.
Michael Plotkin continues. . . I am a descriptivist. I say if we want to decide that a set of names will be treated as feminine, why not? You say, we break the rules, but the rules are whatever we agree they are. There are a legion of examples of rule breaking in all languages, including English. Why do I say, "I had less than 30 minutes to write this" when “fewer” is grammatically correct. Why do we boldly split infinitives (perhaps because it is stupid not too) and end sentences with a preposition, an affront up with which we surely should not put. You can say such things, Michael, because they are all perfectly acceptable in living speech. What you have tossed to us here are straw dogs, sacrificial cases that have no bearing on mistaken botanical names. bc Why have we allowed nouns to become verbs and verbs to become nouns? Because that is a very common way that all Indo-European languages produce new words. The IE and other language groups have been doing that for 5,000 years or more. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with such natural transpositions. Anyone who knew well the evolution of the English word-stock, how our vocabulary grew and continues to grow, anyone acquainted deeply with English would know that. You apparently may not know such things. bc
Why do we use hopefully to mean something other than with hope? (Nulla regula sine exceptione.) Only the most steadfast curmudgeon attempts to hold language static. Yes, we do need rules, but rules are made to be broken, or as Ovid said, "In medio tutissimus ibis."
Michael, you are quite the academic snob. Nulla regula sine exceptione could have been stated in plain English (“Every rule has its exception” - - a comforting cliché but, incidentally, not universal in language studies. Many linguistic ploys have no exceptions.) You toss in the four Latin quotations with which you are passingly familiar, and then you don’t translate them, the better to bamboozle hoi polloi. Naughty, naughty! Beware of toplofty sneering. The higher the monkey climbs, the more he shows his anus. In medio tutissimus ibis, the quotation from the Roman poet Ovid, means “by taking the middle way, you will travel through life most safely.” Ovid was putting into Latin an old Greek philosophical tag, pan metron ariston, “everything is best when one follows the middle course.” But moderation is out-of-place in the attack on word lapses and grammatical slip-ups. By the way, Ovid's caution did not save him. The Roman authorities, prompted by the first emperor Augustus, convicted Ovid of publishing pornography and deported him to exile, to finish his life repining on the Coliseumless shores of a desolate Black Sea fishing hamlet. Exilic woe slew the old poet. Michael, I would not sign Ovid up for your team too hastily. bc
A modern edition of some of the Ovidian poetic oeuvre that may have landed the poet in hot water with the priggish emperor Augustus.
Professor Michael Plotkin continues . . . And who says the ICBN should follow the rules of Latin anyway? It is not Latin, it is botanical nomenclature, based on Latin to be sure, but not Latin. Should the Hawaiian pidgin be held to rules of the languages from which it borrows? Botanical nomenclature includes words from numerous languages, generally Latinized, but not Latin. We botanists have taken Latin and twisted it to suit us, and that is our right, just as the Mexicans have a right to change Spanish (whole verb tenses gone!) and the Canadians to change French. Botanical nomenclature is innovative, not error ridden.
Mikey, Mikey, Mikey! May mind-numbing pollen grains fly up your nose and stopper your brain! You keep missing the point of why Latin was chosen in the first place as a medium for botanical nomenclature. Let us suppose that I plaster labels on a barn full of bushels of 75 different apple species and then return the next day, having decided that the species names, the special epithets, contain too many unscientific eponyms, honoring dead orchardists and defunct botanists unworthy of eponymous memorialization. Suppose there is a hard, red, unbiteable, tooth-breaking apple named Malum plotkinii. How utterly inappropriate in any scientific circumstance! I change it to the more pleasing but hardly less enlightening Malum billcasselmanii. A day after that, a visiting pomologist (apple scientist) comes into the barn and screams bloody murder. He can no longer identify some of the apple species because I have altered their names. That is precisely what the ICBN has been engaged in since its inception. Some of its work is corrective improvement. But many of its rules are totally destructive to scientific advancement, such as its defense of botanical eponyms, which I discuss and dismiss later in this column. bc
Finally, I will point out that this whole discussion will soon be obviated by changes in botanical nomenclature. The Linnaean system is on the outs, because, as you say, science corrects itself. It has become apparent to many of us that far worse errors than solecisims lurk in the names we use: namely that the names do not represent real natural groups. Evolutionary systematics is replacing the arbitrary Linnaean binomial system even as you read this. You may even live to see it laid to rest.
What an excellent and long-needed sweeping away of past naming habits! And let’s make sure botanists eliminate the scientifically useless habit of botanical eponyms, that is, naming plants after the botanist who supposedly discovered the plants. See the section below on eponyms as anathema. Even after professors of botany have rearranged the world’s plants in truer evolutionary systems, there will remain a need to avoid the muddle of multilingual common names. I don’t want my spice garden suddenly lumbered with the Danish common name for lemon-scented thyme. And my Danish counterpart does not want his garden labels festooned with Alabaman common names. Are you sure there will be no need for Latin - - - even if the botanists decide to expunge Linnaean binomials? I am not. bc
Besides, we are now allowed to write botanical descriptions of new species in English. Nevertheless, we old-fashioned botanists are wont to quip: "Felices qui cognoscunt filices" (translation of the gist of this cheap, atrocious Latin pun by Bill Casselman, because it was not supplied by the haughty Plotkin: “Fortunate are those who can identify the many similar species of ferns.” In other words, “Gee, Mummy, am I ever glad I’m a gweat big botanist and not a street cleaner! Weeeeeeeee!”) stalwart, despite any peccadillos, of botany, Michael Plotkin
………………………….. a short essay follows…………………………
Eponyms: The Horror! The Horror! By Bill Casselman
Sure, you can name a plant after pioneering North American botanist Thomas Nuttall. Take the sego lily of the American southwest, Calochortus nuttallii. The species name, nuttallii, is the eponym. But what the hell have you stated in the botanical name that is of any use in identifying some feature of the sego lily species. Below glows a photograph of this elegant lily. Is it the exact species that Thomas Nuttall collected in 1824? Er, uh, duhhh, well, maybe not. But it’s a related species. Closely related? In other words, nuttallii is a useless name conceived and promoted by botanists seeking to glorify themselves. In naming it thus, they shouted to the world: “To hell with scientific clarity! When I can immortalize myself forever in the annals of nomina botanica! Hurray for Me! Me! Me!” Of course, some botanists want to continue with eponyms. Like all of us, they pine for eternal fame. But in doing so they are willing to sacrifice botanical precision. Selfish louts!
Let’s say we were going to revise the botanical name of the sego lily. For the present, let’s keep the generic name Calochortus. It derives from kalos Greek ‘beautiful’ + chortos Greek ‘grass.’ The genus name is a reference to the slender, long-grass-like leaves of some of the 57 species. Instead of the meaningless specific epithet nuttallii, let’s create a Latin or Greek epithet that actually attempts to describe some identifying field mark of the flower. The distinct markings in the centre of the flower look to me to be colored a burning, fiery yellow. So I’m going to dub the species, Calochortus *pyroxanthicus ‘fiery-yellow’. From pyr, pyros Greek ‘fire’ + xanthos Greek ‘yellow.’ Now, is there a big bad burden of memory work for the put-upon dullard who is the average student of botany, as imagined by Professor Plotkin? I don’t think so. The Greek root for fire is reasonably well-known to educated people in the word pyromaniac ‘nutter who lights fires for fun and sexual stimulation.’ Many know the mineral iron pyrite. Fans of volcano words know pyroclastic flow. Heat-and–fire-proof glass objects are made by the Pyrex company. Xanthic is a little rarer adjective, although most medical students have encountered it in medical words like the skin tumor, xanthoma, and in medical literature dealing with jaundice. Some high-school botany students even know that the yellow chemical in autumn leaves is xanthophyll. Memorizing a few Latin and Greek roots in public and high school days opens the whole hoard of technical vocabulary to a mastery far easier to achieve than going through scientific jargon without any Latin and Greek.
The Eponym Plague in Other Sciences like Medicine Instead of Latin and Greek roots which actually denote something about a medical procedure, one sees medical eponyms used. An eponym is a name for a structure, disease, or syndrome based on the surname of a physician or medical researcher, often associated with the discovery or first clinical description of the object or disorder. Yes, it is pleasant to remember and honor pioneers like James Parkinson. But which name is more helpful and descriptive: Parkinson's disease or paralysis agitans? Add to that duo, the confusing welter of Parkinsonism and Parkinsonian syndrome. Or consider Zinn's zonula. Johann Gottfried Zinn (1727-1759), a German anatomist, was the author of a classic treatise on the eye. How many first-year medical students know that? Where is Zinn's zonula? A more appropriate label is the ciliary zonula. Zonula means ‘little belt, little girdle’ in Latin. The ciliary zonula is a group of hair-like (cilium Latin, fine hair, eyelash) suspensory fibers that connect the lens of the eye to the ciliary body. A supercilious glance is a haughty one, originally involving a snooty raised eyebrow. Even in Latin supercilium referred to both the eyebrow (the part above or super to the eyelashes or cilia ) and supercilium was also a common Latin noun meaning ‘snotty behaviour.’
In this diagram Zinn's zonula is called the suspensory ligament. Other names for this anatomical feature are the zonule of Zinn, zonula ciliaris, and ciliary zonule. My problem with the easy-weasy English term “suspensory ligament” is summed up by this question: are there any other ligaments in the human body that can be said to suspend other body parts? Ask an anatomist and you will discover the advantage of the correct NA term, zonula ciliaris.
Eponyms are not practical, not efficient, not scientific labels. They are to be discouraged. Wherever posssible use a scientific name, not an eponym. It takes decades, sometimes centuries, to eradicate these meaningless honorifics, which in fact do no honor to the pioneering physicians and researchers. Most of them would be disgusted to know that their surnames have been plastered on clumsy and impractical medical terms that make learning medical nomenclature more difficult for students. As long ago as 1955, at a conference in Paris, the International Congress of Anatomy adopted a new official list of anatomical names, the Nomina Anatomica, abbreviated NA in many medical dictionaries. All eponyms and proper names were eliminated, so that silly terms like "the foramen of Winslow, Scarpa's fascia, Hunter's canal" and others were abandonned. The NA list is updated and revised regularly. These new terms speed the learning of medical nomenclature, improve the clarity of journal research articles and medical literature in general, and make easier international and interlingual medical communications. And here is the most salient criticism of eponyms: research into and study of the origin of these eponymous monstrosities leads to the sobering discovery that, in anatomy at least, many of the surnames attached to structures are false or incorrect. The men and women honored by having their names attached to some anatomical part were in fact not the first to describe them or discover them! So, even as honorifics, eponyms fail. Avoid them. Seek out the NA name and use it.
------------------------end of eponym essay-----------------------
On Jul 23, 2008 Bill Casselman wrote: Michael - Your attempt to paint me as a nitpicking fussbudget doddering sclerotically through the oh-so-up-to-date hoard of spiffily apt botanical nomenclature shall not be countenanced! Let us return to the reason that science chose Latin in the first place. The prime reason in botany was to solve the bewildering welter of common names in many European languages. I make bold to include here (please read it) part of an introduction to my published medical dictionary, admittedly aimed at first-year meds and nursing students, in an attempt to acquaint them with the roots and husks of scientific vocabulary. ..............................
Why Latin & Greek in Scientific Names?
The simple answer is: 90% of ALL scientific words in English derive from Latin and Greek. In medical English, 98% of all technical terms have Latin or Greek roots. In origin, English is a Germanic tongue based on the Germanic dialects of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who conquered Britain. But invasions of and migrations to the British Isles of peoples speaking other languages, like Latin, Old Norse, and French, added foreign terms to the basic Anglo-Saxon wordstock. English now has more lexical items, more words, than any other language on earth, a larger vocabulary than Chinese or French or Russian or Arabic. Our simple words are still of Anglo-Saxon origin: ‘give,’ ‘man,’ ‘father.’ But almost all our technical words have been borrowed from Latin and Greek. Western medicine was taught in Latin, and to a lesser extent, Greek, for 2,000 years. The Greek word asphyxia is 3,000 years old. Its meaning has changed slightly, but it is still used in English and in most European languages too. Up to the end of the 17th century, medical textbooks were written in Latin. If you were a student at the Sorbonne, or at Oxford, or Bologna, you learned anatomy and physiology from books written in Latin and based on the writings of famous Roman physicians like Galen, who lived from 129 to 199 a.d. As late as 1542 a.d. The influential anatomist Vesalius assembled his personal knowledge of anatomy based on his own dissections and observations, thus changing the course of medical inquiry from superstition to science. Vesalius wrote his famous book in Latin, but included an index of all the Greek names for parts of the body — because the medical students who would use his textbook had to know both Latin and Greek. The first American medical textbooks used at Harvard University were written in Latin.
Hippocrates on a modern Greek stamp
Where did Roman physicians obtain their medical knowledge? Largely from the ancient Greeks. The earliest extant Greek medical texts were written by a Greek doctor named Hippocrates and physicians who had been his students in the fifth century bc. On the tiny, peaceful Greek island of Cos, Hippocrates ran a school for doctors. Here he formulated the famous Hippocratic Oath, still sworn today by some medical students. Its most famous rule is “First, do no harm.”
But why use those dead languages, Latin and Classical Greek, to form scientific and technical terms? First, it is traditional, as we saw above. Second, in a dead language, the meaning of a word does not change. It is frozen. Callus will always mean ‘hard skin’ in Latin. In a living language, words acquire new meanings. In 1930, acid meant a chemical like the acetic acid in vinegar. Nowadays ‘acid’ is English slang for LSD, a dangerous hallucinogenic drug. Because precise meaning and precise use of words is crucial in all forms of medical and scientific communication, it helps to be able to make new medical terms from Latin and Greek roots whose meaning does not alter over time. The Greek root akro- will always mean ‘high’ and phobos will always mean ‘fear,’ so acrophobia will always mean ‘morbid fear of heights.’ Classical Greek is a dead language. The root meanings cannot change, as they can in English. We ought to note here that Modern Greek is a vibrant tongue, still very much alive in Greece and wherever in the world Greek people gather. By the way, knowing akro- helps in ordinary English word origins too. An acrobat was first a high-wire walker, a walker on ropes strung across a room or a street. The Greek adjective akrobatos meant literally ‘walking on tiptoe.’ The high, defended part of an ancient Greek city was an acropolis, from Greekpolis ‘city.’ Athens had the most famous one. But you can guess what and where the Acrocorinth was. One final reason we use Latin and Greek roots to form medical words is — believe it or not— they make terms that are shorter and more convenient than long descriptions in English. Cholecystostomy is much quicker and easier to write than its definition in English: namely, the surgical making of a mouth-like opening (Greek stoma) in the wall of the gall (Greek chole) bladder (Greek cysto-) to introduce a catheter for the purposes of draining excess fluid accumulation. Greek and Latin terms provide a kind of shorthand for the description of complex objects and procedures in medicine. Personally, I’ll take cholecystostomy any day. Now that I know the simple Greek roots, I can even remember how to spell the word more easily. Scientific terms based on the correct use of Latin and Greek roots speed the learning of medical nomenclature, improve the clarity of journal research articles and medical literature in general, and make easier international and interlingual medical communications. ........................................................................ Michael - As for the flaws in my argument, they are gaping lacunae in my modest botanical knowledge. I have not clambered up the statue of Botany. It is a height to which I have never dared aspire. But if xylem and phloem are not broadly analogous to mammalian conductive vascularity, why then, sir, I am a salamander!
Bill Casselman?
Never have I pretended to be a botanist. I was trying to make a point with the slender knowledge to hand. Do forgive me. You also misrepresent utterly my linguistic stance. I am for verbal freedom. Descriptiveness forever! But also I favour correct Latin that performs its botanical task of clarity. I do not support expensive international nomenclature bodies, whose chief function is to hold conventions in Geneva where the nomenclatores may visit dirndl-clad damsels at twilight to engage in the more outré Swiss orgies where innocent milkmaids are solemnly dipped into lukewarm cheese fondue before being ravished. Dictionaries describe how we talk and write. They exist to improve communiction. It strikes me (and perhaps you would like to?) that you are quite ignorant of what botanical treastises looked like before Linnaeus. Like spelling before the advent of universally used dictionaries, botanical papers bristled with invalid common names (some European plants had 412 common names!) Latin binomials solved that, and will continue to do so, as long as they are in Latin. Your laisser-faire attitude is precisely what causes scientific description to sink once again into the medieval swamp of multiple-common-names and rejigging Latin to fit botany, rather than using the brilliant instrument of a dead language, like Latin, crystallized in obsolescence, to render scientific description uniform and comprehensible to all the earth's scientists. All it means, Michael, is that a few of you botanical blowhards, must stoop to learn proper Latin. It is not a prescriptivist plot. It is the common sense of scientific naming. One does not select a dead language to solve labeling problems, and then abandon that dead language to lazybones who would ignore or transform it. Bill Casselman
Professor Micahel Plotkin continues . . . Bill: Damnant quod non intellegunt! Although, dictum sapienti sat est, I have not had sufficient time to shorten my reply, so it remains too long. Thanks for the chapter on the utility of Latin (and Greek). Enjoyable reading and it makes some fine points. You have convinced me that science’s employment of dead languages to vouchsafe its content is profitable. Unfortunately, it also results in a cost, namely, the perception of obscurantism, elitism and jargon-mongering especially among the populist conservatives in our government and citizenry. Thus, an elegant and precious segment of human achievement, already beset by the puerile, boneheaded skepticism of the ignorant, and, potentially worse, the outright enmity of religious fanatics, suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. And after all it’s done for them—ingrates! So, science might significantly benefit by being more accessible to the masses, however unwashed they remain. Then scientists could interact with non-scientists and engage in extended sessions of blepharotachyia—(or would we be better served by simply calling it flirting.) (Of course if I met an attractive hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophiliac I would not be adverse to tossing in a grander (circum)locution or two for effect.)
Michael - As to the charge of elitism : All realms of human endeavour, of any complexity whatsoever, have private vocabularies. The ditch-digger and the reconstructive urological surgeon both need special vocabularies. Shall the progress of knowledge cease because some layabout brain-stem slouching stoned in a bus station cannot fathom string theory? No. And the ultimate validity of string theory is not the point. There is an unpleasant station on the road of progress where elistism must take over, and the brightest among us must in a mighty chorus shout: Fuck the dummies! In order that the morons can follow us, shall we then stop the accumulation of knowledge and the testing of the modest data hoard we have acquired since leaping down from the African trees? No. For example, the born-again cross-clutchers who wish to hamper stem-cell research must be fought. I shiver to recall a religious television program during which a man wheeled his quadriplegic wife out in an electric wheelchair. She was twitching in constant pain. After telling the evangelical preacher why he and his wife were against stem-cell research, the man said that every time his wife screamed and fainted from the pain, why he prayed and offered HER pain to Jesus. That heartless, stupid bastard! Belligerent ignorance never had a more repulsive flag-bearer. That such mental slugs can elect creatures like George Bush and the obscene, gasping Cheney is one of the nastier prices of democracy. bc
Michael Plotkin continues . . . You appear to advance somewhere around four supports for using Latin (from now on I will elide the “and Greek” assuming it is implied): tradition, precision (due to the static nature of dead languages), brevity, and universality. Tradition amounts to an exiguous reason for maintaining an activity (except among traditionalists of course); isn’t this the argument implied by the ICBN when they permit irreverent or incorrect constructions because of longstanding usage, i.e. tradition? If the system sucks, tradition is no reason to keep it, so this argument is neither sufficient nor necessary when adduced in support of Latin for science.
I have already explained that by tradition I mean convenience of conveyance. When customary scientific notation is used, broader understanding results. bc
Precision presents more compelling merit, and I accept it. We botanists know exactly what we mean when we call a vascular system a solenostele (and wouldn’t it be both untoward and beyond our pay grade to repeatedly have to assert one is referring to an “amphiploic siphonostele with non-overlapping leaf gaps” –but c.f. my comments on brevity). We also all know what we mean when we call a leaf a microsporophyll--except that a microsporophyll might be a microphyll or a megaphyll (just as a megasporophyll might be a microphyll or a megaphyll). Alas the esteemed precision of Latin does not extend to alerting us as to whether the micro- refers to the sporangium or the leaf.
Of course, micro- is Greek, Michael. As are all the word segments in your next paragraph. bc I have proposed changing the terms to clarify this, as with: microsporomegaphyll, wherein the first micro (or mega) would refer to the sporangium and the second to the leaf itself. Any potential confusion between microsporophylls that are actually megaphylls, which I would call microsporomegaphylls, and megasporophylls that are actually microphylls, which I would call megasporomicrophylls, would be elegantly avoided. Surprisingly, no listens to me. In any case, it is clear that Latin does help we botanists call a spade a rutila. The question though is whether other languages might similarly allow such fine precision. Does Latin have a greater claim on precision? I take your point that being a dead language, Latin is frozen and meanings will not change. But we don’t conduct science in Latin, we just name some things in it. I doubt that the English word liver will ever mean anything other than liver in science, though it might acquire other meanings in English. Latin words absorbed into English do begin to change meaning. Thus the frozen nature of scientific Latin is a function of the fact the general public does not use the words much if at all, rather than because they possess some mysterious essence of precision by mere dint of being rendered in dead Latin.
Latin’s only precision as a naming language rests in the fact that Latin is a dead language. That’s the reason to employ it. In itself, lingua qua lingua, Latin is no more nor less precise than Swahili! bc
As for brevity, I agree again (although I think your example in the chapter is not quite fair. Cholecystostomy does not mean: “the surgical making of a mouth-like opening in the wall of the gall bladder to introduce a catheter for the purposes of draining excess fluid accumulation.” Cholecystomy [sic] simply means gall bladder mouth.’
Michael, you are utterly wrong! First of all, you messed up the medical word on your second use of it, by not knowing the Greek roots: the word is cholecystostomy. When doctors and nurses use that word, they agree to let it represent the operation and its general procedures. bc Michael Plotkin continues . . . In medicine, this term is understood to refer to a surgery but only by medical (not Latin) convention, and certainly not by any meaning inherent in the Latin [sic] . Could we not as easily concoct a Teutonic (or Dravidian) word of similar meaning? Tradition, I suppose, obliges us to the not at all insignificant exigencies of Latin, a language, which has, as you point out, long since ceased kicking. More importantly, while I agree that Latin permits an elegant brevity among scientists, it also suggests, as explained above, to that incomprehensibly Brobdingnagian segment of the population of this land who reverentially nurture anti-intellectual pieties and pufferies, that we are stuck-up prigs who can’t be bothered to make ourselves intelligible and who verily revel in cooking up obdurate and probably leftist names for commonplace stuff. This is the cost of brevity. As for universality, this bears some consideration. I agree that in the proverbial old days Latin was an excellent lingua franca for science, as scientists might be German, French, English, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish or even Swedish. Also, the educated all learned Latin as a matter of basic literacy. None of this is true today. The average scientist, whether he or she is Burkina Fasovioid, Moldavian, Chinese or Canadian, is more likely to speak passable English than Latin. Might not then English, as far as penetration and reach go, be a better choice for a scientific lingua franca today? (Chinese, which might exceed English in numbers possesses a number of features making it unsuitable for science.)
No, English would not be a better naming language for botany than Latin-and-Greek rooted words. English is alive and kicking and changing every minute. Your bit above about the word liver was wrong. Look up the entries for liver in the Oxford English Dictionary and tell me it only has one modern meaning. bc
Linnaeus, father of binomial nomenclature in botany
Now, on to the good stuff. I am quite familiar with pre-Linnaean botanical texts and have even struggled to translate sections of a few. I also have a number of early herbals and florae in my book collection. I agree that the common name issue is a serious one, and this is the main justification we toss at students as we force on them the daunting task of learning myriad Latin scientific names to pass botany.
Is a bit of memory work that daunting? Awwww! Einstein in his twenties redesigned the entire Swiss postal system. By memorizing the name of every person alive in Switzerland and all their addresses and all the street grids of every town, village, and road! We coddle the kiddies with their tv-destroyed attention spans. Memory work has been shown to increase synaptic pathways through the noggin and actually make one smarter. Oh no! So, teacher, spare me your rod-sparing kiddie slop about the “burden” of memory work. It is good for the lazy little suckholes. bc
I do dispute your contention, though, that any of the 412 common names allegedly held by one plant are invalid. Common names serve a function in the community in which they are used. Though the common name for a widespread plant may differ from region to region, only a botanist (such as myself, I admit) insists on calling it by a universal name. Any common name is valid if a group of people agrees to use it, just as any scientific name is valid if the community of scientists agrees to use it. Plus common names are often a source of information for botanists too, revealing how a culture thinks about and uses a particular plant.
Now, Michael, nobody — least of all humble moi — said that Aunt Betty can’t call strawberries “Shit-Stopper Berry.” Of course there is a place for common names — but not in botany’s laboratory. bc
More importantly, I do not believe, as you contend, that Linnaeus’ binomial system primarily solved the problem of common names (though it did do that) as much as it solved the problem of scientific names. In those days, botanists used Latin to name plants by describing them with a long string of Latin descriptors. Linnaeus introduced an expedient abbreviation by picking one word from the string, which he wrote in the margin. Together with the genus category, this became the scientific name, thus saving us from having to write lengthy phrases in Latin. This also freed botanists to develop a system of nomenclature that suited them—which is NOT LATIN! It’s Botanese. Speaking of which, you are a wee bit guilty in your missive, perhaps blinded by the overweening current of your anti-botany zeal, of erecting a straw man. You intimate that because we botanists do follow the rules of Latin we have no rules. This is non sequitur, tantamount to the religious wackos claiming that because there is a minor inconsistency in evolutionary theory, God created everything. We have, I assure you, rules. They simply are not the rules of Latin. They are the rules of Botanese. I did not intend, by the way, to impugn your botanical knowledge, merely your argument against the uses to which botany has put Latin. The contents of botany are wholly irrelevant to this, though it is true, as you allude, perhaps unintentionally, that botany is stuck with many terms applied as analogy to animals, that are patently not warranted, and under the irrevocable yoke of which we botanists bristle. The vascular system of plants bears little resemblance to that of animals, certainly not in structure and scarcely in function. We see it as unfortunate that zoologically trained microscopists and anatomists named these structures so. Similarly with the egg, the sperm, etc. Botanical nomenclature, as with all scientific and medical terminology, is a Rube Goldberg contraption, cobbled together over centuries. The regularity of Latin does little to correct any of this welter. The conventions that hold together a nomeclatural system are, perforce, far broader than the prescripts of its language. As to your salamanderal nature, I remain silent, preferring, as a scientist, not to advance an opinion about that for which I have no evidence either way.
an Archaefructus-bearing fossil
Which brings me to wonder why you object merely to the nimiety of digressions from agreement you find in botany, but not to mixing up of languages: is it proper for botanists to put Greek prefices on Latin roots and vice versa? Consider the recently discovered and ostensibly oldest of all flowering plants, named Archaefructus, an unabashed mixture of Latin and Greek. A species of Archaefructus is similarly hybrid: eoflora (which, if I remember any Latin appears to be out of agreement; shouldn’t it have been named eoflorus? Yikes! I know the author David Dilcher at least a bit and perhaps will email to ask what he was thinking.)
Michael, you are ignorant of word-formation habits of your own and other western languages. Words with a Latin root combined with a Greek root are termed hybrids. They have been acceptable for 1,100 years in Anglo-Saxon and in all subsequent forms of English. Only fuddy-duddy nonlinguists still write letters to the Times of London decrying a new hybrid. A totally invalid point. There is nothing wrong with Archaefructus. I would invite it to tea on my verandah any day. Your habit in this letter of blithely calling Latin, Greek, - - -perhaps designed to upset me - - - is merely ignorant. Eos in the Greek word for dawn. Eo- is the combining form. There is no necessity whatsoever in a hybrid word for the roots to be of the same grammatical gender or of the same language. Your airy dismissal of even a consideration of precision in the Latin and Greek roots is typical of the worser sort of American scholar. If a fact is not in my field, then I am free to make fun of it and free never to know it correctly. Shame on you, Professor Plotkin! bc
And lastly, as to your averred descriptivist affiliation, I will take you at your word on that. I see your advocacy of Latin is predicated on its status as dead, not on a general grammar-nazi attitude. However, I will say that if the utility and efficiency of Latin comes down to clarity, then I ask, how does granatum vs. granata obfuscate anything. Both mean seedy.
It is an error in nomenclature. Were it an error in botanical structure, you would howl like a dog being untailed. bc
Latin is unlike some other languages, such as French, where a change in gender changes the meaning of the word.
Wrong. Gender changes are used throughout Latin to alter the meaning of words. Latin is a language of small vocabulary, so context and alteration of the grammatical gender of the words making up Latin's limited corpus of verbal forms is important. You have paid no attention at all to Latin word formation. Really, sir, you ought not to pontificate upon matters unknown to you. Even on a literal level, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein spoke to this point when he wrote, in his Tractatus logico-philosophicus, one of his renowned dicta: Wovon man nicht spechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen. “What one cannot speak about, then, about that, one must be silent.” bc
I do have some sympathy for the argument that language should be used exactly and exactingly, especially when the point is to restrict an utterance to one specific meaning. And I repeat, we botanists do that; we have rules, even if you don’t like them.
Ha! Botanists break their own rules of plant denomination in every botanical paper I have ever read. See one atrocious example at the very end of this column. bc I suggest if you want to claim, as on your website, that a lack of agreement between a genus and specific epithet is an error, you should provide evidence, or you should explain what you mean by “error”.
But, sir, can you not read? That is exactly what I have done on my pomegranate page! And do so below again at the end of this column of ours. bc
If I for example, had the great good fortune to discover a new species of beech, which bears the genus Fagus, and I wanted to assert my privilege to name it after you, I would likely name it casselmania, as the botanical tradition is to conjugate specific epithets of many trees as feminine, even when the genus is masculine in construction. (I think this would be, among other things, deliciously condign.)
That is an otiose perversity unheard of in the remainder of scientific naming. bc
It would not be error that the two names did not agree, in the sense that I would not construct the specific epithet as feminine unaware that I was doing this, it would be conscious choice.
Yes, it is erroneous, unclear-making, foolish. The result is the farrago of mistakes, the fetid stew of sloppy names, that fester in the kitchen of botany. bc If you want to claim that this tradition in botany is in error, that is a different issue.
I have so claimed for the last 9,000 words, pal. Wakey-wakey. bc Perhaps your claim is that botanists are misguided to treat Latin so, and this makes them little more than philistines and buffoons. But you should explain, we are not generating errors out of pure dunderheaded, non compos menti-ness, and insufficient grasp of the finer points of Latin, which is the scurrilous implication of your web page.
Botanical nomenclature is stuffed purple with bad Latin and worse Greek. Check out some of the condemnatory essays of the greatest expert in botanical names who ever lived, William T. Stearn, author of the plant-naming bible, Botanical Latin and, at a more popular level, Stearn’s Dictionary of Plant Names for Gardeners. bc
A bit of clarity in your attacks on botany is warranted, or are you, in fact, intending through applications of verbal legerdemain to deceive the ignorant and paint a factitious and decidedly unsalutary caricature of botanists and botany?
Michael Plotkin Assistant Professor, Biology Mt. San Jacinto College
I see nothing factitious in my dismantling the legitimacy of current plant names. What fun this has been! Perhaps readers will continue our discussion? Bill Casselman’s email is: canadiansayings@mountaincable.net
porcupine sedge
History of One of Many Mistakes in Botanical Naming: I invite the reader who has patiently followed us this far to pay one iota of final attention to the procedural drivel in this next note, the pseudoscientific gesturings towards what I can only term “situational acceptance of error” in botany. Read the nonsense below and realize that it passes for scientific procedure in botanical quarters.
"SHOULD THE PORCUPINE SEDGE BECOME HYSTERICAL? From: Adolf Ceska [aceska@victoria.tc.ca] Porcupine sedge was described by German botanists in 1805 and 1806 based on a specimen collected by Muehlenberg in "Pensylvania." The species was described by Willdenow (1805) with a reference to Schkuhr's illustration (Tab. Fff, Fig. 127). The identical description was published again by Schkuhr (1806) that appeared several months after Willdenow's book was published. In their publications, both Schkuhr and Willdenow called this sedge "Stachelschweinartige Segge - Carex hystericina." "Carex hystericina" was also the original Schkuhr's annotation of Muehlenberg's specimen (Dr. Uwe Braun, pers. comm.). Bailey (1886) was the first who noticed that Schkuhr and Willdenow made a mistake in the spelling of the species name. A species name derived from the Latin name of porcupine - Hystrix - should have been Carex hystricina and not C. hystericina: "The name was originally written hystericina, a name of no application. That the author meant to refer to the comose or hystricinous character of the spikes is evident from Willdenow's German name of the plant, no doubt suggested by Muehlenberg, "Stachelschweinartige Segge," porcupine-like sedge." (Bailey 1886: 70) Bailey corrected the spelling from Carex hystericina to Carex hystricina and this correction was accepted by most Carex monographers: Kuekenthal, Mackenzie, Fernald, Boivin, Cronquist, Hermann, Egorova. Only recently, Kartesz (1994 and 1999) reintroduced the original spelling "C. hystericina." Boivin (1979: 98) agreed with Bailey and suggested that the original spelling "hystericina" could mean "hysterical." It looks like derived from the Greek "hysterikos" and may have an obscure connotation to "hysteria," although "hysterikos" or "hystera" (Lat.) also means womb. (The word "hysteria" is derived from Greek "hysterikos" or Latin "hystera" - womb; "from the Greek notion that hysteria was peculiar to women and caused by disturbances of uterus" - Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.) [ Casselman correction: Mr. Adolph Ceska has his etymology of the word hysteria somewhat confused and ballsed-up. But what else is new for botanists? If the reader cares to follow the exact derivation, see my article on this website about the word hysteria. ]
When Bailey made his correction, there were no rules that would allow or ban such a correction. The modern versions of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature allow the correction of "typographical or orthographical errors" (Art. 60.1), but the application of this article might be questionable even if the name would be published today. Bailey's corrected form (C. hystricina), on the other hand, has become a well established custom that was and should be followed (ICBN - Preamble 10) and in my opinion, it would be a mistake to revert to the original spelling now. Casselman again: That’s right. Let’s never permit botanical names to be corrected against any known standard. ] Bailey made a mistake when he attributed the authorship of the name "Stachelschweinartige Segge" to Muehlenberg. Muehlenberg originally named this species "Carex erinacea" referring not to a porcupine, but to the hedgehog. Muehlenberg did not realize that this name had been already used about 6 years earlier for another species by Cavanilles: Carex erinacea Cav. = Uncinia erinacea (Cav.) Pers. and hence could not be used for this species. From the annotation of the type specimen is obvious that the name was first suggested by Schkuhr (who also listed C. erinacea Muehlenb. as a synonym of the Porcupine Sedge) and this species should be cited as Carex hystricina Schkuhr ex Willd. Those who would not accept Bailey's correction can call this sedge C. hystericina Schkuhr ex Willd., but I don't see any reason why the Porcupine Sedge should become Hysterical."
Bill Casselman: By the way, there are tens of thousands of botanical names quite as messed up as that of poor, wee porcupine sedge. I can see why a student of botany might indeed become quite hysterical trying to follow the cat's cradle of botanical evasions and naming mistakes through almost 600 years!
Plotkin Fires Back with a Loaded Magnum
Bill Casselman writes: In the interest of giving Professor Plotkin full scope, I shall interpolate only a few personal comments. He feels aggrieved. I will only say that, having read my columns, he knows I use humour. I think his demurring comments about the jests do mark a certain academic frostiness to the use of humour. I, on the other hand, have found it the most efficient pedagogic tool I ever wielded. I have left inviolate his final blast against me.
Thursday July 31, 2008 Bill: I have read the posting of our correspondence and, wow, I must declare you are nearly as prolix as myself, though without the concinnity and pellucidity of my output. I grant that you far exceed me, and most others, in the wanton employ of imprecation, your glib use of which seems more suited to the clatter and bustle of the saloon than the measured consideration of matters of scholarly interest. And while I enjoy good invective even more so when it is aimed at me, I still contend that 1) there is a nucleus of actual relevant content at issue, that 2) among all of your puffery and verbal self-aggrandizing there occur no answers to a number of my key points, and 3) that you are just dead wrong wrong wrong about some very important stuff. I will conspicuously not address a number of your accusations. I will pointedly address some others. In the interest of brevity I will summarize my points in a list (contra my normal manner of writing) First, two points of self defense against your scurrilous ad hominem fusillades: Some of what I wrote was just plain incorrect, and these lapses should be pointed out, pilloried and gloated over. However, it is unfair, if a bit droll (in a pathetic sort of way) for you to hold up my misspelling of cholecystostomy as evidence of an ignorance of word roots, especially as some of those roots are well used in botany (e.g. stoma for the little pores) I spelled the word correctly once, indicating I likely knew the correct spelling and in the celerity my justifiable dudgeon engendered, I simply bungled it. This typo, of which I was aware, was one I assumed you would correct, as you promised you would--and refrain from the na-na-na of a "sic". Revealingly, in your alacrity to make much of little, you fail to respond to the actual point: the word does not mean what you say it does, it means what the medical community agrees it means, which is no merit for Latin, or in this case, Latinized Greek.
Bill Casselman replies: I carefully corrected several typos, as I said I would. The cholecystostomy comment was fair game in the midst of a communication attacking a knowledge of Greek and Latin as being unnecessary in scientific learning. You are starting to sound just like your defense of botany: some mistakes are okay; others are not. bc
Speaking of which distinction, you accuse me of stupidity for saying Latin when the root is of Greek origin. I did say at one point that I assume you understand I mean Latin and Greek when I say Latin. Perhaps for you this is an intolerable imprecision. It saved me time. I was writing an email, not an essay for publication, in which case I would have been more precise. And in any case, the words may be Greek in origin, but if they are used in scientific nomenclature, they are Latin in form.
No. Many scientific etyma remain clearly transliterated Greek. bc
2. You accuse me of snobbery for using Latin phrases without translation or where English would do. I was being arch as any fool can see. What sort of calculated misrepresentation is this? You know I was writing for you, not the public. I would not have written with such exaggerated haughtiness for, as you pejoratively call the general reader, the "hoi polloi". I was japing and assumed you would have no trouble understanding the joke.
Hoi means “the” in the phrase “hoi polloi.” It means “the many.” So, Michael, you have written about “the the many.” Jokes are fine. Illiteracy is another matter. bc
Permit me the digression to carp that it is disheartening to debate someone so willing to seize, as if at straws, on nugatory points and to the arrant neglect of the signal ones. I try not to do that myself so I won't point out the numerous gaffs and lapses in your postings, including even the misspelling of my name. Oops-- I guess I couldn't resist mentioning one.
Mea maxima culpa. bc
The rest of my objections are substantial. I fear that I conceded too much in my previous arguments, so as to promote discussion. While I still admit that botanical Latin isn't perfect, my conciliatory tone simply gave comfort to your outrageous claims. I end that error here.
3. You say, repeatedly, something like: "Science decided to use Latin and Greek because they do NOT change." Twaddle! Science did no such thing. Latin became the language of science because it was the language of international scholarship in the 18th Century. The Latin that botanists and other scientists used, however, was not the dead language of antiquity as you so blithely claim over and over. William Stearns (whom you invidiously (where he alive to hear it) claim in support of your spurious history) says: "This [18th Century scientific Latin] was not, however, classical Latin but an expanded form of Latin derived from the Latin used for many purposes in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Latin used by botanists today is very different indeed from that of the Romans....." I would also direct you to the great philologist John Rolfe's 1906 paper entitled "Some Recent Tendencies In Latin Syntax" in which he declares: "One who has carefully examined the Latin grammars which have appeared with so great frequency during the last decade or two, and the successive editions of the older manuals, must have been impressed with the fact that Latin syntax is not standing still: and this impression is heightened if one also followed the scientific treatises and monographs on that subject." Scientists adapt an evolving Latin, they do not seize on a finished, eternally static product and attempt (clumsily as you accuse) to use it as best their insufficient cortices would allow. Dead language my arse.
4. You stubbornly, completely (and impressively) misconstrue botanical nomenclature. The clarity of the system is that each species bears but one name. It makes no difference if the name is in Latin (though many of us, myself included, believe it or not, prefer Latin), and it certainly makes no difference if the Latin is constructed by the rules of classical Latin. What matters is that a valid name is published and attached to a specimen which is deposited in a herbarium. Many scientific names are nonsense words, anagrams of other names, names of people or places, or of unknown provenience. The point you so dramatically fail to grasp is that the scientific binomial is not limited to the rules of classical Latin. It is limited by the rules of Botanical Nomenclature, which include much of Latin. There circumstances in nomenclature, however, which the genus and specific epithet do not need to agree, whether you like it or not. Not all of these are botanical either. What have you to say about Panthera leo. This is a valid name despite the lack of agreement, because the words are in apposition, not descriptive of each other.
Plotkin Defends The Odious Eponyms 5. Though I fear I am taking the bait here, you are stupefyingly wrong about honorifics in scientific nomenclature. Very few scientific names that derive from human names are named by the namesake. These names, rich with history by the way, do lack any specific referent to a feature of the organism, but that is not the point of a name. The name is not supposed to be a description of the organism, even if it might be sometimes. It is meant to be a name for a species. As long as we can operationally and repeatedly associate the name with the organism, we have a good name. As for the sego lily, it was named by John Torrey and Asa Gray after Thomas Nuttall. If you had your way and renamed it C. pyroxanthicus, you might find that other species of Calochortus have similar markings and it would help no one to figure out which lily he or she was holding to know what you cute epithet meant. You simply have to memorize the name that goes with a species, even if sometimes a very distinctive feature provides a nice name. Your contention that honorifics are about "Me Me Me" is as bogus as it is ludicrous. Some honorifics are actually dishonorifics as, for example, some of Linnaeus' attributions. He was wont to name noxious weeds after people he did not like. While botany clasps eponyms to its inflated breast of pride, medicine and most other sciences seek to bar eponymous naming from science. Do you want to read an intelligent set of naming rules? Check out medicine’s Nomina Anatomica. Eponyms are out! bc
6. One misstatement I made concerns the feminine gender for Latin botanical names ending in -us. You repeated my error in your condemnation of botanical Latin, indicating perhaps your Latin is not quite up to par. A quick consultation with several Latin grammar books reveals that the in Latin, some words ending in -us are feminine. These include, as Carl Zumpt says in his "A Grammar of the Latin Language", "the names of plants and precious stones, as well as those of towns and islands, with a few exceptions." So botanists do follow the rules of Latin grammar in naming an oak Quercus alba. I did not realize this, as I had thought it was a botanical convention, not a Latin convention. Now I know. And now you know too.
7. Let's talk about pomegranates again, and perhaps disinter additional examples your exiguous grasp of Latin in the offing. You say that Pliny the Elder called the tree malum punicum. This is almost definitely wrong as the word malum refers to the apple fruit, not the tree. In Latin, the word for a tree often ends in -us (which is feminine) while the fruit of that tree ends in -um, a Latin grammar fact you apparently lack . The tree would be malus. Similarly, pomus is a tree while pomum means the fruit of the tree. Cerasus, cerasum, prunus, prunum, etc. One exception is the fig, for which the word ficus in Latin serves both the fruit and the tree. You really ought to check the Latin text of Pliny. The Romans did have different words for tree and the fruit thereof. But Pliny slipped up once in awhile. As Horace wrote: quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus. ‘Sometimes even the great Homer nods off.’ That is, the wisest of men make mistakes. And you and I certainly do. bc
8. You refer to the namers of pomegranate with breezy condescension as unnamed "botanists", "early botanists" and "scientists" who "screwed up". I smell a cover up. You are either shockingly ignorant or willfully obscure, for it was none other than Linnaeus who was the author of the name Punica granatum. Linnaeus was fluent and literate in Latin. He wrote long treatises and letters in Latin. He Latinized his own name. He rued that the proceedings of the Swedish Royal Society were not rendered in Latin. He invented botanical nomenclature and ensured it was derived from Latin. So let's get this straight for the record. You claim that Linnaeus, a man who lived and breathed Latin, just happened, when he named pomegranate, to make the sort of knuckle-headed mistake a first year Latin student might make? Not too likely, pal. You painted the wrong botanist as depauperate in Latin. The truth has been revealed. Since Linnaeus chose Punica for the genus and granatum for the species epithet, he had reasons. Answer me this riddle: is it not common in Latin to treat the neuter form of an adjective as a noun when constructing nouns from adjectives? (Latin scholars seem to think so.) To persist in the blunt claim that an apparently neuter suffix is wrong and that it must be rendered in feminine, is to protest rather foolishly. Latin has intricacies and exceptions that you crush in your puerile zeal. These two words Punica and granatum are likely abstracted from a longer Latin phrase and did not need to agree in the full phrase. The binomial for Linnaeus was an abbreviation and not a complete sentence, after all. If an impartial observer had to bet on who is right, should they choose the inventor of the whole system, who conversed and wrote in Latin with aplomb daily, or you? This is a rhetorical question. Ever heard of the logical fallacy called argumentum ad auctoritatem? You revel in it, Michael. bc I will find out why Linnaeus chose the name he did for pomegranate, when I get the chance.
9. Perhaps your errant etymology should be titled The Big Mistake Repeated On the Internet. Fortunately you can correct yours and beg the pardon of the hoi polloi for degrading the quality of the internet. You may (and should) append this to the evolving correspondence, as I deserve a rebuttal to your less than equitable exegesis.
In haste but with conviction, Michael Plotkin Assistant Professor, Biology Department Chair Mt. San Jacinto College. San Jacinto, CA
- - - - - - - - - - - - The ultimate or penultimate missive in this wee flurry of emails is again from the prolix professor. I have posted it without comment. bc
San Jacinto, California Saturday, August 2, 2008
Bill - I don't really mind my name being misspelled, it's an email exchange not a publication. I only mentioned it in the context of feeling held to a higher standard in the case of cholecystostomy, and now "the hoi polloi". I do realize that hoi is the article in Greek, and I know that Fowler strongly averred that the hoi polloi is incorrect. I am away from home and not able to consult any of my usage books, however, the wikipedia entry says The Chicago Manual of Style considers "the hoi polloi" as standard, and the entry quotes the Merriam Webster Dictionary of English Usage: When hoi polloi was used by writers who had actually been educated in Greek, it was invariably preceded by "the". Perhaps writers such as Dryden and Byron understood that English and Greek are two different languages, and that, whatever its literal meaning in Greek, hoi does not mean "the" in English. There is, in fact, no such independent word as hoi in English — there is only the term hoi polloi, which functions not as two words but as one, the sense of which is basically "commoners" or "rabble." In idiomatic English, it is no more redundant to say "the hoi polloi" than it is to say "the rabble," and most writers who use the term continue to precede it with *the* In any case, I think it's a side issue (i.e. the patent fact of my illiteracy). I am not sure if your intercalation of the Horace quotation after my criticism of your pomegranate info intended to argue that Pliny slipped up in naming the tree malum punicum, or you slipped up in calling Pliny's term a name for the tree rather than what it appears to be: a name for the fruit. If the latter, then at least that much of your pomegranate web page should be corrected. The rest will, if you keep your promise, be corrected, if I can find out what Linnaeus intended. (Unfortunately there is no tradition or requirement for scientists to explain the derivation of their names. That's a big pity. If there were, it would be easier to spot the mistakes. If Linnaeus says, "I took Punica as the genus for pomegranate from Pliny, in the feminine as it is a fruit bearing tree, and the species epithetic refers to the seediness of the fruit." then bammo! --we caught the miscreant in the act of mangling Latin. What, however, if Linnaeus constructed the name for the pomegranate as: "a genus name for a tree, the known species of which produces a useful and historical fruit, abbreviated from Pliny's phrase malum punicum, in the feminine because fruit trees are traditionally ferminine. The genus also refers to the geographical place from where the tree originated. The species epithet for the well known fruit is a noun constructed from the adjective granatus, taken in the neuter since that is how I chose to construct the noun from the adjective, especially as the neuter form is traditional for fruits in Latin." Then we have to accept his name as correct within the rules he created for botanical nomenclature, and if we want to take issue, it must be with the system itself, not with a particular name, constructed within that system.) The issue of argumentum ad auctoritatem comes up here. I did not know this term in the Latin, but if by it you mean appeal to authority, of course I know the fallacy. I deal with it frequently, as in "just because the bible or your pastor says god created plants, that isn't evidence that he did. You need a bit more evidence than a book or a pulpit. Scientific consensus is a form of appeal to authority, too, if I want to say to my benighted student, "but the scientific consensus tells us plants came to be by the workings of evolution, not deity." I try to avoid this more subtle appeal. However, appeal to authority is not inherently a logical fallacy, it is only a fallacy if done incorrectly. If for example I want to tell my friends that your name Bill is a nickname for Ballbuster and not William, then how can they prove me wrong. If my friend emails you and discovers from your virtual lips that your nom de guerre "Bill" is in fact short for William, and then presents to me the argument that I am wrong and the reason is that you told him I was wrong, well then that appeal to authority is logically sound. (The postmodernist fashion of rejecting even the authority of the creator or a work, notwithstanding.) It is true, one cannot base a logical proof on appeal to authority alone, however the question of scientific names is not question of logical proof. The fact is you are accusing the inventor of a system of naming based on Latinized binomials of making a very basic error in his Latin grammar. If I say, it is unlikely that the inventor of the system made such an error, especially given his indisputable facility with Latin, then that argument is adduced as evidence for the proposition that the name Punica granatum is not constructed in proximal error. My contention from the beginning has been been that there are two issues here: - did the namer of the pomegranate make a mistake in Latin grammar. This is what you claim on your pomegranate webpage; -is botanical nomenclature stupid to allow such constructions as Punica granatum. I have presented evidence, admittedly not yet conclusive, that the name was intended to be what it is, that is, it is what it is on purpose, not because of a bumblefuck error of basic Latin. of epic proportions for the father of plant taxonomy True even Homer nods now and then, just as the authority you seem fond of citing, Einstein, made some very elementary errors in his arithmetic. But Einstein corrected his errors when people found them. What you are claiming strains credulity: that the inventor of a naming system misapplied it, that a man exceptionally well acquainted with Latin made a howlingly elementary error, that this howler was never subsequently noticed by him, despite all the editions of his treatises, and that no one else in 18th Century botany, a field that thrived on passionate vituperation of, as our president so laconically calls them, wrongdoers, noticed this error and attempted to point it out and change it. The distinction here is not trivial. John Berryman, the poet, writes in Dreamsong 29:
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart so heavy, if he had a hundred years & more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time Henry could not make good.
I could decry his incorrect grammar ("them time"? what the hell) but that would be incredible, wouldn't it. How much water would my claim that Berryman messed up the grammar of his native language in a poem that saw publication in several editions hold. None. It is not a credible claim, though, since Berryman is dead, also safely irrefutable. It would be stupid to do anything other than allow that Berryman intended to use "them" for a reason. I could decry the use of incorrect grammar in modern poetry if I wanted, which would be the vertiiginous height of pedantry, but my right. At least it would be worth talking about--should poetry allow twisting of grammar, isn''t it facile, isn't it smarmy and cutesy and too clever by half, etc. The question of whether Berryman made a grammatical error is not worth considering, as it is obvious he didn't, at least within the context of what he thought was poetry. The other issue, whether botanical nomenclature represents a ramshackle structure, due soon to collapse under the weight of its supernumerary tergiversations, well, that is another issue. In any case, if you want to argue this point, the pomegranate may not be the best exemplar. And as for eponyms, I don't like them much myself, and your plaint has nearly convinced me that I should importune the ICBN committee to rethink the propriety of such. However, what you seem to miss is a fundamental difference in the function of taxonomic names, such as Punica granatum and anatomical nomenclature. So the Eustachian tube is now called the auditory tube, thus cutting Eustachio out of his eternal glory, and increasing the coherence of anatomy. But the auditory tube patently exists, and the term for it might best be a term that actually suits it rather than an arbitrary term, such as an eponym. Taxonomic names are different. When Torrey and Gray named a plant sample Calochortus nuttallii they were not naming something that necessarily actually exists, they were essentially putting forth a hypothesis: this plant is a specimen from population of other individuals which interbreed and are phylogenetically distinct, an isolated group. Not everyone would agree that this proposed species is correct, in the sense that it can be disputed whether this "kind" of organism Torrey and Gray claim to have found is real or represents a form of, or variation within, some other group. Without going into too much of the boring science, evolving groups of living things can never be accurately represented by essentialist or typological nomenclatural systems in the same way that anatomical terms can be. A Fallopian tube (now called a uterine tube) exists, which no one disputes: hence we need a name for it. Calochortus nuttallii may or may not actually exist. The proposal of a name is the proffering of the claim that a natural entity exists, but it is open to debate. That is why the name not only has to follow naming guidelines, but must be attached to a published description (typically in Latin) and a type specimen, deposited in a herbarium Though this is controversial in taxonomy, taxonomists since Linnaeus have considered taxonomic names to be titular, provisional, and to some degree arbitrary. None of this really addresses your distaste for honorific names. I will say that considering the function of taxonomic names, it seems to some reasonable to name a lilly after Nuttall since he risked his life to "discover" it for science, and since the proposal of this plant for the status of a species is a human endeavor, and not necessarily merely an attempt to describe nature, but also an attempt to facilitate human endeavors in science. The name thus might as well reflect the history of its creation as a name as it might a morphological feature evident to people, though not necessarily important to the plant or its pollinators. And by the way, you say that most sciences have abjured eponyms, but beside the question of whether medicine is a science (not really in my book), eponyms abound in medicine even if they have been removed from some aspects of anatomy. For example you don't want to get Huntington's disease or Alzheimer's. Or for that matter Lyme disease, an eponym from a geographical name. Also, I believe that microscopic anatomy still abounds with honorific names, as do zoological, mycological and bacterial nomenclatures. What about plants named after mythological figures like the beautiful flowers called Iris. Astronomy seems to revel in honorifics. How about physics where we must deal in units named after various eminences of science, and where sometimes I have to employ Planck's law of black body radiation. Or chemistry where I am forced to use the Avogadro constant. Etc. Etc. This has been a very fruitful exchange for me, and has given me a chance to rethink some of what I teach and think, as well as much entertainment. And I do love to bedight myself with the affectation of frigid academic haughtiness in the face of your botany baiting, bashing and ballbusting. I am hard at work to discover a new species so I can name it after you in Latin that will be as incorrect as I can make it. Perhaps, in one of life's nearly incredible but still delightful little synchronicities, I will have the opportunity to re-name a Canadian taxon that my research suggests should not be a species and that the very same Adolf Ceska you pillory the posting has severely admonished me not to take away from Canada (Limnanthes macounii) eponymously after you. P.S. I have only found one reference to Punica granatum being incorrect other than yours: this is from 10/19/07 in a physics forum. http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-191254.html Here, the silly physicist claims, as you do that the name contains a simple grammatical error, but avers that it is the only biological name with such an error. Physicists should stick to vectors. What keeps me up at night is that this situation will change and your webpage on pomegranates will spawn a generation of folks who believe that the name reflects a piddling error, without benefit of the full story. Imagine all those kindergarten teachers fomenting antipathy for botany among their charges, without telling them it was the great Linnaeus himself who concocted this name, and that botanists are not necessarily all illiterate drudges, like myself. Scary! Michael Plotkin Assistant Professor, Biology Department Chair Mt. San Jacinto College. San Jacinto, CA
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