Is Taxonomy an Art or Science?

I think he's too hard on systematics. First, taxonomy has two major components, of which he mentions only one: the attachment of names to groups. But there's also (at least) alpha taxonomy, the delimitation and description of species. The former, being arbitrary (you can pick any clade to name, and assign any name to it subject to certain likewise arbitrary rules of nomenclature), isn't science. But I don't know of any systematist whose work consists mainly of doing that. Instead, they do phylogenetics, which sometimes requires new taxonomies. So nobody's going to lose a career if that sort of taxonomy is recognized as non-science. And of course the point would still remain that naming is necessary for science even if naming isn't science.

Then again, in alpha taxonomy there's a clear hypothesis to be tested: this entity here is a new species, separate from all previously described ones. To the extent that alpha taxonomists actually test that hypothesis, they're doing science. Even if the test is "this looks too different from previous specimens for me to believe they're from the same population".

Yes, but for an alpha taxonomy hypothesis, when do you know the results support the hypothesis? Deciding if a new taxon is "separate from all previously described ones" certainly involves some subjectivity, based on an individual's definition of a species. In that sense, I would argue that it could still be called art. But as Brendan mentions in his post, calling taxonomy art doesn't detract from its importance! I think Brendan does a great job of describing taxonomy and its role in relation to "hard" science. I like to think of systematics/phylogenetics as the "hard" science and taxonomy as the art of interpreting that science.

John Harshman said: I think he's too hard on systematics. First, taxonomy has two major components, of which he mentions only one: the attachment of names to groups. But there's also (at least) alpha taxonomy, the delimitation and description of species. The former, being arbitrary (you can pick any clade to name, and assign any name to it subject to certain likewise arbitrary rules of nomenclature), isn't science. But I don't know of any systematist whose work consists mainly of doing that. Instead, they do phylogenetics, which sometimes requires new taxonomies. So nobody's going to lose a career if that sort of taxonomy is recognized as non-science. And of course the point would still remain that naming is necessary for science even if naming isn't science.

Joe Felsenstein said: I'm glad to hear that maybe my view was not so isolated after all.

John Harshman said: You seem to have elided from "...it isn't science" to "...it doesn't matter."

My point, and the original poster's point, was that taxonomy (the part about naming groups) is necessary even though it isn't science. We need to give names to things we want to talk about. Just as it isn't important whether protons are called protons or glerps, as long as we agree on what to call them and agree on their properties, it isn't important whether a node is called Aves or Neornithes, as long as we agree on the topology of the tree. But we do have to have some name. At least that aspect of classification is crucial.

So then is taxonomy art or science? …

Or to put that another way, the answer to this question requires the use of Fuzzy Logic rather than binary logic.

Henry J said: Or to put that another way, the answer to this question requires the use of Fuzzy Logic rather than binary logic.

For a while, I associated with a number of fanatical birders. Each one kept multiple lists (of birds they'd seen in different locations or circumstances), and at least in the US, the most important list of all is the North American Life List, every bird seen in North America. Birders are very competitive lot, and they are as attracted to round decimal numbers as anyone else. And as it happens, the number of birds inhabiting or seasonally visiting North America is just about exactly 600. (There are also "accidentals", birds blown in by storms or who fell in with flocks of some other species, but these are few and rare).

As a result, the most successful competitive birders tend to have 599 or 600 birds on their life lists. Seeing that one last species to push from 599 to 600 is a major event. Now, enter the splitters and the lumpers among ornithologicsts. The members of two flocks might be different in some tiny ways, so do they qualify as two species? If so, the birders jump for joy. Then someone discovers that the black-crested titmouse is actually an immature tufted titmouse, and the black crest is gone at about 3 years old. So they are they same species. Agony! Dozens of people are knocked off the 600-bird perch. Birders love splitters, adding species, and hate lumpers. For them, taxonomy costs them a lot of sleep.

Joe Felsenstein said:

John Harshman said: You seem to have elided from "...it isn't science" to "...it doesn't matter."

If it does matter, then it is part of science, I would think.

As a physician, my answer is clear.

To me the standard is - if things which are proven wrong by the scientific method are eliminated from the discipline, then the discipline is at least an applied science. In fields where the professionals don't necessarily get to choose their projects, it may be necessary to take actions where complete scientific knowledge is not available. But that which has been shown to be wrong in scientific studies should always be eliminated.

Ironically, a "pure" scientist and "pure" artist have something in common - a very high degree of freedom in choosing their next project.

Taxonomy has to deal with what nature serves up. Every type of organism needs some kind of human-meaningful nomenclature. To accomplish that, some kind of arbitrary divisions are needed. For example, genus is pretty useful to lay (relative to taxonomy) people, even if it arbitrary. If I know that an animal is a member of the genus Mus, that gives me a fair amount of useful information about what type of animal to expect.

The answer to this thread's title question is .... no.

This is a very slippery subject, dancing on the edge between art and science. We have to remember that "species" is one of those things that is difficult to define, even though it is something that everybody recognizes as real in some sense, and important. I remind students that the problems inherent in defining and identifying species at least partly arise from the fact that we see populations in all phases of the process of speciation. The concept of typological species, or any other taxonomic rank, is platonic, and arose from the concept of stasis and immutability, not transformation. The recent trend of "species inflation" underscores the problems. Even creationists are forced to acknowledge the fluidity of species, trying to bullshit their way around the issue by creating "baramins" that somehow evolve but don't evolve.

The application of science to species and taxonomy is context dependent. For example, I hold to the view that cladistics is not scientific because it uses parsimony as an operational tool, thereby defining homology and synapomorphy by the number of character transformations in its purest form. Yet you can argue that it is scientific in the sense that hypotheses are falsified and corroborated on the basis of a few simple and reasonable assumptions. Certainly numerous hypotheses are tested each day concerning phylogenetic relationships, but it is only rarely that data can be brought to bear to actually falsify a hypothesis with any sort of certainty (for example, SINEs offer a powerful test of phylogeny because they are one of the few characters that can be confidently shown as homologous on an a priori basis).

Regardless, I agree with Joe that the tree is what is important. Higher levels of taxonomic classification are user-defined, and largely stabilize through consensus. People use the classification that best reflects our knowledge about phylogeny, and that most usefully expresses how we communicate about groups of taxa and their relationships to each other.

Labeling and organizing the data may be analogous to the building of tools for use in science, but it's certainly crucial to subsequent progress. Whether it's labeled as "doing science" or as "doing science-related activities" is, imo, quibbling over terminology. (Of course, quibbling of that kind is probably a very common pastime among scientists and related professions.)

Henry

Taxonomy is an Art. But Baraminology, that's a Science!

Reed A. Cartwright said: Taxonomy is an Art. But Baraminology, that's a Science!

Reed A. Cartwright said: Taxonomy is an Art. But Baraminology, that's a Science!

Ohh, you think that AiG's Ark Park will have racketball? That way they can give their 1.5 gajillion visitors every year something to do other than stand in a really really long line for their only ride. (Yay! The Plagues of Egypt log flume, can we go again mom!)

I liked the frogs best.

No, I liked the river of blood.

Hey, Mom, why isn't Bobby moving?

John Harshman said: I liked the frogs best. No, I liked the river of blood. Hey, Mom, why isn't Bobby moving?