This thread is precisely what I meant by "sticky wicket." Even an informatician
can observe the stickiness.

I think in the context of the prior thread, subjective referred to the variation
of perspective between taxonomists, such as forming an opinion about whether
some other taxonomist is a "taxonomic vandal" or "taxonomic hero" and whether
someone like Hoser gets safely ignored (poor guy) or embraced. These kinds of
statements about vandals and ignoring people sure sound subjective, that is,
they are based on human opinion and judgment, as opposed to sounding objective,
such as a person making a non-opinion-based observation of the occurrence of an
immutable fact.

Theoretically, all of the publications about an organism and the immutable
statements printed therein are available for all taxonomists to study, yet
different taxonomists will study them and apply a different perspective, perhaps
influenced by new objective specimens or new phylogenetic analysis, and arrive
at different opinions. But, different opinions nonetheless. That's what I
thought was meant by being "invariably subjective" -- invariably based on
differing human perspective or opinion. But, I may have misunderstood.

Chuck

From: Stephen Thorpe [mailto:step...@yahoo.co.nz] Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2012 5:25 PM To: Richard Zander; Chuck Miller; Roderic Page; taxacom Subject: Re: [Taxacom] validation of taxon names

yes, one should note in this context that there is nowhere in the Code anything
which says that there is a single, currently valid name for any taxon.
Specifically, there is nothing to say that the most recently published taxonomic
opinion corresponds to the "currently valid name". This is a good thing, for
otherwise we could get massive destabilisation from "taxonomic vandals"
publishing crap recombinations in dodgy journals ... as things are, for example,
there is no need to take the likes of Hoser seriously - he may create some new
available names, which cannot be ignored, but his taxonomy (what he does with
the names) can be safely ignored ...

Stephen

From: Richard Zander <Rich...@mobot.org<mailto:Rich...@mobot.org>> To: Chuck Miller <Chuc...@mobot.org<mailto:Chuc...@mobot.org>>;
Roderic Page <r.p...@bio.gla.ac.uk<mailto:r.p...@bio.gla.ac.uk>>; taxacom
<TAXA...@MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU<mailto:TAXA...@MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU>> Sent: Friday, 17 February 2012 12:10 PM Subject: Re: [Taxacom] validation of taxon names

It seems to be best that informatics deals best with as objective, factual information, minimizing the gray area.

Regarding "subjective," however, taxonomists wrestle mightily with decisions every day, trying to make reasonable and fact-based name changes of benefit to all users of taxonomy. They use discursive logic based on examination of dozens or hundreds of specimens in the context of evolutionary theory, and this is not particularly subjective to me.

Yes, deciding which name is "correct" ("valid" for botanists) is a problem for those not familiar with the subject matter. Using the latest name is a good rule of thumb, although I've argued against the newest molecular phylogenetic names interminably in the past.

One might make an analogy with scientific theorization in other fields. Which theory is right, photon or wave? Is the world round or flat? Is the red shift a property of an expanding universe or a function of decreasing energy associated with intervening gravity wells? Is the value of pi different if you have a large enough circle, like one around the whole universe? Is the black maple a species or only a variety of the sugar maple?

Note that the above are, however some are strange, scientific questions. Scientific intuition helps solve them. Each question in valid/correct names needs a FermiLab of scientists to do the molecular, growth, ethology, allozyme, biogeography, cytology, population, and etc. studies needed to get a definitive answer.

This is why it is easy to say decisions are subjective when they are merely poorly funded. If every informatics person spent half his/her time in biosystematics work, these problems would be less "subjective."

* * * * * * * * * * * * Richard H. Zander Missouri Botanical Garden, PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/ and http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm Modern Evolutionary Systematics Web site: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/21EvSy.htm