Carol Kaesuk Yoon

loved this book. I've read several books on the history of taxonomy that had a lot more infomration, but this one had a thoroughly different approach. It probably resonated with me because 30 years ago when I was in college, I learned some traditional taxonomy and then, a few year back , in taking some biology classes to get certified for wildlife rehab, I was introduced to the new cladistics. I wondered if I was just too old to adjust my thinking, and this book makes me feel better , since it faults my umwelt, or human way of looking at things.I especially enjoyed the chapter on a particular type of brain damage that only effects the ability to name living things. The studies about language and "folk " taxonomies were also fascinating.… (mais)

The author gets repetitious at certain points, and sometimes over-explains ideas. However, this wasn't a deal breaker for me, I was entertained throughout the whole book. Also, I learned a lot of new things about nature and taxonomy, which was the whole point of my reading it. Like most good non-fiction that I have read, this book made me take stock of how I live my life and think about changes that I should make. Will I actually make them? Meh. But I will certainly think about them, and the author's arguments for them, and who knows what this percolation will brew.… (mais)

This book is essentially a history of the science of taxonomy, which sounds like it ought to be really boring but turns out to be very fascinating.

Humans are natural taxonomists. In fact, it turns out that taxonomy is hard-wired into our brains. All humans have an innate need to categorize living things, and across all cultures, we do it in a remarkably similar way. There are people who have brain damage in a particular part of their brains who are incapable of identifying living things, so we know that this is hard-wired.

Starting with Linnaeus, taxonomy became an important branch of biology, and categorizing and naming species has been one of the major goals of biology. However, the process for doing this is remarkably unscientific, and relies mostly on gut instinct. "This seems like a different bug from other bugs, and it seems like it's related to those bugs" is basically how taxonomy was done until the 20th century. We don't even really have an accepted definition of what constitutes a species. Then a few different groups of people tried to find better, more objective ways to do taxonomy, but they all had their problems. In the 1970s or so, a group called the cladists completely turned taxonomy on its head by doing taxonomy based entirely on evolution: species belong in the same group only if they have a common evolutionary ancestor. It turns out that this way of doing taxonomy is completely antithetical to the taxonomy that is hard-wired into our brains. Famously, the cladists have killed fish: from an evolutionary standpoint, there is no such thing as a fish.

This book explores that tension between what our guts tell us is true, and what science tells us is true. Ultimately, our hard-wired sense of taxonomy is part of what makes us human. Although the work of the cladists is important, it is also unmooring nature from humanity. Yoon argues that this is part of why humans find it hard to care that we are responsible for a rapid mass extinction event.

This is a fascinating book, not only about the history of taxonomy, but about the place of humans in nature.… (mais)