Naming Nature by Carol Kaesuk Yoon

Published by W. W. Norton & Company

For a book that aims at a large readership, Naming Nature (2009) dares to explore a topic that seems anything but sexy at first sight: taxonomy. But we know better and we won’t turn away from the book, since the act of naming and classifying organisms is of course a very exciting activity! (No, I’m not kidding.)

In her book, Carol Yoon recapitulates the history of the discipline and presents the main scientific actors who contributed to the advance of taxonomy. She thus tells us about important figures:  Linné (Carolus Linnaeus), who is considered the founder of modern taxonomy, and who notably popularized the use of the binomial nomenclature (Felis catus and Escherichia coli, to name two lovable examples); Charles Darwin, who needs no introduction, and who revolutionized taxonomy by showing that species were not immutable; Ernst Mayr,  one of the main architects of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory; Linus Pauling, the Nobel laureate chemist who had the brilliant idea of classifying organisms by looking at the amino acid sequence of hemoglobin; and Carl Woese, microbiologists’ modern hero, who classified organisms by looking at their DNA sequence and turned the tree of life topsy-turvy. Nothing new to me here, but, after all, this book is not written for biologists.

On the other hand, I learned facts that I was ignorant of (and this seems to be an inexhaustible category of facts...). For instance, I learned that it was Julian Huxley (member of a family in which each member is either a literary or a scientific genius) who coined the term ‘systematics’ and proposed to use it in place of taxonomy.

Kingdoms or domains?

I view taxonomy – the classification of organisms – at the same time as the most useless and the most useful science. Useless because we know that all life forms are related to one another, and therefore the categories that we create to separate them are arbitrary (with the exception of the distinction at the species level). Most useful, since naming and organizing things seem necessary if we are to claim any knowledge. And isn't it a true pleasure (I almost dare to write "bliss") to point at a plant, a mushroom or an animal (if the latter doesn't move too fast) and be able to name it? 

I learned my share of taxonomy as a student, but I also forgot quite a bunch… At least I remember that I got a good grade at my zoology exam (I had to talk about the subphylum Chelicerata!), based on a course by one of the best professors I ever had, Peter Vogel. 

Taxonomy, which is part of Systematics (the study of biological diversity), proposes a hierarchy from the most particular to the most general: Species, Genera, Families, Orders, Classes, Phyla… (In the classic evolutionary taxonomy, classification is mostly based on morphology, while modern molecular systematics compares the sequence of amino acids in proteins or of nucleotides in nucleic acids.) But, what about higher (more global) levels of classification? 

Bacteria, Archaea, bacteria, or prokaryotes?

In this blog, I use the term ‘bacteria’ (with a lower case), as a generic term equivalent to prokaryotes (that is, Bacteria and Archaea). In this I follow the example of the Brock Biology of Microorganisms, a reference textbook in microbiology (and a wonderful read, by the way).

If you are not familiar with these denominations, here is a brief recap: