[Taxacom] International Commission on SubatomicParticleNomenclature?

Sun Oct 2 09:24:05 CDT 2011

Of course - one doesn't need to know the names of the plants when one is conducting various kinds of work on plant systems.  But, as soon as one tries to generalize from this observation about for plant X to other kinds of plants, then one must at least know how to use nomenclature. erhaps one even needs to understand evolutionary relationships to develop anything more than proximate explanations for what happened.

As for negative connotations of particle physics, I have always viewed the phrasr "god particle" as an indication of arrogance (at least for many who use it).  Everything cannot be reduced to the qualities and beahvior of a single physical abstraction.

Dick J 

----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Heads <michael.heads at yahoo.com>
To: Peter Stevens <peter.stevens at mobot.org>
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Sat, 01 Oct 2011 20:12:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] International Commission on	SubatomicParticleNomenclature?

?I have

always thought one could be a great botanist without knowing a single plant by

name? With all the names you have few ideas?.  (C. Baehni, the Sapotaceae specialist, in Boissiera 11, 1965).

Michael Heads

Wellington, New Zealand.

My papers on biogeography are at: http://tiny.cc/RiUE0

________________________________

From: Peter Stevens 

To: Richard Zander ; Bob Morris ; taxacom 

Sent: Sunday, 2 October 2011 12:39 PM

Subject: Re: [Taxacom] International Commission on SubatomicParticleNomenclature?

I don't profess to know what Fermi really meant, but a common meaning in the 19thC was that botany was a science of names - and by implication, little else.

And since I cannot remember names, I cannot be a botanist.

P.

-----Original Message-----

From: Richard Zander

Sent: Sat 10/1/2011 1:31 PM

To: Peter Stevens; Bob Morris; taxacom

Subject: RE: [Taxacom] International Commission on SubatomicParticleNomenclature?

No, no, Fermi was saying that he could not well remember scientific names and therefore could not be a botanist. A shame, but not all can be botanists.

??? 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

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

-----Original Message-----

From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Peter Stevens

Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2011 10:09 AM

To: Bob Morris; taxacom

Subject: Re: [Taxacom] International Commission on SubatomicParticleNomenclature?

This kind ofusgae persited certainly up to 10 years ago, and I presume still persists.  I picked up similar quotes in "Science", "Nature" and the "International Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science", or whatever is is called; natural history also sometimes has very negative connotations.

P.

-----Original Message-----

From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Bob Morris

Sent: Sat 10/1/2011 12:25 AM

To: taxacom

Subject: [Taxacom] International Commission on Subatomic ParticleNomenclature?

'By the 1980s physicists were drowning in a sea of subatomic

particles. Every time they smashed an atom apart with powerful particle accelerators, they found scores of new particles spitting out.  It was so frustrating that J. Robert Oppenheimer declared that the Nobel Prize in Physics should go to the physicist who did \not/ discover a new particle that year. (Enrico Fermi, horrified at the proliferation of subatomic particles with Greek sounding names, said, "If I could remember the names of all these particles, I would have become a botanist.")'

Michio Kaku, "Physics of the Impossible", Doubleday, 2008., p. 

234-235, Chapter 13 ("Parallel Universes", section on String Theory

--Bob Morris

-- 

Robert A. Morris

Emeritus Professor  of Computer Science

UMASS-Boston

100 Morrissey Blvd

Boston, MA 02125-3390

IT Staff

Filtered Push Project

Department of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology

Harvard University

email: morris.bob at gmail.com

web: http://efg.cs.umb.edu/

web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush

http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram

phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)

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