Is stability too revered in zoological nomenclature?

Le résumé fourni par la source

Recently, the ICZN Commissioners (Ceríaco et al. 2023) issued a formal statement signalling their resistance to promoting the replacement of specific epithets honouring historical figures who, for example, advocated racist and/or sexist views, or were otherwise associated with unethical behaviour. Before analysing the logic of their position, we feel compelled to comment on the origin of what we believe to be a ‘stability fixation’ that forms the backdrop to most papers criticizing nomenclatural evolution, irrespective of whether the critics come from a conservationist standpoint (e.g. Garnett and Christidis 2017, Garnett et al. 2020) or, as in this case, are taxonomists concerned with the use of the Code’s premises (Ceríaco et al. 2023). Both early predecessors of the ICZN Code (Strickland Code 1842; and the Règles internationales de la Nomenclature Blanchard 1905) were conceived in a positivist context previously established by figures such as Auguste Comte (1798–1857). In the early 19th century, it was believed that science could, ultimately, mirror reality unequivocally, and philosophers even thought that mankind might forge a morality based exclusively on science. Then, just over two centuries ago, stability made perfect sense, especially as the early proponents of the Linnaean system operated within the context of a fixed world. Even prior to Comte, however, the perception that science could reflect reality was being challenged by David Hume (1711–1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant unequivocally demonstrated that we could never be sure how our propositions relate to the real world. This ontological ‘truth’, although well accepted by 19th-century philosophers, was transferred to science only in the 20th century, when Karl Popper (1902–1994) published his famous work ‘Logik der Forschung’ (Popper, 1934). Therein, he argued that the possibility of refutation, i.e. falsification, was the only means to rescue deductive reasoning and rationality itself from scientific thought. This transformation from a positivist to a rationalist system impacted all of science in the 20th century, including biological classification. This occurred because, simultaneous with the Popperian revolution, classification was still experiencing the aftershocks of Darwin and Wallace’s revolutionary propositions. After the ‘evolution revolution’, it became inevitable that biological systematics and classification were forced to deal with two fundamental issues in tandem. On the one hand, flux and evolution should be represented in hypotheses about kinship; on the other, classifications must be permanently open to the possibility of change and refinement. In biological systematics, it fell to Willi Hennig (1913–1976) and his followers to transform the discipline from an empirical-inductivist model into a hypothetical-deductive one. With respect to zoological classifications, systematists promoted the incorporation of Darwinian kinship relations and the effects of Popperian falsifiability into their classifications. There has also been a great conceptual revolution regarding species, most clearly indicated by the multiplicity of species concept proposals, each aimed to better respond to the specific question being asked. Most recently, taxonomists have started to engage with broader societal issues such as historical justice and racial equity (e.g. Gillman and Wright 2020, Smith and Figueiredo 2022). This brought to light the fact that biological nomenclature, nowadays, is far from being the mere application of norms and rules. It is the combination of taxonomic efforts to propose the clearest explanatory hierarchy of life forms with the best verbal representation of those units. However, this ‘liquidity’, which is a characteristic of a dynamic up-to-date science, has provoked growing discomfort among some of its end-users mainly because of the potential impact of the lack of nomenclatural stability on conservation (e.g. Garnett and Christidis 2017, Garnett et al. 2020). According to Raposo et al. (2017) ‘They [Garnett and Christidis 2017] appear to believe that taxonomic revisions should be based on political, economic and conservation concerns’. The negative reaction of Ceríaco et al. (2023) to the proposal to change historically offensive names (e.g. Hammer and Thiele 2021, Smith and Figueiredo 2021, 2022, Tracy 2022), again using the conservationist argument, undermines the development of nomenclature as part of the taxonomic science and is contrary to the progress achieved in the last 50 years. It is worth noting that there is a tendency among biologists to dissociate taxonomy from nomenclature and to consider only the former as a science. Under such a scenario, it might be argued that while the notion of taxonomic stability is clearly unscientific, the same failing does not undermine our natural desire for nomenclatural stability. However, such a dissociation ignores the strong interdependence and co-evolution between taxonomy and nomenclature, as well as the necessary plasticity with which philosophers have treated the concept of science throughout the 20th century (e.g. Gaston Bachelard, Ludwik Fleck, Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn). In all cases, if someone considers nomenclature a non-science, the defence of its dissociation from causes such as social equity becomes even stranger. Furthermore, it is important to also note a huge misunderstanding behind the belief that nomenclatural changes motivated by ethics oppose stability. Ethical standards constitute a principle, not a consequence such as stability or instability. Therefore, changes of taxonomic names due to offensiveness act in opposition to priority as a principle, provoking an immediate question: why should we opt for the benchmark of priority over that of historical reparation? It is also interesting to note that the ICZN Code clearly establishes when usage (stability) should force us to abandon the ethical framework of priority. We might then ponder why Commissioners refuse to consider future regulations favouring even more powerful ethical principles. We should also keep in mind that there is no reason to believe that a change necessitated on ethical grounds (historical reparation) really threatens stability. In practical terms, it could be easily argued that more ‘palatable’ epithets might also result in greater long-term stability of scientific names. Unfortunately, due to space we are unable to address all the ‘paranoia’ expressed by some colleagues (e.g. Mosyakin 2022, Wheeler 2023) who listed dozens of cases that might eventually be addressed by ‘crazy’ revisionist taxonomists who would change every specific name, from those honouring football teams to those referencing North American states. In our view, more urgent than such speculation is to demonstrate that stability should not be considered on the same level as ethics (see also Figueiredo et al. 2023; this issue). The latter is a principle which, in fact, underpins equality, justice and priority. The dilemma now faced by taxonomists is to choose between historical justice/equity versus priority of names honouring Imperial colonialists. For those who believe rationality is threatened (such as Wheeler 2023), it is important to make clear that historical reparation is not an emotional or sentimental issue. It is a rational and historically based attempt to promote equality in human society. The same cannot be said about concerns regarding the future of nomenclature. The fear of a possible explosion in the number of name changes is entirely speculative. The perception that stability is important as one of the struts underpinning the universality of biological nomenclature should never acquire greater primacy than basic principles such as refutability (changeability) and ethics (including priority and equity). Regarding the solution to the issue raised by Ceríaco et al. (2023) we do not subscribe to the radical solution proposed by Guedes et

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.