TAXONOMIC PRINCIPLES 7 



their appellation, all such workers are, in fact, taxonomists; perhaps 

 a bit more modern by employing experimental procedures but other- 

 wise attempting to solve the same problems, namely, to show 

 relationships and to classify accordingly. 



Constance (1960) in reviewing the book of Takhtajian (1959) 

 was impressed enough with certain statements made by this author 

 to quote in his review the following section: 



Among many biologists of experimental aim the notion is widespread 

 that Systematics is a branch of knowledge that is absolutely out- 

 moded. This conception of Systematics is profoundly false and the 

 result of a certain narrow-mindedness of thought associated with one- 

 sided specialization. . . . The fundamental general-biological signif- 

 icance of Systematics consists in that millions of facts that have no 

 sort of scientific value in themselves find their place in the construc- 

 tion of Systematics. Systematics is consequently not only the basis of 

 biology, but also its coronation. 



Placed in its proper perspective then, taxonomy becomes the 

 framework or the ordered arrangement of innumerable observations 

 and bits of information. This order is as useful for biochemical data 

 as it is for morphological features. Indeed, it would seem almost indis- 

 pensable for the former since the seemingly unlimited number of 

 molecular configurations might lose much of their interpretative 

 significance without such a foundation. 



Taxonomists generally fall into one of two sorts: (1) those 

 who are primarily interested in the biological units, particularly with 

 respect to their identification, distribution, and proper description, 

 £md (2) those who are less concerned with the names and descriptions 

 of categories and more concerned with evolutionary histories and the 

 mechanisms of speciation. In taxonomy, as in most other fields, there 

 are specialists, some who are involved with floristic work, some with 

 identification, some with phylogeny, and some with evolutionary 

 mechanisms. There is room for all, in spite of the fact that different 

 approaches might seem to be more significant at different periods of 

 time. Ultimately all of the information must be consohdated into any 

 unified system of classification. 



The categories 



formal categories 



There has been much misunderstanding about the nature of 

 biological categories. Such terms as species, genus, tribe, family, 



