16 HEDGPETH 



work, we must re-examine and re-evaluate that former work. Hence 

 our need for a continued supply of expert systematists, even — or perhaps 

 particularly — in groups that are considered well known and thoroughly 

 described, is perpetual. The dependence on past knowledge and reap- 

 praisal of previous work is one of the most characteristic aspects of science 

 in general. Many of Aristotle's biological observations are still valid 

 although his theories are no longer important, and we still repeat the old 

 observations in the light of new theories. Such analytical description 

 appeals to many students, and there is no finer way to present many 

 problems in biology than from the viewpoint of systematics. Inevitably 

 some students are fatally infected, and want to become systematists. 

 They should be — and sometimes are — encouraged "1:0 do so, even when 

 it is understood that the possibility of being employed in this field is 

 small. 



However, it is not for the sake of making jobs that other institutions 

 besides museums should be encouraged to employ systematists. No single 

 institution can be expected, of course, to hire enough specialists to repre- 

 sent all the plant and animal groups requiring identification and study, 

 and such attempts to provide complete coverage would be unnecessary 

 duplication. What seems to be needed, more than the policy that lim- 

 nological and oceanographic institutions should hire systematists, is the 

 recognition that systematists are just as promising scientists as the para- 

 meter parsers and nucleic acid merchants. It may be that the lack 

 of enthusiasm expressed in some quarters for systematic biology is based 

 on the realization that the objective definition of a species is a counsel 

 of perfection, i. e., that systematics cannot reduce all its terms to en- 

 tities that may be digested by a computing machine. Such a holier than 

 thou attitude is presumptuous when it is remembered that all human 

 knowledge is derived through the subjective filtering of our senses, that 

 some minds may be as incapable of distinguishing between two and 

 three as some eyes are of telling red from green. 



This aloofness toward systematics is not, of course, peculiar to 

 limnological and oceanographic institutions. It seems to be a general 

 attitude, general enough, in fact, to inspire a conference under the 

 auspices of the National Research Council on April 22, 1953 (Schmitt 

 et al., 1953). While the finding of this conference that "fewer groups 

 of plants and animals are being worked on by fewer people" should 

 deeply concern the director of every limnological and oceanographic in- 

 stitution, it is unfortunate that the conferees recommended expanding 

 the staffs and endowments of museums and "other institutions carrying 



