41classifi cations in equal proportions, he nevertheless concedes that grouping species into
oversized genera and monotypic genera provides little information regarding the species’
evolutionary connections, thereby making plant taxonomy “irredeemably ineffi cient”.
Stating the case of the large and economically important plant family, the Leguminosae,
Cronk [ 126 ], like Walters before him, demonstrates that the present-day taxonomy of
the three sub-families, Caesalpinoidae, Papilionoidae and Mimosoidae closely follows
the patterns established by Linnaeus and continued by the great botanist George
Bentham in 1865. Accordingly, Caesalpinoidae contains the smallest genera and
Mimosoidae the largest, refl ecting the fact that many species of the former group were
known to Linnaeus. In contrast, Linnaeus had access to very few specimens of
Mimosoids, leading him to group them together under one genus.
In his discussion on the development of the concept of “genus” in scientifi c tax-
onomy, Berlin attempts to draw links between folk generic taxa and scientifi c gen-
era by citing a “ perceptive paper ” by Bartlett [ 128 ]. Here, Berlin says, Bartlett
outlines the parallels between scientifi c and folk genera. However, using data from
historical sources, Bartlett makes the following observation about the internal struc-
ture of scientifi c genera:
...the inclusiveness or size of genera, now as in the past, is less a matter of science than of
linguistic preference and convenience.
... Greene has shown that the generic idea “oak”, as held today, was really borrowed by
scientifi c systematic botany from the folk science of the English pioneer settlers in temper-
ate America, who extended the English folk concept of “oak” to cover the various widely
different American oaks. In the eastern United States we distinguish white oak, burr oak,
chestnut oak, live oak, scarlet oak, black oak, shingle oak and others, having a perfectly
binomial nomenclature for them in English, and, from the literary record, we may be sure
that these designations owe nothing to scientifi c botany. (p. 351)
One must wonder how much “borrowing” from folk systems went on during the
time when fi eld naturalists and collectors were scouring “exotic” locations around
the world for specimens, and were heavily reliant on the input and knowledge of
their native guides. Whether this could account for the perceived similarities
between folk and scientifi c taxonomies would be hard to verify, but it is nevertheless
a possibility that cannot be ignored.
The practice of taxonomy in western science has always been strongly infl u-
enced by prevailing evolutionary theory (or lack thereof) and perceptions of the
natural order of living organisms. The Linnaean system was conceived of in the
tradition of Aristotelian essentialism, “ not because he observed essences in nature...
but because he believed that is how God created nature ” [ 114 ]. As noted above,
existing European taxa and morphological features were used wholesale in the nam-
ing of Linnaean taxa. Two centuries later, Ernst Mayr championed the biological
species concept [ 129 ], characterised by the presence of interbreeding. Although he
advocated that genera be kept of equal size as far as possible, the “ hollow curve ” has
become a dominant feature of modern taxonomy. The advent of molecular phyloge-
netic techniques in the last two decades now threatens to bring about a revolution in
scientifi c taxonomy, with proponents of phylogenetic classifi cation demanding that
the old Linnaean scheme be replaced with a new PhyloCode [ 130 ]. Unfortunately,
2.4 Problems with Berlin’s Ethnobiological Classifi cation