42
by constantly referring to “Western science” or “scientifi c taxonomy” as though
these endeavours were totally unbiased and free of disagreement, Berlin paints an
oversimplifi ed view of the scientifi c process that tends to be misleading. Such a
view glosses over inconvenient facts that show scientifi c taxonomy and systematics
to be a highly contentious fi eld. Researchers who carry out meta-analyses of taxo-
nomic papers have repeatedly pointed out that the geographic distribution of tax-
onomists and their research interests are highly skewed, as a result of which
countless important species and habitats remain understudied [ 131 ], and by conse-
quence, inappropriately classifi ed. This is particularly true of tropical species.
2.5 Synthesis
In the preceding sections, I have tried to argue that the goal of constructing a single
scientifi c classifi cation scheme for a single natural order is at the very least conten-
tious, if not totally unfeasible. Taxonomists are deeply divided on the best way to
develop even a classifi cation for practical purposes, let alone one that faithfully
represents real divisions in the natural world. For much of the last 200 years, the
business of taxonomy has been dominated by an exclusive focus on the morphologi-
cal features of plants and animals. It is only in the last two decades or so that genetic
and molecular techniques have started to be used, either in isolation, or in conjunc-
tion with morphological data. This has forced taxonomists to revise large numbers
of previously created groupings. Such revisions are slow to take effect, and many of
the old names are still used in fi eld guides and fl oras.
It has been argued that the Linnaean classifi cation system suffers from serious
ethnocentric biases, and that utilitarian concerns in European folk taxonomy have
motivated some of the more important groupings. Moreover, the kinds of tasks used
to elicit folk taxonomies suffer from a range of methodological issues, which make
it almost inevitable that the native speakers being interviewed will only use morpho-
logical criteria—which happen to be the criteria used in traditional taxonomy. No
wonder, then, that folk taxonomists are sometimes found to produce the same cate-
gories as scientifi c taxonomists, leading to superfi cial similarities between different
systems. This contention is amply supported by a key experimental study by Boster
and Johnson [ 56 ]—two groups of people, “novices” and “ expert fi shermen” were
asked to categorise pictures of fi sh outlines into as many groups as they wished, and
using whatever criteria they wished. The researchers found that the novices pro-
duced groupings solely on the basis of morphological criteria, which happened to
closely match scientifi c taxonomy. The expert fi shermen, on the other hand, not
only showed more variation in their groupings, but also used a combination of mor-
phological and functional (such as good sport, high meat value) criteria. Berlin ’s
“student experiment” can be explained in these terms, and the only generalisation
that can be made is that when humans categorise living organisms using morpho-
logical criteria alone, they do so in similar ways.
2 Ethnotaxonomies and Universals: Investigating some Key Assumptions