Cancel culture, history and nomenclature
When scientific names give offense
A listener to the podcast suggested that I weigh in on a current controversy regarding offensive scientific names and whether they should be replaced. I am in agreement with a recent statement from the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature that stability of scientific names must be of paramount concern. Aside from the obvious practical benefits of maintaining existing names, my reasoning and principles, and the issue itself, are not as simple or straight forward as an emotional reaction to an offensive name might make them appear. To begin with, who gets to decide that a name should be replaced? How many people must it offend, or just how offensive must it be in order to set aside the rules governing scientific names? As a fan of The Ohio State University’s football team, I find the epithet of the noctuid moth, Capablepharon michiganensis offensive. It would please me to replace the epithet with tunensis, referring to that Team Up North rather than having to utter the name Michigan. I’m pretty sure that renaming the moth would offend just about everyone in Michigan. So, whose feelings matter more, mine or the population of an entire midwestern state?
In reality, I would find it far more offensive to restrict the freedom of thought and speech of taxonomists—even those in Michigan— than to tolerate a name that offends me. Complicating things further, what people perceive to be offensive changes along with milieux and social norms. What was perfectly acceptable in the 18th or 19th centuries we may regard as offensive today. And what we find fine now may give offense to those a hundred years from now. Given the permanent nature of our system of nomenclature, this makes offensiveness to someone unavoidable sooner or later. There is simply no way to anticipate what might give offense in the future or to stop the evolution of societal sensibilities. Are we to allow every generation to go through the catalogue of species and rename any which they dislike? Stability has become a hallmark of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. If that stability goes away, if we respond to every perceived offense with a replacement name, we would return to the chaos that existed before the Code. It would be difficult to know which name to use for a species at any given moment and pulling together biological information published under multiple names would be challenging. On a planet with millions of species, in the middle of a mass extinction, this would set a terrible precedent.
My Michigan example, of course, was a silly one. We need one that is more universally offensive. I can think of no better example than a small, pale, blind and flightless cave beetle from Slovenia named Anophthalmus hitleri. Yes, that Hitler. Any ethical person should be offended by the mere idea of honoring such an evil human being. By 1937, when the species was named, there was unequivocal evidence of the despicable nature of the Third Reich, including prison camps for those who dared question its views or authority. Thus, even with little direct knowledge of what Oskar Scheibel knew when he named the beetle, it is difficult to cut him slack. Further, there are honorable people who, through no fault of their own, share the surname Hitler who may be quite deserving of an epithet in their honor.
So, it is not the epithet hitleri that gives offense but rather the assumed intent behind the patronym to honor one particular, despicable Hitler. Perhaps we are looking at this name in the wrong way. Instead of accepting it as an honorific, even if it was originally intended as such, why not choose instead to see it as a reminder of the horrific depths to which humans are capable of descending? And a cautionary tale to consider all the angles when naming new species. Along with death camps and Holocaust museums, we could decide that preserving the name of this beetle is one more way to remind ourselves of an ugly, inhuman chapter in world history that we must never forget. Papering over uncomfortable facts of history, rewriting it to avoid feeling offended, could contribute to repeating past mistakes. Better that we be uncomfortable and remember. Better to learn from history and past mistakes than pretend they didn’t happen.
Most offensive names are not so extreme. They exist somewhere along a spectrum, from the trivial like my Michigan moth to the most disgusting imaginable in the case of Hitler. They are challenging because it is not clear where to draw the line or whose feelings to protect. There are species named for the Pope, for example, that may offend people of other faiths or atheists. Species named for European explorers that may conjure up negative feelings about the colonial period. Evolutionists could find species named prior to Darwin offensive, as most were coined by creationists; and the opposite is true, too. Creationists may be offended by species named by evolutionary thinkers after Darwin. There is no end to the ways in which people might be offended and few objective criteria by which to adjudicate among differently offended people.
Gary Nelson once commented that honest men must exist, but that he had never actually seen one. The same may be said of perfect people. If they’re out there, I have yet to meet one. The human condition is complicated and nuanced and we each hopefully learn from our experiences, shortcomings and mistakes and acquire a measure of wisdom in the course of a life lived. We can choose to judge people by their single best or worst action, or some balance of the two. This is not to say that all offenses are forgivable, or that we should pretend that character flaws don’t exist. But it is to say that in focusing on great achievements—even those made by imperfect people— we create worthy aspirational goals with which society can improve itself. It is good to memorialize heroes, even flawed ones. That’s why history books have lots of footnotes.
The Code advises against foul language. But what about foul language that is cleverly disguised? Jim Pakaluk named a beetle genus Foadia whose root was said in his publication to be an arbitrary combination of the letters f, o, a and d. But this was a ruse to get the name past the journal editor. It was, in fact, an acronym for *uck off and die. Does it give offense? I suppose to some it does, but I find it hilarious and one of many examples of the humanity behind the implementation of otherwise dry nomenclatural rules.
Those who attack the memory of Thomas Jefferson because he was a slave holder choose to see a half-empty glass. Slavery is one of the ugliest stains on the human race, one of the most loathsome scars on human history. But to judge people from the 18th century by 21st century standards is naïve and unfair. This is not to forgive the barbaric practice, merely to see it in its historic context. Deciding to see the glass half-full, one can decide to celebrate Jefferson for putting into words self-evident truths that inexorably led to the demise of slavery. That vision, that moral clarity, was an act of courage in a time when slavery was shamefully widely accepted. Could he have been more courageous, at least leading by example and liberating his own slaves? Absolutely. But this does not take away from the moral compass in his words. While he failed to follow its true North, his noble thoughts and words set a nation on the path to abolition, to honoring the dignity of every human being, and to taking the measure of individuals based on their character and accomplishments rather than race, gender, ethnicity or social status.
The Code is only as stable as we allow it to be. A good case can be made to rid ourselves of the hitleri epithet, but once we step onto the slippery slope of expunging offensive names, it immediately becomes difficult to draw a clear line, to decide whose feelings count, and just how offensive a name must be to deserve replacement. So long as names are formed according to the rules, they enter the annals of nomenclature. Scientific names are the unique identifiers by which we organize and retrieve knowledge, but they are also time capsules reflecting the history of civilization. A history we can only learn from by keeping its record intact including the good, the bad, and the ugly. The Code cautions against names that give offense, and this is good advice that should be heeded by taxonomists. Journal editors and peer reviewers are gatekeepers, too, for current sensibilities and can help filter out offensive names. It is worth remembering, too, that while replacing a name might make us feel better, the offending name does not go away. Replaced, it becomes a junior synonym and continues to exist and be recognized and perpetuated in taxonomic publications. This is unavoidable. It is the only way in which existing knowledge, published under the offending name, can be retrieved.
As strong as the impulse is to bury the epithet hitleri, we must be careful not to unintentionally engage in the same kind of suppression of intellectual freedom that was imposed by Hitler and tyrants throughout history. Our pop culture is not entirely blameless in this respect today. We are not sending those who say things we find offensive to prison camps, but we are cancelling them, making them societal outcasts, sometimes causing them to lose their livelihoods because they dared to express ideas or use words not approved by a self-appointed political-correctness police force. As the self-righteous tear down statues and rename buildings they find offensive, because their namesakes were imperfect humans, they tear too at the fabric of intellectual freedom and the objectivity of history.
It is good to be offended from time to time. By not making nomenclature a safe space, we are forced to think about our beliefs and why we have taken offense, to deal with the facts of history—and learn from them, to examine the ethical basis of our concerns, and to look in the mirror to see whether we are measuring up to the principles we profess to hold. Even when we are doing pretty well, without exception, if we are honest, we, like the historical figures we so easily condemn, come up short. Tolerating some offensive names may be the price that must be paid in order to defend freedom of thought and speech for all. If that is the toll to avoid censorship and suppression of minority views, I, for one, will gladly pay it. It’s easy to protect words and ideas with which we are in agreement. But adhering to the principles of freedom of thought and expression demands that we defend also those ideas and words with which we violently disagree, including those which may offend.
Further Reading
Ceriaco, L.M.P. et al. (2023) Renaming taxa on ethical grounds threatens nomenclatural stability and scientific communication: Communication from the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 197: 283-286. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlac107
Cahan, E. (2020) Amid protests against racism, scientists move to strip offensive names from journals, prizes, and more. Science, 2 July. https://www.science.org/content/article/amid-protests-against-racism-scientists-move-strip-offensive-names-journals-prizes-and
Gunaysu, A. (2009) Learnings from the Sari Gelin case. The Armenian Weekly. https://armenianweekly.com/2009/03/04/learnings-from-the-sari-gelin-case/ (retrieved: 31 Jan 2023)
Leinaweaver, A. (2022) Changing animal names. Animal Encounters. Fort Collins Museum of Discovery. https://fcmod.org/blog/category/exhibits/animal-encounters/ (retrieved: 31 January 2023).
You make an excellent points. It is difficult to counter your logic regarding public structures that in some respects ought to evolve like common language. Yet, something about efforts to demote historic figures, like the removal of a window honoring geneticist Ronald Fisher at Cambridge because of his views on eugenics, remind me of the destruction of archaeological sites in the Middle East for extreme religious views. I can't help but think that both the good and bad from history have valuable lessons to teach us and I'm not sure that denial or diminishment of the bits we dislike is an entirely good thing. While there is room for debate on this point, the Code seems a clear place to draw the line.
Thanks for your comments. Although some scholars, such as Coe, interpret Jefferson's words, "all men are created equal," to be a reference to the colonists as a whole rather than to individuals, I remain skeptical and, in any event, in post-Revolutionary America those words did come to be so interpreted, giving voice to the principle of individual equality that, if believed and adhered to, led only to one place: the eventual rejection of slavery. I agree with you that every compromise prior to the Civil War that permitted the continuation of slavery was morally reprehensible as that institution is simply indefensible under any circumstance I can imagine. Nonetheless, it is important to temper our view and criticism of decisions and stands, taken at an earlier time, recognizing that we have the advantage of hindsight. I'm no historian, and claim no specially enlightened insights, but my sense of fair play that tells me that it is unfair to impose contemporary norms on those living in a different time. This does not excuse support for slavery, by any one at any time, that is an absolute evil. But it may help us better understand decisions made in a different era. Aspects of contemporary society, mistakes that we are making, including cancel culture, will likely be seen as absurd and wrongheaded with the passage of time and difficult to understand or defend in a more rational milieu.
Your position, that we avoid creating new names that are actually or potentially offensive, is sage advice—within limits. There are intuitively obvious lines that ought not be crossed when formulating new names. But there are also no bounds to the names that might, today or at a later time, be seen as offensive to someone. I remain convinced that looking historical facts square in the eye is the best way to deal with names from the past. There is much that can be learned by exploring why certain names from the past offend, and we are ultimately better served by learning those lessons rather than removing names we dislike from the taxonomic lexicon and risking never learning them.