The Woke Cometh
Biological Nomenclature: Stability or Safe Space?
What do Roald Dahl and biological nomenclature have in common? Until recently, I should have thought nothing. But the woke movement has come for both. The publisher Puffin has rewritten parts of Dahl’s books, substituting words or inserting new text, to correct what it finds to be non-inclusive or insensitive language. And a recent paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution proposes substituting new scientific names for species whose epithets they find offensive, such as those honoring colonial explorers.
Changing the words in children’s books may seem trivial, but the principles that it violates are not. Unless we honor the intellectual property, intent, and creations of authors, artists, and scientists, how can we ever know which words and thoughts are theirs, and which belong to some unnamed, politically-correct editor? I am more offended by this transgression than any word from a dictionary rich in four-letter entries.
Denying and erasing the facts of history begets ignorance, and little else. We cannot learn from past mistakes when history is rewritten. The woke suggestion to do away with scientific names which may be offensive to someone reminds me of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001. These cliff carvings had existed since the first millennium, but they were offensive to the Taliban who destroyed them and archaeology, history and humankind are poorer for the loss.
It is common courtesy to be respectful and avoid intentional offense. But when it comes to biological nomenclature, the goal of inoffensiveness must be balanced against scientific stability, history and information content. The system of names has served science so well, fostering precision in communication and efficiency in data retrieval, precisely because changes in names are undertaken only when absolutely necessary as dictated by the codes. Before these rules, biological nomenclature was chaotic; names could be replaced on a whim, simply because they were disliked by a later author.
For biological nomenclature to function it must be stable across an incredible diversity of cultures around the world and endure the inevitable changes in social norms over centuries. It is impossible to say if, who or when someone may take offense at a previous name. The purpose of nomenclature is to provide stability, not a safe space where no one is ever offended. Given this kaleidoscope of sensitivities around the globe and through time, it may be that some measure of offense is the price for stability in scientific names and freedom of thought and speech.
The authors begin, “Science is often lauded as the pursuit of objectivity: a field that is meant to stand separate from value or emotion.” They then proceed to use their emotional response to certain people as the basis for condemning an entire class of scientific names. Replacing every scientific name that gives offense to someone will be a subjective and never ending process of nomenclatural confusion. Destroying monuments and rewriting history are tactics of dictators and totalitarian states, not science.
Science, by the way, is not the pursuit of objectivity. It is the pursuit of knowledge. And the very best science is often motivated by strong emotions, not insulated from them. What makes science special is not that it is cold, objective, and divorced from emotions. What makes science special is that in spite of emotions and human bias it has the remarkable property of being self-correcting. Objectivity enters when hypotheses are tested by experiments and observations. Whitewashing history takes us farther from, not closer to, objectivity.
Since Homer, history is replete with individual people held up as symbols of traits that we admire from courage to creativity. There are no perfect humans. To honor no one, to deny humankind of aspirational heroes, because of the inherent imperfection of humans would be a tragic mistake. It is perhaps the most poorly guarded secret that every hero is tragically flawed in some way. We do not honor them because they were saints, but because their best acts were symbolic of something we value. Most eponyms do not aim for heroic status, simply to acknowledge the first person to find a new species, benefactors funding expeditions, or individuals who made an important contribution of some kind.
One could argue that naming a species of wasp from Thailand after Lady Gaga was a frivolous thing to do. But I disagree. The challenges of taxonomy and the biodiversity crisis are not known to the general public. The Gaga wasp brought them to the attention of thousands of people who otherwise would have paid this aspect of science no notice. Surely, this is a good thing. In nomenclature, as in life in general, we should embrace, celebrate and tolerate differences among cultures, religions, beliefs and customs. There is no one size fits all for the human race, or for changes of social norms through time. Better that we know and learn from history than suppress facts and be ignorant.
Even if banning eponyms were a good idea — and let me emphasize that it is a terrible idea— this is not the time to engage in revisionist history. Earth’s sixth extinction is underway with tens of thousands of species lost each year. This is an all-hands-on deck crisis that calls for accelerated taxonomy and a worldwide inventory of species, not nursing perceived wounds from words we dislike. Systematics should be pursued with the rigor imparted by philosophy, methodology, and nomenclatural codes, not dragged into the subjective quagmire of political correctness. It is the height of arrogance for anyone to presume that they have the moral authority to dictate what is or is not an acceptable name to others. Who are we to rewrite facts of history or shackle the intellectual freedom of the scientists of tomorrow? We need to accept facts of the past, do what we think is right for ourselves, and trust scientists in the future to be smart enough to figure it out for themselves.
Where does renaming end? Why stop with explicit eponyms. By their logic, we would have to also rename the ant Camponotus pennsylvanicus because it was named for Pennsylvania where it was found, and Pennsylvania was named for William Penn who was a white colonist who dressed like the guy on an oatmeal box. Do such eponyms once removed give sufficient offense to be black-listed, too? What about otherwise acceptable names that were proposed by offensive individuals? I could list a few colleagues I personally find offensive, but it never occurred to me that their work should be shunned for that reason.
And let’s face it, eponyms are not the only names that may bring offense. Some may blush and be made uncomfortable at the genus name Phallus that was given to penis-shaped stinkhorn fungi. Must they be renamed, too, and perhaps images of them banned so as not to visually offend the prudish among us? And, I suspect that the place-based names for the sulfur-reducing bacterium, Dethiosulfovibrio russensis, and the fossil bivalve Buchia russiensis, both named for the Russian motherland, are pretty damned offensive to many Ukrainians at the moment, yet their objective existence cannot be denied, nor their contributions to geographic information and nomenclatural stability.
Can Creationists insist that species named by Darwinians be replaced, and vice versa? There is no end to possible offenses, and no clear rationale for determining who gets to claim victimhood and force name changes. With two million named species, millions of diverse people, and constantly changing social norms, nomenclatural stability could very quickly become a thing of the past. We could avoid all of this by stripping all humanity and meaning from scientific names and using instead DNA barcodes or arbitrary numbers like license plates. This would work well for computer retrieved information systems, but would deprive us of a rich biodiversity vocabulary that is precise and that often aids in memory. As Steven Pinker has said, humans can no more ignore their capacity for language than fail to remove their hand from a hot stove. It would be disastrous to lose all the richness that comes from scientific names.
I’m reminded of Ed Wilson’s reaction to the phylocode proposal to do away with the Linnaean system, including binominals, and rename and reclassify every known species. He said that shifting to a new system of classification in the midst of a biodiversity crisis would be like rewriting the operator’s manual for the Titanic as she was sinking. With an estimated 20,000 extinctions per year, and most species unknown to science, it is folly to worry about past names that some, in this moment of imposed conformity, find offensive.
This proposal to do away with eponyms is an assault on intellectual freedom, the right for each taxonomist to propose names as she or he sees fit so long as they conform to the Code and pass peer review. The authors of this silly idea may rest assured that no one is likely to honor their contribution with an eponym, unless to poke a playfully ironic, binominal thumb in their eye.
As a taxonomist with my senses of tolerance, humor, proportion, and intellectual freedom firmly intact, I am deeply offended by the opposition to eponyms and the very idea of giving any generation the ability to wipe away history because they don’t like it. Do my feelings count, or just those of an intolerant, woke mob seeking to impose their sensibilities on the rest of humankind, present, past and future?
Let’s put this woke nonsense in perspective. Seventy percent of species are predicted to be extinct in less than three hundred years. We know fewer than twenty percent of earth’s species. The ecosystem services on which our lives depend are imperiled. And taxonomy and natural history museums are woefully underfunded to complete a species inventory. Yet we are asked to prioritize renaming thousands of species because some of them may offend someone? This is unworthy of the traditions of science and the commitment to freedom of thought that others have purchased for us with great sacrifice.
On February 17, 1600, Giordano Bruno chose to be burned to death by the Roman Inquisition rather than recant his ideas about the universe, ideas that were, by the way, scientifically correct but offensive to the prevailing views of the time. Talk about someone who could have used a safe space! Considering Bruno’s courage of conviction, surely scientists today can bear the emotional pain inflicted by names with which they take offense in order to defend nomenclatural stability, intellectual freedom, and the accuracy of the historical record. We’ve all had a good laugh. Now, there’s a biodiversity crisis to attend to.
References
Guedes, P., Alves-Martins, F., et al. 2023. Eponyms have no place in 21st-century biological nomenclature. Nature Ecology & Evolution
Vernon, H. 2023. Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive. The Guardian, 18 Feb. (web retrieved 20 March, 2023)
You make very good points. Being awakened and attuned to serious social issues was and remains a good thing, as first intended. I'm not sure of a better word, however, to identify the movement sweeping across our culture and agree that my issue is with the transformed version of woke, not the original. I don't question that the intentions of the authors were good, either, but there are more things to consider than potentially hurt feelings. Having a few battle scars of my own, I appreciate that occasional clashes of ideas are necessary and desirable for the advance of science, but that pretty much precludes science from being a safe space, nomenclature notwithstanding.
Highly ironic that some comments fixate on and project indignation at the usage of “woke” in this essay, thereby proving the author’s point that a name (or word) to be useful should be stable. Those offended perceived the same usage of the word, i.e., the modern usage of “woke,” as defined by Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary: aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice), and identified as U.S. slang. The essay would have lost its clarity if the author, for fear of offense, had substituted “shazbot” for “woke.” Wokeness is the appropriate descriptor for the justification for calls to expunge any species name that might reference something that offends someone somewhere, anywhere. Scientific dialogue is stifled by angry masses, overtaken by perceptual disturbances and offensensitivity, shrieking for the heads of anything that offends them. Even offensive nomenclatures have historical contexts from which we can learn, and hopefully do better ourselves. How ironic that some natural historians want to cancel history. Recall also that as taxa evolve, so do word meanings. This is a good article.