Bully for Brontosaurus (8 page)

My correspondent is quite right, and I misspoke (I also trust that recent tension at Folsom had sources other than the great typewriter wars—yes, I did answer the letter promptly). Fortunately, my hypothesis is secure against my own carelessness—for Sholes needed simply to separate frequently struck keys to avoid jamming. The finger used to strike mattered little (I also rather suspect that many people were experimenting with many-fingered typing before the full four-fingered methods became canonical).

But the vast bulk of correspondence, more than 80 percent, took issue with my throwaway and tangential last line—thanks to our long-standing and happy fascination with words and word games. I gave the conventional typist’s sentence as being the shortest phrase using all letters:

I have since learned that sentences containing all letters of the alphabet are called “pangrams,” and that the quest for the shortest represents at least a minor industry, with much effort spent, and opposing factions with strong passions. Many readers suggested, as a well-known alternative with three fewer letters (32 versus 35),

Zoological enthusiasts and prohibitionists then retort that the fox-dog classic can still tie by dropping the first article and becoming only slightly less grammatical:

But Ted Leather wins this limited derby for shortest sensible pangram with the 31-stroke

We now enter the world of arcana. Can shorter pangrams be made? Can the ultimate 26-letter sentence be constructed? This quest has so far stymied all wordsmiths. Using common words only, we can get down to 28 (but only by the slightly dishonorable route of using proper names):

And to 27, with some archaic orthography:

But for the ultimate of 26, we either use initials in abundance (which doesn’t seem quite fair),

or we avoid names and initials, but employ such unfamiliar and marginally admissable words that an equal feeling of dissatisfaction arises,

A
cwm
is a mountain hollow in Wales, while
qoph
, the nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, has been drawn (and has attracted the ire of an immigrant fly) by a member of an Iranian minority. Sounds awfully improbable.

My favorite proposal for a 26-letter pangram requires an entire story for comprehension (thanks to Dan Lufkin of Hood College):

Warm plucky G.H.Q. jinx, fez to B.V.D.’s.

A free copy of this and all my subsequent books to anyone who can construct a 26-letter pangram with common words only and no proper names.

QUESTION:
What do Catherine the Great, Attila the Hun, and Bozo the Clown have in common? Answer: They all have the same middle name.

Question: What do San Marino, Tannu Tuva, and Monaco have in common? Answer: They all realized that they could print pretty pieces of perforated paper, call them stamps, and sell them at remarkable prices to philatelists throughout the world. (Did these items ever bear any relationship to postage or utility? Does anyone own a canceled stamp from Tannu Tuva?) Some differences, however, must be admitted. Although San Marino (a tiny principality within Italy) and Tannu Tuva (a former state adjacent to Mongolia but now annexed to the Soviet Union) may rely on stamps for a significant fraction of their GNP, Monaco, as we all know, has another considerable source of outside income—the casino of Monte Carlo (nurtured by all the hype and elegance of the Grimaldis—Prince Rainier, Grace Kelly, and all that).

So completely do we identify Monaco with Monte Carlo that we can scarcely imagine any other activity, particularly something productive, taking place in this little land of fantasy and fractured finances.

Nonetheless, people are born, work, and die in Monaco. And this tiny nation boasts, among other amenities, a fine station for oceanographic research. This combination of science and hostelry makes Monaco an excellent place for large professional meetings. In 1913, Monaco hosted the International Zoological Congress, the largest of all meetings within my clan. This 1913 gathering adopted the important Article 79, or “plenary powers decision,” stating that “when stability of nomenclature is threatened in an individual case, the strict application of the Code may under specified conditions be suspended by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature.”

Now I will not blame any reader for puzzlement over the last paragraph. The topic—rules for giving scientific names to organisms—is easy enough to infer. But why should we be concerned with such legalistic arcana? Bear with me. We shall detour around the coils of
Boa constrictor
, meet the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature head-on, and finally arrive at a hot issue now generating much passion and acrimony at the heart of our greatest contemporary fad. You may deny all concern for rules of taxonomy, our last domain of active Latin (now that Catholicism has embraced the vernacular), but millions of Americans are now het up about the proper name of
Brontosaurus
, the canonical dinosaur. And you can’t grasp the name of the beast without engaging the beastly rules of naming.

Nonprofessionals often bridle at the complex Latin titles used by naturalists as official designations for organisms. Latin is a historical legacy from the foundation of modern taxonomy in the mid-eighteenth century—a precomputer age when Romespeak was the only language shared by scientists throughout the world. The names may seem cumbersome, now that most of us pass our youthful years before a television set, rather than declaiming
hic-haec-hoc
and
amo-amas-amat
. But the principle remains sound. Effective communication demands that organisms have official names, uniformly recognized in all countries, while a world of changing concepts and increasing knowledge requires that rules of naming foster maximal stability and minimal disruption.

New species are discovered every day; old names must often change as we correct past errors and add new information. If every change of concept demanded a redesignation of all names and a reordering of all categories, natural history would devolve into chaos. Our communications would fail as species, the basic units of all our discourse, would have no recognized labels. All past literature would be a tangle of changing designations, and we could not read without a concordance longer than the twenty volumes of the
Oxford English Dictionary
.

The rules for naming animals are codified in the
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
, as adopted and continually revised by the International Union of Biological Sciences (plant people have a different code based on similar principles). The latest edition (1985), bound in bright red, runs to 338 pages. I will not attempt to summarize the contents, but only state the primary goal: to promote maximal stability as new knowledge demands revision.

Consider the most prevalent problem demanding a solution in the service of stability: When a single species has been given two or more names, how do we decide which to validate and which to reject? This common situation can arise for several reasons: Two scientists, each unaware of the other’s work, may name the same animal; or a single scientist, mistaking a variable species for two or more separate entities, may give more than one name to members of the same species. A simple and commonsensical approach might attempt to resolve all such disputes with a principle of priority—let the oldest name prevail. In practice, such “obvious” solutions rarely work. The history of taxonomy since Linnaeus has featured three sequential approaches to this classic problem.

1.
Appropriateness
. Modern nomenclature dates from the publication, in 1758, of the tenth edition of Linnaeus’s
Systema Naturae
. In principle, Linnaeus endorsed the rule of priority. In practice, he and most of his immediate successors commonly changed names for reasons, often idiosyncratic, of supposed “appropriateness.” If the literal Latin of an original name ceased to be an accurate descriptor, new names were often devised. (For example, a species originally named
floridensis
to denote a restricted geographic domain might be renamed
americanus
if it later spread throughout the country.)

Some unscrupulous taxonomists used appropriateness as a thinly veiled tactic to place their own stamp upon species by raiding rather than by scientific effort. A profession supposedly dedicated to expanding knowledge about things began to founder into a quagmire of arguments about names. In the light of such human foibles, appropriateness could not work as a primary criterion for taxonomic names.

2.
Priority
. The near anarchy of appropriateness provoked a chorus of demands for reform and codification. The British Association for the Advancement of Science finally appointed a committee to formulate a set of official rules for nomenclature. The Strickland Committee, obedient to the age-old principle that periods of permissiveness lead to stretches of law ’n’ order (before the cycle swings round again), reported in 1842 with a “strict construction” that must have brought joy to all Robert Borks of the day. Priority in publication shall be absolutely and uncompromisingly enforced. No ifs, ands, buts, quibbles, or exceptions.

This decision may have ended the anarchy of capricious change, but it introduced another impediment, perhaps even worse, based on the exaltation of incompetence. When new species are introduced by respected scientists, in widely read publications with clear descriptions and good illustrations, people take notice and the names pass into general use. But when Ignatz Doofus publishes a new name with a crummy drawing and a few lines of telegraphic and muddled description in the
Proceedings of the Philomathematical Society of Pfennighalbpfennig
(circulation 533), it passes into well-deserved oblivion. Unfortunately, under the Strickland Code of strict priority, Herr Doofus’s name, if published first, becomes the official moniker of the species—so long as Doofus didn’t break any rule in writing his report. The competence and usefulness of his work have no bearing on the decision. The resulting situation is perversely curious. What other field defines its major activity by the work of the least skilled? As Charles Michener, our greatest taxonomist of bees, once wrote: “In other sciences the work of incompetents is merely ignored; in taxonomy, because of priority, it is preserved.”

If the Sterling/Doofus ratio were high, priority might pose few problems in practice. Unfortunately, the domain of Doofuses forms a veritable army, issuing cannonade after cannonade of publications filled with new names destined for oblivion but technically constituted in correct form. Since every profession has its petty legalists, its boosters of tidiness and procedure over content, natural history sank into a mire of unproductive pedantry that, in Ernst Mayr’s words, “deflected taxonomists from biological research into bibliographic archeology.” Legions of technocrats delighted in searching obscure and forgotten publications for an earlier name that could displace some long-accepted and stable usage. Acrimonious arguments proliferated, for Doofus’s inadequate descriptions rarely permitted an unambiguous identification of his earlier name with any well-defined species. Thus, a rule introduced to establish stability against capricious change for appropriateness sowed even greater disruption by forcing the abandonment of accepted names for forgotten predecessors.

3.
Plenary Powers
. The abuses of Herr Doofus and his ilk induced a virtual rebellion among natural historians. A poll of Scandinavian zoologists, taken in 1911, yielded 2 in favor and 120 opposed to strict priority. All intelligent administrators know that the key to a humane and successful bureaucracy lies in creative use of the word
ordinarily
. Strict rules of procedure are ordinarily inviolable—unless a damned good reason for disobedience arises, and then flexibility permits humane and rational exceptions. The Plenary Powers Rule, adopted in Monaco in 1913 to stem the revolt against strict priority, is a codification of the estimable principle of
ordinarily
. It provided, as quoted early in this essay, that the first designation shall prevail, unless a later name has been so widely accepted that its suppression in favor of a forgotten predecessor would sow confusion and instability.

Such exceptions to strict priority cannot be asserted by individuals but must be officially granted by the International Commission of Zoological Nomenclature, acting under its plenary powers. The procedure is somewhat cumbersome and demands a certain investment of time and paperwork, but the plenary powers rule has served us well and has finally achieved stability by locating the fulcrum between strict priority and proper exception. To suppress an earlier name under the plenary powers, a taxonomist must submit a formal application and justification to the International Commission (a body of some thirty professional zoologists). The commission then publishes the case, invites commentary from taxonomists throughout the world, considers the initial appeal with all elicited support and rebuttal, and makes a decision by majority vote.

The system has worked well, as two cases may illustrate. The protozoan species
Tetrahymena pyriforme
has long been a staple for biological research, particularly on the physiology of single-celled organisms. John Corliss counted more than 1,500 papers published over a 27-year span—all using this name. However, at least ten technically valid names, entirely forgotten and unused, predate the first publication of
Tetrahymena
. No purpose would be served by resurrecting any of these earlier designations and suppressing the universally accepted
Tetrahymena
. Corliss’s petition to the commission was accepted without protest, and
Tetrahymena
has been officially accepted under the plenary powers.

One of my favorite names recently had a much closer brush with official extinction. The generic names of many animals are the same as their common designation: the gorilla is
Gorilla;
the rat,
Rattus
. But I know only one case of a vernacular name identical with both generic
and
specific parts of the technical Latin. The boa constrictor is (but almost wasn’t)
Boa constrictor
, and it would be a damned shame if we lost this lovely consonance. Nevertheless, in 1976,
Boa constrictor
barely survived one of the closest contests ever brought before the commission, as thirteen members voted to suppress this grand name in favor of
Boa canina
, while fifteen noble nays stood firm and saved the day. The details are numerous and not relevant to this essay. Briefly, in the founding document of 1758, Linnaeus placed nine species in his genus
Boa
, including
canina
and
constrictor
. As later zoologists divided Linnaeus’s overly broad concept of
Boa
into several genera, a key question inevitably arose: Which of Linnaeus’s original species should become the “type” (or name bearer) for the restricted version of
Boa
, and which should be assigned to other genera? Many professional herpetologists had accepted
canina
as the best name bearer (and assigned
constrictor
to another genus); but a world of both technical and common usage, from textbooks to zoo labels to horror films, recognized
Boa constrictor
. The commission narrowly opted, in a tight squeeze (sorry, I couldn’t resist that one), for the name we all know and love. Ernst Mayr, in casting his decisive vote, cited the virtue of stability in validating common usage—the basis for the plenary powers decision in the first place:

These debates often strike nonprofessionals as a bit ridiculous—a sign, perhaps, that taxonomy is more wordplay than science. After all, science studies the external world (through the dark glass of our prejudices and perceptions to be sure). Questions of first publication versus common usage raise no issues about the animals “out there,” and only concern human conventions for naming. But this is the point, not the problem. These are debates about names, not things—and the arbitrary criteria of human decision-making, not boundaries imposed by the external world, apply to our resolutions. The aim of these debates (although not always, alas, the outcome) is to cut through the verbiage, reach a stable and practical decision, and move on to the world of things.