Page:The Scientific Monthly vol. 3.djvu/461

 PHILOSOPHICAL BIOLOGY 455

��THE PLACE OP DESCRIPTION, DEPINITION AND CLASSI- FICATION IN PHILOSOPHICAL BIOLOGY

Bt PBOnossoB WM. B. BITTBB.

8CBIPP8 INSTITUTION FOB BIOLOGICAL BBBHABCH

Empirical theory of knowledge tends to regard detailed, complete descrip- tion as identical with explanation. (Professor B. AdamsoiL)

... it would hardly be too much to define logic as the theory of classifica- tion. (W. 8. Jevons.)

Science can extend only so far as the power of accurate classification ex- tends. If we can not detect resemblances and assign their exact character and amount, we can not have that generalized knowledge which constitutes science. (W. S. Jevons.)

., . the mathematical and mathematico-physical sciences have, in a great degree, determined men's views of the general nature and form of scientific truth; while natural history has not yet had time or opportunity to exert its due influence upon the current habits of philosophizing. (Wm. AVhewell.)

I WISH to point out in the briefest way possible the vital importance to biology of the truth of these statements.

We are familiar with the view that the transition from the pre- Darwinian to the Darwinian era of biology was accompanied by a com- plete revolution of conception as to the significance and value of our systems of classification of living beings. The current notion is that the old taxonomy was superficial in that it was merely descriptive, but that, with the oncoming of the doctrine of evolution, it became pro- found because it then became a record of evolution. While formerly we are wont to say, the schemes of classification were only logical, or verbal, those of the present era are truly scientific, because natural; and they are natural because based on genetic kindred. And in the minds of many biologists the still further notion has gained lodgment that systematic zoology and botany should be looked upon as marking the juvenile period in the life of biology ; and as having been outgrown and left behind when evolution came, something as a boy^s falsetto voice and beardless face are left behind when puberty is reached. It is this view, I suppose, which makes many a present-day biologist feel that if by chance he is caught having anything to do with description and classi- fication, he must explain that it is only a little by-play with him, that he is not really interested in it, it being too small a matter to merit the full occupancy of his manly powers.

I want to show three things: first, exactly what has happened to taxonomy as biology has progressed ; second, something of the monstrous- ness of the fallacy into which biologists have fallen in conceiving taxon-

�� �