Re: A Pet Peeve and Need Identification Help

**A*@aol.com**

Here's another rant about "scientific" names.  It often seems to me that 
American society wants to denigrate science and the scientific method for 
gathering knowledge.  I long ago stopped noticing when people misused words relating 
to the biological and physical sciences.  I am also, now, convinced that those 
people are beyond help from me.  If a twenty something female doesn't know the 
history of science sufficiently well to know about Mr. Jenner and cowpox, 
then I can only hope that the agent for smallpox is not released anywhere in the 
United States.

There are occasional articles in Natural History and similar magazines and 
journals by people like my late heroes Isaac Asimov and Stephen Jay Gould that 
try to explain that science is not about certainty, but the search to 
understand.  Karl Linne saw the need to organize the things he wanted to understand.  
We are beginning to reorganize some of his patterns, but it is still about 
searching and testing.  I had little exposure to different cultures until 35 years 
ago.  I knew a little bit of scientific Latin, but had zero awareness of how 
many common names could be hung over the same plant and nobody wants to change 
their practices.

If only Natural History would use binomials in the short articles about 
special spots around the United States it would help to get more people accustomed 
to those names.

Barbara Emeneau
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