Taxonomy Red in Tooth and Claw 11

Thus taxonomies are important cognitive tools, and hence we are

rightly concerned when our categorizations go awry. Developing a nat-
ural classification system is often a major intellectual achievement. The
claim that a system in use is not natural, likewise, is an important intel-
lectual challenge. So changes in the way we view biological taxonomy
are not just changes in scientific fashion. They are changes in our view
of the units-and-differences project, and that is a fundamental project
in biology.
However, the problem of constructing a natural system is especially
difficult for biology. Identifying similarity and difference is difficult
because much of biology is profoundly historical. It is historical not
just because (some) biologists aim to chart and explain a particular his-
torical process—the evolutionary history of life on earth—but because
biological systems—organisms, populations, gene pools, species, com-
munities, ecosystems—are the products of historical processes. And
biological systems differ from one another in part as the result of those
historical processes (Williams 1992). That is not true of physical and
chemical kinds.4 Gold has a history; all gold is made in stellar explo-
sions. But the different tracks particles of gold have made through time
and space make no difference to their intrinsic causal profile. No one
wonders whether the ductility, reactivity, or melting point of gold will
be different on the planets of other solar systems. In contrast, in biology
history leaves its traces on organisms. The desert-adapted flora and fau-
na of Australia resembles the arid-lands biota of Africa in some respects
because of their similar environments, but the biotas differ importantly
because of their different pasts.
Organisms (populations, species) are the result of a conspiracy be-
tween history, environment, and chance. Since those conspirators mark
biological systems in different ways—affect their causal profile in dif-
ferent ways—it turns out that there is no single system for identify-
ing all the similarities and differences between biological systems that
matter. Nothing in biology is exactly equivalent to chemistry’s periodic
table or to geologists’ classifications of minerals. This makes a profound
difference; as a consequence, there is no single right way of identify-
ing the elements of biological populations or of identifying the differ-
ences between them that matter. Developing this case and assessing its
consequences will be the burden of this whole book. But we begin the
argument with an illustrative case, by sketching a brief history of the
taxonomy of species and species differences. This history is in many
ways an attempt to build a taxonomy that recognizes and integrates
shared histories with phenotype similarities. No stable solution has
been found. Current practice sacrifices phenotype similarity and uses