Folk taxonomy
A folk taxonomy is a vernacular naming system, as distinct from scientific taxonomy. Folk biological classification is the way people traditionally describe and organize the world around them, typically making generous use of form taxa such as "shrubs", "bugs", "ducks", "fish", "algae", "vegetables", or of economic criteria such as "game animals", "pack animals", "weeds" and other like terms.
Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus more objective and universal. Folk taxonomies exist to allow popular identification of classes of objects, and apply to all subsections of human activity. All parts of the world have their own systems of naming local plants and animals. These naming systems are a vital aid to survival and include information such as the fruiting patterns of trees and the habits of large mammals. These localised naming systems are folk taxonomies. Theophrastus recorded evidence of a Greek folk taxonomy for plants, but later formalized botanical taxonomies were laid out in the 18th century by Carl Linnaeus.
Anthropologists have observed that taxonomies are generally embedded in local cultural and social systems, and serve various social functions. One of the best-known and most influential studies of folk taxonomies is Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Scientists generally recognize that folk taxonomies conflict at times with Linnaean taxonomy or current interpretations of evolutionary relationships, and can tend to refer to generalized rather than quantitatively informative traits in an organism. Some anthropologists say race is a folk taxonomy.[1][2][3]
Linnaeus, Theophrastus, and Folk Taxonomy
Linnaean Taxonomy is a scientifically ranked based classification system of living organisms. Developed by Carl Linnaeus, the classification system biologically distinguishes all differentiable species that have been discovered into subcategories[4]. Linnaean Taxonomy was a radical idea developed from similar biological Folk Taxonomy developed by Aristotle and Theophrastus. This biological naming system designed to classify all biological taxa into sub groups of the smallest category of specificity[4]. This method of sub-categorically ranking taxa was designed to explain the theory of evolution, but the principal of classification could be applied to everyday phenomena[5].
Some cultures use folk taxonomies more or less specific, or in direct correlation with modern Linnaean Taxonomy in reference to biological taxa. In areas that the direct biological distinction of plants are more important, such as crops used for food or firewood, some cultures will have a one to one ratio of plants to their Linnaeus counterpart[6]. The use of each group of taxa (species: words) from 2:1 to 1:1 to 1: many, define the cultural significance of each species and the level of specificity they use is their form of a culturally influenced folk taxonomy[6]. Native Tzeltal speakers in the Mayan region of Mexico were found to have developed such divisions towards the crops they most frequently use in everyday life[6]. The cultural significance determined the number of words that the Tzeltal group had for each crop, such as the leguminose legume (Phaseolus vulgaris L. at its most specific Linnaean taxa) was differentiated in Tzeltal into five specific words. This legume is a large farm crop that is extremely present in day to day life in this region[6].
Folk taxonomy precedes the Linnaean taxonomy chronologically.
See also
- Glossary of scientific naming
- Parataxonomy
- Baraminology, a taxonomy used in creation science
- Cladistics
- Common name
- Contrast set
- Corporate taxonomy
- Ethnotaxonomy
- Evolutionary taxonomy
- Incertae sedis
- Linnaean taxonomy
- Phylogenetics
- Wastebasket taxon
References
- ^ Michael Alan Park, Introducing Anthropology: An Integrated Approach (2003, ISBN 0072549238), pages 346-353
- ^ Conrad Phillip Kottak, Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity (1982), page 45
- ^ The Carlos Hoyt, Arc of a Bad Idea: Understanding and Transcending Race (2016, ISBN 0199386285)
- ^ a b Reid, Gordon McGregor (2009). "Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778): His Life, Philosophy and Science and Its Relationship to Modern Biology and Medicine". Taxon. 58 (1): 18–31. ISSN 0040-0262.
- ^ Clutton-Brock, Juliet (2015-05-26), "Naming the scale of nature", Taxonomic Tapestries: The Threads of Evolutionary, Behavioural and Conservation Research, ANU Press, retrieved 2023-04-28
- ^ a b c d Berlin, Brent; Breedlove, Dennis E.; Raven, Peter H. (1966-10-14). "Folk Taxonomies and Biological Classification". Science. 154 (3746): 273–275. doi:10.1126/science.154.3746.273. ISSN 0036-8075.
Bibliography
- Bailenson, J.N., M.S. Shum, S. Atran, D.L. Medin, & J.D. Coley (2002) "A bird's eye view: biological categorization and reasoning within and across cultures". Cognition 84:1–53
- Berlin, Brent (1972) "Speculations on the growth of ethnobotanical nomenclature", Language in Society, 1, 51–86.
- Berlin, Brent & Dennis E. Breedlove & Peter H. Raven (1966) "Folk taxonomies and biological classification", Science, 154, 273–275.
- Berlin, Brent & Dennis E. Breedlove & Peter H. Raven (1973) "General principles of classification and nomenclature in folk biology", American Anthropologist, 75, 214–242.
- Brown, Cecil H. (1974) "Unique beginners and covert categories in folk biological taxonomies", American Anthropologist, 76, 325–327.
- Brown, Cecil H. & John Kolar & Barbara J. Torrey & Tipawan Truoong-Quang & Phillip Volkman. (1976) "Some general principles of biological and non-biological folk classification", American Ethnologist, 3, 1, 73–85.
- Brown, Cecil H. (1986) "The growth of ethnobiological nomenclature", Current Anthropology, 27, 1, 1–19.
