Let’s Hear it for Bombina

If members of the Kingdom Animalia could communicate through the Media and, doing so, keep a sharp eye out for discriminatory treatment of their many kinds, be sure that one of the most vocal of the Orders would be the Anura, the classification that includes all of the species of Frog. So where does the toad belong? It turns out that, taxonomically, they are frogs, and the toad designation might be viewed, if you’re a frog, as scurrilous.

Let’s imagine a situation in which the Order of Anura took part in what is known as the Great Dialogue on Living Being Rights. And just so that we, the humans, would get the message right up front, face-to-face, and personally, the chief spokesperson chosen by Frogdom to represent it would no doubt be a European Fire-bellied Toad, a person of quick wit, sardonic temper, and stunning looks—and she would be known frequently to say to the press. “Linnaeus Schminaeus! look. Just tell me what I look like. Do I look like a frog or don’t I? Did I call myself a European Fire-Bellied Toad or did I call myself Bombina bombina? The latter, you will find. Look high and low in Linnaeus’ classification scheme. I urge you to do it. Dig, dig, dig. Nowhere—I assure you, nowhere—will you encounter the word ‘toad’ within the order of Anura. Yes, yes. I know. One of you will say that the Family Bufonidae are called the ‘true’ toads. You might say that. But we, in the Order of Anura, deny any such designations apparently based on your distorted aesthetic sense and well known color prejudices. Do I look brown to you? Only if you’re color-blind. But I’m a toad so far as you’re concerned. Nor will you find Bufonidae anywhere in my name. But I’m still a toad. Well, in defense of the Bufonidae—and the 500 species they represent—I must insist that none of them thinks itself a toad either! You point to special glands in the back of their heads that they use to squirt poisons? Well, my dears! What you call poison is a uniquely delightful chemical feature of all frog designs, in some more, in some less self-dramatized. Our research—and we’ve done it in depth—suggests that Linnaeus never used the word. Neither should you. There are no toads—only frogs. And tell them Bombina told you.”

Inspired by reading “I killed the Bufo Toad,” by Mark Derr in the New York Times (July 23, 2011). Pic thanks to Wikipedia here.

Linnaeus was a Flatterer

We owe the biological classification of humans to the same man who named just about all other species too, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish botanist. We’re classified as Homo sapiens, “wise man.” Linnaeus’ assignment of wisdom as the defining characteristic of the human was, I would note, not his first instinct. His first name for Man was Homo diurnus, “man of the day” or “the man of today.” That works, minimally. Obviously it didn't please Linneaus. It failed to identify any particularly unique characteristic of the human beyond asserting that, to know us, we need but look around. Today. Therefore he went on to make us wise. Now it strikes me that Linnaeus was a flatterer. Clever, yes, but more than just a quip. It goes beyond that. It strikes me that Linnaeus made a mistake; he wasn't precise enough. I'll try to show why.

Almost the first thing that sapience teaches (once it has been, to some degree, achieved) is that humanity, viewed from a distance, anyway, appears to be be mad, asleep, confused, at war, cruel, negligent, unjust, egotistical, short-sighted, careless, and blind. On average and in general, it seems that such traits, which we don't share with any animal species, are muted or mitigated only by the experience of hardship. Hardship produces some useful habits here and there.

A story in today’s paper of an event in China: A drunk young man ran down another young man and a girl. The girl later died of her injuries. When the drunk driver was apprehended, he warned the security guards who’d grabbed him, saying: “My father is Li Gang.” His father was the deputy police chief in a district of his city. This sort of story is the point here. That's what humanity seem to be like when it is left to develop any-which-way.

An illuminating insight into this matter comes to mind. It is Mortimer Adler’s view of human nature. Adler is the famed editor of The Great Books of the Western World. His view appear in various places, including Ten Philosophical Mistakes. Elsewhere, in an interview, Adler argued that:

The denial of human nature rests ultimately on the striking contrast between the dominant behavioral similitude that prevails among the other animal species and the dominant behavioral differentiation that prevails among the subgroups of the human species. Looked at one way, the denial of human nature is correct. The members of the human species do not have a specific or common nature in the same sense that the members of other animal species do. This, by the way, is one of the most remarkable differences between man and other animals, one that tends to corroborate the conclusion that man differs from other animals in kind, not in degree.

The unique core of humanity, Adler asserted, was potentiality. Man appears with a great many potentialities which its members may (and I would emphasize also may not) actually develop. I agree. In my mind the central fact of being human is that we are incomplete and undeveloped—unfinished, potentially something and, failing that, much worse than animals. Linnaeus erred because he designated humanity with a characteristic that, God willing and the crick don’t rise, we might actually develop. But we are, in truth, Homo potentialis at best.