The Namings

[herschel.raney at conwaycorp.net]

Oh, I hesitate, and then I don’t. To speak of naming. And the taxonomic 
way. Anyone who looks at butterflies and plants and dragonflies out in 
that mutating force we call the world wants for a name for each thing. 
Some tag that puts it rightly in the mind. And there are so many. And 
taxonomists do base their naming on the best science they have. It 
results in fighting, such passion as this. The passion to apply the name 
that is the ‘truth’. The truth about origination and time for each beast 
and bud. And that huge rulebook of taxonomy is the catalog of rules that 
brings the patterning process itself into order. Structures and color go 
here, just so. If you follow this set of pathways then your name will be 
the right name. And this may be. Until we know the coded tricks that 
made the colors shift, that made the genitalia fold and sharpen, that made 
the seabird swing right instead of left at that particular star—perhaps 
they are the best we have. But certainly once the coding is unfurled, 
once the jumps and splices that time and nature played upon are written 
out and we sit back and go ‘ahhh, I see’, then the best rules are still 
guesses.  And we will cling to what we have. The ordering of the birds 
has been all blasted around by some men with devices for measuring the 
DNA separation points. Boiling pressured pots and slippery codelines all 
pumped up together with the millions of years of shift and play, 
reconnection and breakage all brought down to one notation in 
Fahrenheit. The reordering evidence is there. The first bird in our US 
birdbook should be the Chachalaca. These are men of science, trying to 
get it right. And damn, I believe them, looking at the Chachalaca running 
up a tree in Santa Ana. Surely to God that thing is more ancient than a 
Loon. The bones and feathers fooled us. But not one guide has shifted 
to the new order. Can the visual lines of evidence be so crotchety? 
Change hurts even when it smells of truth.

We are upstarts. We humans, I mean. Just 15 thousand years in North 
America. 15 million years ago at least 9 species of horses romped across 
Florida. We were not there to name them. We named their bones. 
Someone else may rename ours. We (and the consequences of our 
needs) are the most important force at work today in the world of 
destruction and natural choice. The first great force in nature with a 
conscience. I suppose we should be the namers too. But there will be 
arguments.

One day we will have the entire code, every letter and link of DNA. 
Taxonomists argue that their book is the one. Developmental 
Embryologists argue they are the ones. The Code book for the DNA of 
all the world’s butterflies (the ones that are left) will eventually be 
available. We will say, ‘Now we know the names’. Papilio glaucus, that 
lovely Swallowtail with the Y chromosome that occasionally makes a 
Black Tiger (now that is a name) may become PGLine 8, tangle flip 3,Y 
shift/Guanine 456. And there will be men who fight for everyone to call 
out this name when they find one out there in the wild. The new name is 
the one. It reflects all we can know about this creature. Our namings must 
have order. And I will cherish the new understanding of things. But I will 
still point with my finger at the buttonbush or the lily, at the fluttering 
dark wonder upon it and whisper in my daughter’s ear, “there, right 
there, goes another Black Tiger”. 


		Herschel Raney
		Conway, Arkansas

 
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