The Natural Order

Published: April 6, 2000, 8 a.m.

b"

Melvyn Bragg examines the science of taxonomy. The Argentinean author Jose Luis Borges illustrated the problematic nature of scientific classification when he quoted from an ancient Chinese Encyclopaedia, the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On these remote pages, in a complete absence of Phylum, Genus and Species, animals are divided into: \\u201c(a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs\\u201d and \\u201cthose that tremble as if they were mad\\u201d ending with \\u201cthose drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush\\u201d, \\u201cothers\\u201d, \\u201cthose that have just broken the flower vase\\u201d and \\u201cthose that at a distance resemble flies.\\u201dPerhaps our own system of classifying the natural world might seem just as fantastical to a more knowing mind, and perhaps underlying the Linnaean system that homo sapiens currently finds useful there are prejudices of our own which distort the scientific truth. How does natural history classify the \\u2018natural order\\u2019?With Colin Tudge, writer, scientist and author of The Variety of Life: A Survey and a Celebration of all the Creatures that Have Ever Lived; Dr Sandy Knapp, Research Botanist, Department of Botany, Natural History Museum, London; Henry Gee, Senior Editor of Nature and author of Deep Time: Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution.

"