[Sigia-l] Linnean naming system faces challengers

[Dwayne King]

I think this post brings up a perfect example of difficulty in 
nomenclature. Better is a slippery term with any nomenclature. While 
I'd agree that Kelvin is better for physics, I'd argue that Celsius is 
more relevant for biology. Admittedly, I haven't read the article that 
started this post, but I hope if they are creating a "better" system 
than good ol' Carl came up with, they define better for what. Often 
times better is what people know and use even if it's junk by all other 
measures. Back to the temp example, the metric scale clearly makes more 
sense than the english system, but try telling someone in the U.S. that 
it's 23ûCelsius, and see if they have any clue what it is you're 
talking about (or better yet, tell them it's 297û kelvin). So, even 
though Celsius and Kelvin, by most measures are "better" measurement 
systems than english, english is better when describing room temp. top 
and American english speaker.

Sorry, this is pretty stream of consciousness writing. If it's too 
scattered, forgive me.

Dwayne

On Sep 13, 2004, at 9:19 AM, Groot, Boyd de wrote:
>
> Scientifically Kelvin is a better scale, but for pragmatic and historic
> reasons the Fahrenheit and Celcius scale still exist.