Peirce used the practice in biology and chemistry as a guideline for his ethics of terminology. The basic idea is that the person who first discovers a new species or chemical element has the right to name it. But that policy can have unintended consequences. URL and excerpts below. John ------------------------------------------------------ A rose by any other name could be confusing Kanchi Gandhiis part of a select posse of experts, armed with the accepted rules, who ride herd on the nomenclature of the worlds plants... Scientists count 1.4 million different names for plants on Earth. But botanists estimate there are just 300,000 existing species. That means theres a veritable Tower of Babel of plant names are kicking around... The senior nomenclatural registrar is part of a small community of global experts toiling in relative obscurity to bring order from the chaos and ensure that when botanists talk to each other about a plant, they can be confident theyre talking about the same one... I think Kanchi is really outstanding in being one of the few nomenclaturists left in the world who understands and referees the rules when it comes to naming new species of plants, said Michael Dosmann, keeper of the living collections at Arnold Arboretum. It really is a labor of love and often is too in-the-weeds or bureaucratic for a majority of botanists to get as proficient as Kanchi is. ... Source: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/10/how-new-plant-species-get-their-names/
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