Emperor Akihito Discusses Taxonomy

In front of his esteemed colleagues at the Linnean Society of London, Emperor Akihito of Japan delivered a lecture entitled Linné and Taxonomy in Japan-On the 300th Anniversary of his Birth. In 1980, the emperor was elected as a foreign member of the society for his contributions to ichthyology (the scientific study of fish). His speech which took place in London yesterday was the culmination of a whirlwind tour to the countries of Sweden, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuthia.

Here are some excerpts from Emperor Akihito's eleven-page speech.

"Carl von Linné, who was born in Sweden in 1707, published in 1735, when he was 28 years old, the 1st edition of "Systema naturae", in which he outlined a new system of classification. According to this system, the plant kingdom was classified into 24 classes based mainly on the number of stamens, the animal kingdom was classified into six classes quadrupeds, birds, amphibians, fishes, insects and worms and the mineral kingdom was classified into three classes rocks, minerals and mined material. Each class was divided into several orders, and examples of some genera were given for each order."

"Linné firmly believed that nature had been created by God in an orderly and systematic manner, and he aimed to discover the order of nature so that he could classify and name all things created by God and thus complete the system of nature."

"However, in Linné's system, which classified plants mainly on the basis of the number of stamens, species with different numbers of stamens belonged to different classes, even when their other characteristics were very similar, while species with the same number of stamens belonged to the same class, even when their other characteristics were very different. This led to the idea that the classification of organisms should be based on a more comprehensive evaluation of all their characteristics. This idea gained increasing support, and Linné's classification system was eventually replaced by systems based on phylogeny."

"The binomial nomenclature proposed by Linné, however, became the basis of the scientific names of animals and plants, which are commonly used in the world today, not only by people in academia but also by the general public. In the binomial nomenclature, the scientific name of a species consists of a combination of the generic name and an epithet denoting the species."

"Before Linné established the binomial nomenclature, scientific names consisted of the species' generic name and a description of the characteristics of that particular species which differentiated it from the other species in the same genus. Therefore, when there were many species in one genus, the description differentiating one species from the others became highly detailed and very long, making scientific names difficult to use."

"To solve this inconvenience, Linné proposed a new nomenclature, excluding the description of characteristics from the scientific name and simplifying it to a combination of a generic name and an epithet only, with the description of the species to be noted separately."

"The binomial nomenclature established by Linné has been immensely beneficial, providing a universal basis for taxonomy throughout the world and enabling taxonomists around the world to communicate with each other through a common language about things existing in nature. Since then, taxonomy to this day has continued to develop on the basis of this binomial nomenclature."

"As I mentioned at the beginning, Linné's classification system based mainly on the number of stamens was eventually replaced by a system based on a more comprehensive evaluation of all characteristics. It is understandable that the idea of using phylogeny as the basis for taxonomy had not yet appeared at Linne's time. It was almost a hundred years after Linné that the theory of evolution proposed by Darwin and Wallace was presented here at the Linnean Society, and the idea of phylogeny became newly accepted in the academia."

"In academia today, an even newer field of research, molecular biology based on evolution, is seeing remarkable development. As a result, more importance is placed on phylogeny, and systems based on phylogeny are considered to be more accurate and are now the mainstream of taxonomy."

"In the years ahead, I think the analysis of mitochondrial DNAs will open up great possibilities of discovering new species which cannot be distinguished morphologically but which can be clearly distinguished at a molecular biological level."

"On the 300th anniversary of Linné's birth, I feel that taxonomy, which used to be based solely on morphology, is entering a new era."

Emperor Akihito's entire lecture,Linné and Taxonomy in Japan-On the 300th Anniversary of his Birth can be read here.