Putting Life Into Categories
2.2 Benefits and Need for Categories
Consider this example. A LEGO Master Builder such as yourself decides to build a LEGO X-Wing. You must first come up with a parts-and-materials list. You go to your stockpile. This may be one huge bin or a series of drawers. Look at the two organizational systems below:
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Which system gives you the best chance of success with your building project? If you want to build an X-Wing before bedtime, then choose A. If success means building something novel, System B might spark unique construction ideas that may not occur to you if you used System A. Let’s pursue this building project further. Let’s say you decide to join the LEGO Master Builder Guild. The guild brings together the most productive and creative LEGO builders of this age. Your task: construct the most detailed and creative LEGO universe of all time.
Compare the task of the LEGO Master Builders Guild to the X-Wing task I first mentioned. Building a LEGO universe requires more parts and then more builders. In other words, increased complexity requires increased organization. To achieve this organization, the guild assembles hundreds of bins to hold all the LEGO parts. These bins make it easy to find the beams, bricks, gears, and pins necessary for the job. Now we’re ready to build, right? No. Something else binds these builders and parts and ideas together: A plan or scheme. A good plan enables all the different builders to work together toward one common goal: building the most detailed and creative LEGO universe of all time.
Taxonomists work this same way. They build metaphorical bins or categories to put creatures into. Just as a LEGO bin might hold small, blue LEGO bricks, organisms in the same bin have many characteristics in common. These may include wings and beaks and shiny colorful patches of feathers on their necks, characteristics describing the hummingbird bin. These categories give biologists a way to compare all known creatures. When placed into a classification scheme (called a taxonomy), patterns among living things pop out. Similarities and differences become easy to see.
Like LEGO master craftsmen, taxonomists work together. They might share new observations or argue about which bin a sea cucumber belongs in. They may even add new categories to their classification scheme. Sometimes they rearrange the bins themselves, or even switch organisms from one bin to another. A shared plan encourages scientists to communicate more effectively with each other. This taxonomy of living things shows scientists the gaps in their understanding, helping them decide on the topic of their next investigation.
Organizing living things in this way benefits all of us infected with biophilia. This hopefully includes you. Now, when we observe, read, or chat about some interesting creature, we have a common system to use to identify and describe it. Let’s get to know this system.
Copyright Will Boyd, 2023
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