Classifying Animal(s)

These names were themselves disputed and used as insults or boasts by either side, as were various taxonomic terms of art. Reading through the pages of Systematic Zoology, it is not uncommon to see authors accuse each other of redefining key terms or to see them attempt such redefinitions (usually in the name of “clarity”) themselves. Determining what a word essentially denoted was a problem not only for naming species of beetles or apes, but also for naming groups of taxonomists. As the advent of genetic sequencing shifted the central focus of biological taxonomy (Woese et al. 1977), determining which side of the debate had “won” became primarily a question of which of their features one took to be definitive. To use a term that anthropologists would later borrow from the taxonomists, the two schools were polythetic classes (Needham 1975) — identifiable through a set of shared characteristics or “family resemblances,” but not defined by any one in particular.

via https://medium.com/@npseaver/classifying-animal-s–4f86395eb801