Mammals: What's in a name?
Why Linnaeus picked a female trait to define the highest class
By Callan Bentley
Flat Hat Variety Editor
One of the things that dissuades many people from liking science is the phenomenal amount of vocabulary to be learned. Some estimates indicate that an introductory college-level biology course has more new words than an equivalent-level introductory course in a foreign language. With such a large amount of memorization in front of a student, it is not surprising to see a rise in the number of English majors.
One of the major culprits in this stockpiling of strange words is the binomial ("two-name") classification system used to describe an organism's lineage and relationship to other organisms. There are eight levels to this classification system: an organism is filed under a kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. I learned these levels in grade school with the mnemonic device King Philip Came Over From Germany Smiling.
The genus and species terms
constitute the organism's scientific name. Humans, for instance, are referred
to in taxonomic circles as Homo sapiens, from the Latin for "man
of reason." We are grouped in kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordata, class
Mammalia, order Primates (pronounced "pry-mah-teez"), and family Homididae.
Other organisms are grouped under other names. The names that they share in
common represent how close the two species are on the evolutionary tree. Chimpanzees,
for instance, share family Homididae with us but are grouped in a different
genus, Pan. (Some primatologists are of the controversial opinion that chimps
and humans belong in the same genus.) Monkeys fall into a different family,
but their family too falls fits into the drawer marked Primates. Bats (order
Chiroptera) and rodents (order Rodentia) are classified under further orders
on the same level as Primates. All three orders, plus many more, are mammals.
These names were coined for
the most part by Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus, who was also responsible for
the organizing all of life into the binomial classification system. Linnaeus
published the entire plan in the book System of Nature. Why he picked
the names he did is an interesting question to many scientists, as well as to
anthropologists and historians.
Last week, professor of history
Londa Schiebinger came to campus from Pennsylvania State University to talk
about why Linnaeus picked the term "Mammalia." Schiebinger has made
some groundbreaking research in this area, and was, in fact, the focus of a
column in this month's Natural History magazine.
The reason that Schiebinger
bothered to research this topic at all is itself of interest. Linnaeus' term
"Mammalia" according to the characteristic female mammary gland, or
breast. After all, Linnaeus was a typical conservative 18th-century sexist.
Why should he choose to name the "highest" group of animals after
a patently female trait?
Furthermore, even if Linnaeus
had temporarily dropped the sexism characteristic of his culture, why would
he, as a trained scientist, pick a name for a group of organisms that describes
a trait held by only half of the individuals in the group? Males of any species,
after all, lack breast. "Mammalia," therefore, only truly describes
the female gender. (The term also fails to describe the monotremes, a group
of primitive mammals in Australia which lack milk-producing glands. Instead,
they feed their young with a nutrient-rich excretion from their sweat glands.)
There are alternative names
for the class we share with wolves, shrews, and elephants. Schiebinger suggested
a few: "Pilosa," meaning "the hairy ones," Vivipora,"
meaning "the bearers of live young," or "Lactentia," meaning
"the sucking ones." All of these other options convey a more comprehensive
view of the mammals. Yet Linnaeus chose otherwise.
Some of the alternative names
were even suggested to Linnaeus. What would drive this man to choose a female
trait to define the "highest class"? Stephen Jay Gould, the eminent
Harvard natural historian pointed out that Linnaeus' decision added "insult
to male injury by selecting a feature that males also possess, but in a rudimentary
and useless state." (Schiebinger stated conclusively that no one knows
why male mammals have nipples, but she spoke of a few dramatic historical examples
where men's "breasts" have supposedly functioned to some degree.)
At any rate, Schiebinger
thinks that Linnaeus had a higher purpose in mind. He, ever the scientist, was
also attempting with the System of Nature to classify humans into nature with
everything else. This was a shocker to the people of the 18th century, as they
thought of themselves as unique creations, alone among species to be endowed
with souls, and crafted in God's image. She suggested that Linnaeus was attempting
to draw humankind closer to nature.
The female breast has been
symbolic of nature since ancient times, when Romulus and Remus, the twin founders
of Rome, were mythologize as suckling at the teat of a she-wolf. Zeus himself
was thought to have been nursed by a goat ewe. Numerous woodcuts of the period
show "Nature" as being a naked woman surrounded by beasts and trees.
Thus did Linnaeus pick Mammalia, emphasizing humanity's intimate and inescapable
connection to the Earth and her other inhabitants.
By way of evidence, such
a postulation is consistent with Linnaeus' battle against wet-nursing by the
1700's elite. He felt that wet-nursing was unnatural, and urged all high society
women to suckle their own babies, and not pay peasant women to do it.
His choice of names therefore
reflects the sexual politics of the time, and the contested role of women in
the broader culture. Schiebinger thinks Linnaeus' selection was a step in the
right direction.
"For Linnaeus to have
picked a female characteristic to describe the highest class is an important
break," she said.
Modern science, due to numerous
such small steps in the right direction, attracts more women to its ranks now
than ever before. While still a male dominated industry, females are becoming
more a part of the scientific establishment. Someday, it is hoped that science
will be gender-blind, but to reach that point will be an effort, a journey made
in small steps.
Why we call ourselves mammals
rests of the decision of a man who lived over 200 years ago. The name isn't
really the important thing, though. The dog, the squirrel, the moose, the whale,
the bat, and the human all share characteristics which point to a common ancestor
over 200 million years ago. While each species is indubitably different from
its neighbor, we are all mammals. We are all products of the same evolutionary
processes, and we are all kin.