Plant Systematics Art

Abstract

It is reported about the place of systematics in botany, the stages of the formation of a specialist- systematist. The author’s personal experiences, the role of Linnaeus in the development of systematics as a science are presented in the report.

Good systematist finds its place in science, is determined to belong to a particular “school”. You can associate it with the fact that he reads some scientific works and chooses his role models, including contemporary reputable botanists, belonging to this or that school. Some systematists believe that races (species) are not natural objects, but creations of scientists, needed solely for the convenience of the knowledge of living and memorization. Naturally, in their works imaginative thinking dominates. But other systematists believe that taxa of any rank are the real natural objects.

Systematics is an art, of course, not scholastic science. But it’s a serious question! If this science rests in the actual work on the skills of the scientists, on the art, are the objects objective or subjective? In fact, this dilemma is one of the fundamental bases of separating different “schools”. Author of the report belongs to the school, for which the object of systematics of plants are races (species and subspecies). Races are natural formations, existing as a whole, objectively, independently of us. Because they are composed of many individuals, their reflection could be through generalized images (although any image – it is a subjective idea). But the hierarchy of relationship we are building on the image that reflects the relationship, but not natural formations – taxa.