Weird existential nature related thing I have going on...

Sheesh it has been a while since I've made a post here, and why not dive right back in with a sort of existential crisis I've become increasingly aware of recently. (By recently I mean I realized this an hour ago and haven't been able to stop thinking about it.)

I've always used the common name to identify all organisms, and I think that's the product of learning birds before everything else, and no one besides taxonomists, ornithologists in academia, and people speaking non-english languages uses binomials. Recently I've learned just how hard it is to work your way through conversations, as well as make yourself seem a bit smarter, without the use of scientific binomials. What has been so hard for me about learning the countless names is that there's a bit of a disconnect in my brain that doesn't link the binomial to the species. It tacks it on as a separate entity that has nothing to do with the organism or the common name that I've learned to recognize that organism as. Really the hardest part to comprehend (and quite frankly I have no idea why) is that the scientific name is the same exact thing and linked to the organism I'm looking at. It's almost like if I've never heard of a species before and I see a picture and a binomial, I just can't seem to think that it could possibly called only the binomial even though I very well know that the binomial is just as much of a name for a species as any of its common names.

Honestly, I have no idea if this is just a me thing, or if it's something that happens to other people.

All for now,
Simon

Posted on Μάρτιος 09, 2022 1052 ΜΜ by brdnrdr