Quinarian system

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The Quinarian system was a method of zoological classification which had a brief period of popularity in the mid 19th century, especially among British naturalists. It was largely developed by the entomologist W. S. MacLeay in 1819. The system was followed by Nicholas Aylward Vigors and William Swainson. Swainson's work on ornithology gave wide publicity to the idea.[1]

Swainson's Quinarian structure of birds
Swainson's Quinarian structure of birds

Quinarianism gets its name from the emphasis on the number five: all taxa are divisible into five subgroups. And when these subgroups are placed in a series of circles, the ones that are closer together have greater affinities. When they failed to find five subgroups, they believed that the missing subgroup remained to be found.[1]

Vigors' Quinarian classification of birds
Vigors' Quinarian classification of birds

Presumably this arose as a chance observation of some accidental analogies between different groups, but it was erected into a guiding principle by the quinarians. It became increasingly elaborate, proposing that each group of five classes could be arranged in a circle, with relatively advanced groups at the top and degenerate forms towards the bottom. Each circle could overlap with adjacent circles (a phenomenon called 'osculation').

Swainson's arrangement of the insects with analogies to the vertebrates
Swainson's arrangement of the insects with analogies to the vertebrates

Another aspect of the system was the identification of analogies across groups:[2]

[W]e shall consider that to be a natural system which endeavours to explain the multifarious relations which one object bears to another, not simply in their direct affinity, by which they follow each other like the links of a vast chain, but in their more remote relations [analogies], whereby they typify or represent other objects totally distinct in structure and organization from themselves

—Swainson, 1835:197[3] (italics in the original)

Quinarianism was not widely popular outside the United Kingdom; it had become more or less unfashionable by the 1840s, during which time more complex "maps" were made by Hugh Edwin Strickland and Alfred Russell Wallace. Strickland and others specifically rejected the concept of "analogy".[4] These systems were eventually discarded in favour of principles of classification based on evolutionary relationship.[1][5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c O’Hara, Robert J. 1988. Diagrammatic classifications of birds, 1819–1901: views of the natural system in 19th-century British ornithology. Pp. 2746–2759 in: Acta XIX Congressus Internationalis Ornithologici (H. Ouellet, ed.). Ottawa: National Museum of Natural Sciences. Full text
  2. ^ O’Hara, Robert J. 1991. Representations of the natural system in the nineteenth century. Biology and Philosophy. 6(2):255–274. Text
  3. ^ Swainson, W.: 1835, A treatise on the geography and classification of animals, Longman, London. Full Text
  4. ^ Strickland, H.E. (1841) On the true method of discovering the natural system in zoology and botany. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 6:184–194 Full Text.
  5. ^ Pachen, Alec L. (1992)Classification, Evolution, and the Nature of Biology. Cambridge University Press.