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Like the Athenians, today's biological scientists have an UNKNOWN GOD they worship. Scientists have spent over two centuries developing different scientific taxonomies to enable a qualitative improvement in our perception of the world. There are approximately 10 million kinds of organisms in the world, and some 15 percent, or 1.5 million, have been described, according to a 1971 article.3.174 More recently, a worldwide scientific effort to catalog everyliving species has reached 1,009.000 of an expected 1,750,000 species on earth.3.175 This same article quotes Thomas Orrell, a biologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, as saying, "Many are surprised that, despite over two centuries of work by biologists and the current worldwide interest in biodiversity, there is presently no comprehensive catalog of all known species or organisms on Earth." And the current work does not include species from the past. This project involves over 3,000 biologists. It seems scientists are seeking the mind of their UNKNOWN GOD through better understanding the creations of this UNKNOWN GOD and the interrelationships of these creations.
With the advent of modern computers, there are unparalleled tools for classifying and relating life forms. Recording information about organisms in an electronic data bank hopefully creates a permanent record, and provides a place to go to for retrieving and for storing new information. By capturing and updating "folk classification systems" and translating them to scientifically consistent classification systems, more rapid access to information about specific issues related to life can be retrieved and acted on in a timely manner. For instance, consider this quote from the website of the London Natural History Museum:
| "Botanical taxonomists have long been interested in the development of flowers because many sexual characters, which are found in the flowers, are used to classify plants. Researchers are now looking at the genes that control flower development, at the ways they are turned on and off and how they relate to each other. What is being sought is essentially the genetic basis for what Linnaeus called the sexual system over 300 years ago."3.176 (SIC, Linnaeus' first work was published in 1735 about 270 years ago.)
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paradoxes