Image: an Enigma encoding/decoding machine (Greg Goebel, CC 0 via Wikimedia.org). Which, I admit, is only tangentially related to this piece, but it’s pretty cool.
I’ve celebrated many a Latin name on Scientist Sees Squirrel, sometimes for something as simple as the way it sounds, but more often for a story it tells. But this time, I’m celebrating the loss of a Latin name. Not because I didn’t like the lost name; I did. But its loss – or, more precisely, its replacement by a new name – has a lot to tell us about the process of naming and the progress of science. Continue reading