16 November 2009
Hidden in Plain Sight
Posted by Daniel under: Miscellaneous .
A few months ago, I came across a New York Times article called “Reviving the Lost Art of Naming the World.” I was expecting to simply read something interesting from the world of science, not to see God. And yet, He was there — hidden in plain sight.
Taxonomy is the science of naming and grouping things; or, more formally, “orderly classification of plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships.” (Merriam-Webster Online). The author of the Times article, Carol Kaesuk Yoon, lamented the gradual disappearance of this science, saying that it “…is essential to understanding the living world, and our place in it.” Hmmmm…sounds like Genesis 1:19-20: “So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.” (ESV). I’ve never really thought much about those verses, except maybe to wonder how long it took, and what language Adam used. After reading this article, it seems that there is something deeper going on.
I was fascinated by Yoon’s description of the universal nature of taxonomy, which she describes as being more than a 17th-century science –- instead, “when people across the globe were creating ordered groups and giving names to what lived around them, they…[appear] unconsciously to follow a set of unwritten rules.” Despite the inestimable variety of “folk taxonomies,” there is a global commonality to how we classify and describe the world around us. My immediate question is, why? How did this happen?
Yoon gives three concrete examples of such commonality; I’ll list them here, but won’t quote at length from the article – you should read the whole thing for yourself. Her examples are:
1) “People recognize the same basic categories repeatedly.” (e.g. fish, birds, trees, etc.)
2) “People consistently use two-word epithets to designate specific organisms within a larger group of organisms.” (e.g. grizzly bears)
3) “People will even concur on which exact words make the best names for particular organisms.”
Now, Yoon does not discuss how our descriptions of the world around us can be so universal, so common to all people groups from urban societies to jungle clans in Papua New Guinea – perhaps that is for the best. I’m not sure how someone with a non-Biblical worldview would explain this, but to me these facts point with a large, flashing arrow directly to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. Verse 1: “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” Verse 9: “…there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.” The Bible provides a clear explanation of why people of every language describe the world in essentially similar ways – because at one time, we all had the same language, and from that group of people which God scattered over the entire earth have come all the peoples and languages that we know today. I was surprised, pleasantly, to find evidence for the truth of Scripture in such an unlikely place –- a kind confirmation from the Lord that His Word stands the test of time -– and science.
One part of this article that I haven’t thought about in depth, but am drawn to, is Yoon’s thesis that ordering and naming life is a fundamental part of who we are. It is as if Adam, in ordering and naming all the animals in the Garden of Eden – before the Fall – somehow imprinted that into the DNA of the entire human race. She concludes the article, “Once you have a name for particular beasts, birds and flowers, you can’t help seeing life and the order in it, just where it was always been, all around you.” I would simply add to that the thought that, as we see “life and the order in it,” perhaps God will reveal Himself in places that we never expected.
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