Dear Carl,
In February, 1676, Sir Isaac Newton wrote to Robert Hooke that "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." Thanks to your system of names, as now codified in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, this kind of humility is imposed upon every taxon expert.
In order to master a single genus, a taxonomist must read and understand every theory of a species proposed since your own masterpiece in 1758, including each theory of homology contained in each description, grasp their implications for variations and character distributions, and then assess those predictions by comparing tens of thousands of accumulated specimens. No other field of biology has such deep scholarship as a standard mode of practice.
Naming a species in your system is one of very few sure paths to immortality. While a paper published in other biological disciplines is effectively ignored after a few years, taxonomic papers will remain mandatory reading for students of taxa who will not be born for centuries to come. The upside of course is the exhilaration of knowing that your good work will exist in perpetuity. The downside is that your mistakes will last just as long. Taxonomists alone bear the burden of signing their work, since author names follow the genus and specific epithet in your binomial system and will forever be there for adoration or cursing.
Apostolically yours,
Quentin
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