I recently read some article about a possible 7th kingdom of classification . They considered technology as a kingdom and named it Technium. Actually I was not sure whether it could be called a kingdom as of course we do not consider machines to be living. Thus my doubt was whether there is any biological significance to this claim or is it simply a term that represent technology? https://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.edge.org/conversation/kevin_kelly-the-technium-and-the-7th-kingdom-of-life&ved=0ahUKEwi1i7vgyd7XAhVCpI8KHfiTCagQFggkMAA&usg=AOvVaw0vYZQy60vYGU0WkN0cBrBi
Asked
Active
Viewed 88 times
-1
-
3Kevin Kelly writes some interesting books, but I don't think this is a very useful idea from him. Of course, you can classify entities (frogs, busses, rocks) in all sorts of ways but biological classification into kingdoms surely only works for biological entities. Since technology is not biological, it doesn't make sense to classify it within a biological hierarchy. I might as well classify rocks as another kingdom - Rockium. – gilleain Nov 27 '17 at 11:13
-
1I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it has nothing to do with biology in the terms of this list. – David Nov 27 '17 at 17:26
1 Answers
2
The classification of organisms on Earth is a highly regulated science. It may be interesting to talk about non-living things as a "Kingdom", just to provoke discussion. But under the rules set out by the International codes of zoological/botanical Nomenclature, all higher classifications are the descendants of a common ancestor. Only living things are classified under this code. So, no, technology is not a kingdom. And the term "Kingdom" has undergone so many changes under the rules of cladistic nomenclature, that it is not nearly as relevant as it was when I was a kid (with only 3 kingdoms), since most of the familiar kingdoms are not monophyletic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)
Karl Kjer
- 7,665
- 1
- 18
- 26