"First, in continuity with tradition, it captures forthrightly the conviction that we can only see organisms in their relation with us. Second, it avoids other standard taxonomic devices that do embody what we seek most heartily to avoid—judgments of worth in human terms (the ladder of simple to complex, or time of evolutionary origin relative to our late arrival). Thus, we hope that the honest acknowledgement of intrinsic relationship will place the necessity of ties up front, thereby forcing us to contemplate explicitly what the nature of those links should be. Finally, the very arbitrariness of arrangement by letters best expresses our deepest convictions that organisms must not be seen as shadows of ourselves, relatively flimsy or filled out according to their taxonomic nearness, or as objects for our ethical instruction.

One tradition proclaims that objects of art should speak for themselves, and that commentary (particularly from someone Else) can only clutter, or become an unwelcome intrusion of an alien ego. In a stronger version, which we heartily reject, art and science (sometimes abstracted to a false and silly antithesis between feeling and intellect) should follow their separate and legitimate pathways…The theme of human uses and perceptions can only be played off against a knowledge of a taxonomy and evolutionary history. This book then becomes, in part, our contribution to the healing of a false and dangerous dichotomy in human knowledge."