The Tree of Life and Coal's Phylogeny--a decent Diagram but a Bad Idea

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 165

Even though this is a simple classification scheme, and a very-well designed graphic at that, the use of the tree describing the genealogy of coal by-products just seems, well, wrong. The use of the tree in defining a visual phylogenic interrelatedness of living things appears pretty much for the first time in the first edition of the Origin of Species in 1859, and it is the only diagram that appears in the book. (And by this I mean the use of the tree-scheme for scientific purposes:  the tree of life of course has been used for many, many centuries, the philosophical design woven into the fabrics and incised into the stone of many cultures.  It sort of appears in print in classification usage at least by the wily and polymathic Athansius Kircher, who used it to display the elements in a Kabbalistic Tree of Life some 350 years ago.)
The Verkaufsvereinigung fuer Teererzeugnisse (of Essen) used this idea in 1922, publishing the ad for their company in the Illusrtriete Zeitung (Leipzig). The great tree spring from a bed of coal (“kohle”) exhibiting the “stammbaum der nebenerzeugnisse” (roughly the “pedigree of our product”), with the trunk being gas, branching out into tar, coke and cyan and so on.  Even though it’s the lifeblood of the continuing industrial revolution, and even though we’re hundreds of years into a deep need with the products, the use of the tree just seems antithetical to it all on all levels of recognition, especially now.  (The Darwin tree of life is below.)