BioConcepts

psychozoaPsychozoa (ger.)

• The organizational grade of human beings as opposed to that of animals  
  category man

  1955

  I personally would like to see a new, evolutionary classification, which would combine the advance and ancestry principles. We would then have groups of common ancestry–Classes, Orders, and other familiar designations, and grades of advance (advance sometimes independently achieved, sometimes in common), for which new designations would have to be coined. I would hope that Metazoa would be restored to its original use as a grade label, and that Man would be placed in a new major grade, which might be called Psychozoa.

  Huxley, J. (1955). Evolution, cultural and biological. Guest editorial, Yearbook of Anthropology 1955, 3-25: 23.

  1982

  Psychozoa A grade of organization represented by man and characterized by a unique method of evolution by cultural transformation.

  Lincoln, R.J., Boxshall, G.A. & Clark, P.F. (1982). A Dictionary of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics: 207.

  2011

  Sprachlich angemessener als die Bezeichnung ›Psychozoa‹ wären allerdings die Termini Logozoa (von griech. ›λόγος‹ »Rede, Denken« und in Anlehnung an ›λογιστικόν‹ für den rationalen Seelenteil nach Platon) oder Noetikozoa (von griech. ›νοῦς‹ »Vernunft, Geist« und in Anlehnung an ›ψυχὴνοητική‹ für die Vernunftseele nach Aristoteles). Denn nach klassischer Auffassung haben die Tiere zwar eine Seele (griech. ›ψυχή‹), aber im Gegensatz zum Menschen keinen Geist

  Toepfer, G. (2011). Mensch. In: Historisches Wörterbuch der Biologie, vol. 2, 520-72: 535.