Carolus linnaeus classification
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Although the system, now known as binomial nomenclature, was developed by the Bauhin brothers (Gaspard Bauhin and Johann Bauhin) almost two hundred years earlier, Linnaeus was the first to use it consistently, and may be said to have popularized it within the scientific community. San Francisco: Westview Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0813345543
T. 1957. By itself, this was nothing new; since Aristotle,biologists had used the word genus for a group of similar organisms, and thensought to define the differentio specifica -- the specific differenceof each type of organism. He died four years later, in 1778. Within Homo sapiens, Linnaeus proposed four taxa of a lower rank: Americanus, Asiaticus, Africanus, and Europeanus.
A yearlater, he transferred to the University of Uppsala, the most prestigiousuniversity in Sweden.
To some extent, Linnaeus also pioneered the division of humans according to "race," a concept that was not widely employed throughout history, where people were more often divided according to culture, religion, customs, and other such features.
Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707 – January 10, 1778), also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, and in English usually under the Latinized name Carolus Linnaeus, the name with which his publications were signed, was a Swedishbotanist, physician, and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature.
Most of Linaeus's time at Uppsala was spentcollecting and studying plants, his true love. This structured arrangement allows for a clear way to categorize the vast diversity of life.
Binomial nomenclature is central to the Linnaean system, assigning a unique two-part scientific name to each species. This order included conifers such as pines, firs, and cypresses (the distinction between true flowers and conifer cones was not clear), but also included a few true flowering plants, such as the castor bean.
After experimenting with various alternatives,Linnaeus simplified naming immensely by designating one Latin name to indicatethe genus, and one as a "shorthand" name for the species. For instance, Linnaeus's Class Monoecia,Order Monadelphia included plants with separate male and female "flowers" on thesame plant (Monoecia) and with multiple male organs joined onto onecommon base (Monadelphia).
So the Swedish name of the boy was Carl Linnaeus (Stearn 1992). Among the later subdivisions that have arisen are such entities as Phyla (singular: phylum), superclasses, subclasses, superorders, infarorders, families, superfamilies, and tribes. For example, he discovered that the hawksbeard plant, opened its flowers at 6:30 a.m., whereas another species, the hawkbit, did not open its flowers until 7 a.m.
The sexual basis of Linnaeus's plant classification was controversial in its day;although easy to learn and use, it clearly did not give good results in many cases.Some critics also attacked it for its sexually explicit nature: one opponent, botanistJohann Siegesbeck, called it "loathsome harlotry".
Linnaeus named taxa in ways that personally struck him as commonsense; for example, human beings are Homo sapiens (wise man).
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His system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms is still in wide use today (with many changes). Click on the image to see an enlargement.) Linnaeus was also deeply involved with ways to make the Swedish economy more self-sufficient and less dependent on foreign trade, either by acclimatizing valuable plantsto grow in Sweden, or by finding native substitutes.
Manybiologists gave the species they described long, unwieldy Latin names,which could be altered at will; a scientist comparing two descriptions ofspecies might not be able to tell which organisms were being referred to.For instance, the common wild briar rose was referred to by differentbotanists as Rosa sylvestris inodora seu canina and asRosa sylvestris alba cum rubore, folio glabro.The need for a workable naming system was made even greater by the hugenumber of plants and animals that were being brought back to Europe fromAsia, Africa, and the Americas.
ButLinnaeus observed how different species of plant might hybridize, to createforms which looked like new species. He was instrumentalin arranging to have his students sent out on trade and exploration voyages to all parts of the world: nineteen of Linnaeus's students went out on these voyages of discovery.