James Baquet

    As the Age of Enlightenment took hold, Europe experienced a frenzy of discovery and collecting. One of the great challenges in this environment was the organization of all of the resulting knowledge.

    Enter Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), a Swedish botanist who formalized the system of assigning two names to living things, now known as binomial nomenclature. Prior to his work “Species Plantarum” (“The Species of Plants,” 1753) there had been an unwieldy system which might use several names (called “polynomial nomenclature”). Linnaeus’s genius was to reduce this down to a system of two. The 10th edition of his “Systema Naturae” (“System of Nature,” 1758) expanded the classifications to include animals.

    You may know that humans are designated “Homo sapiens” (“wise human”), to distinguish us from, for example, the extinct Homo neanderthalensis. It was Linnaeus who not only created this system, but actually created that particular designation. “Homo” here is the genus name; adding “sapiens” creates the species.

    A broader example (as Homo sapiens is the only non-extinct member of the genus of hominids) would be the canids or canines. These include Canis familiaris, the “familiar” domestic dog; Canis lupus, the gray wolf (“lupus” is simply the Latin word for “wolf”); Canis rufus, the red wolf (“rufus” meaning “red”); and Canis latrans, the coyote (“latrans” meaning “barking”).

    The system as used today is more complex than this, with subfamilies, tribes, and other refinements, but it is all based on the taxonomy established by Linnaeus.

    Carl Linnaeus’s father was a Christian minister and amateur botanist. Young Carl had an early love of plants; when he was upset, they would give him a flower to calm him down. He gardened with his father, and as a student took to the countryside looking for plants. He changed his emphasis from theology to medicine, and thus was able to indulge his passion for botany. His learning was profound, and he helped found the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. He continued to research and publish throughout his life.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. having many names

    2. period between the Renaissance and the Modern Age

    3. still in existence

    4. wild, perhaps disorganized, activity

    5. one who does things for “love,” not a professional

    6. recognize as different from

    7. having two names

    8. deep

    9. one who studies plants

    10. awkward, inconvenient