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Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778)
Portrait of Carolus Linnaus (ca. 1735-40)
Carolus Linnaeus, the Latinized name of Carl von Linne (1707-1778), was a Swedish naturalist born in Småland in southern Sweden. He taught botany at Uppsala University from 1730-1735, then travelled to collect and study plant and animal specimens. In 1738 he published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands, before returning to Uppsala as professor of medicine and botany. Through the 1760s he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, while publishing several more volumes.
As one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe, through a lifetime of comparative research, Linnaeus devised the main classification system used in biology and zoology from the mid 18th century onwards (Linnaeus 1758). It provides a universal system of organized cataloguing (called taxonomy), with a fixed hierarchy of levels of groupings or taxa (e.g., kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species).
The
Linnean system is not primarily designed to show ancestry or evolution,
as studied in modern paleontology and geology, but placement in the Systema Naturae
or the great scheme of nature as conceived in the 18th century.
It is immediately useful as a mode of learning species, such as a
range of animals or plants. For example, to classify a dog in the
Linnaean system, a full Linnean taxonomy includes Kingdom
(animals), Phylum (chordates), Subphylum (vertebrates), Class
(mammals), Order (carnivores), Family (canidae), Genus (Canis), and Species (familiaris).
For
understanding phylogeny or the ancestry of species (fossil and/or
extant), the Linnaean taxonomy has now been largely supplemented or
replaced by a systems approach called cladistics, which can (for
example) use dozens of anatomical and genetic traits to trace the
complex fossil ancestry of canines, carnivores, and mammals back
through their early relations and origins.
References
Linnaeus, C. 1758. Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis, Editio decima, reformata, Tomus 1, Laurentii Salvii, Holmiae.
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