Systema naturae, 1735: Facsimile of the first edition (Dutch Classics on History of Science, 8)

by Carl Linnaeus

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Genres: Science, Biology, Nonfiction, Reference, History

48 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus or Carolus Linnaeus, also called Carl von Linné, founded the modern classification, presented in his influential work Systema Naturae , for plants and animals.

This physician and zoologist laid the biological naming scheme of binomial nomenclature. People know and also consider him as the father of taxonomy and also ecology.

Linnaeus received most of his higher education at Uppsala, where he began giving lectures in 1730. From 1735, he lived abroad, studied, and also published a first edition in the Netherlands. He then returned in 1738 as professor of medicine at Uppsala. In the 1740s, people sent him on several journeys to find organisms. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect even minerals and wrote several volumes. People most acclaimed him of the scientists in Europe.

The Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth." The German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote: "With the exception of Shakespeare and Spinoza, I know no one among the no longer living who has influenced me more strongly." Author Johan August Strindberg later wrote: "Linnaeus was in reality a poet who happened to become a naturalist". People called and complimeted Linnaeus, princeps botanicorum (prince of botanists) and as "the Pliny of the north."

According to German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, the question of origin of man began with Linnaeus. He described humans just as any other species and thus helped later research in the history.

Linnaeus with the first edition began listing humans among the primates. During time at Hartekamp, he took the opportunity to examine several monkeys and noted similarities with man. He pointed out basically the same anatomy and found no other differences except speech. Thus, he placed man and monkeys under the same category, Anthropomorpha, meaning "manlike."

The twofold theological concerns thus arose. Putting man at the same level as monkeys or apes lowered the assumed spiritually higher position in the great chain. Second, because the Bible says that God created man in His image (theomorphism), if He not distinctly and separately designed humans, then He well created monkeys and apes in His image, which many persons ably accepted not. Asserting man as that type caused the conflict between worldviews, based on science and theology; this conflict simmered for a century until the much greater and still ongoing creation–evolution controversy began in earnest when Charles Darwin in 1859 published On the Origin of Species .

Major celebrations marked anniversaries of birth of Linnaeus, especially in centennial years.
Numerous postage stamps and banknotes bore his image. Numerous statues honor him in countries around the world. Since 1888, the Linnean society of London awarded the medal for excellence in zoology. The parliament approved merger of Växjö University and Kalmar college on 1 January 2010 to Linnaeus University. People named the twinflower genus Linnaea, the crater Linné on the Moon and the cobalt sulfide mineral linnaeite.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first edition of a work that would go on to become thousands of pages in subsequent editions, massively expanded versions of this 12-page first-edition treatise. Already, from Linneaus' brief comments, we have a rough sketch of his classification system and his motivation for devising it. A devout Christian, Linneaus' love of nature inspired the pioneering thinking at the foundation of modern-day classification systems of the natural world. Exploring and classifying the titular systema naturae is, for the author, akin to uncovering the "footprints of the creator." And the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms he writes about (yes, this famous triptych division is Linneaus' ) testifies to the "wisdom" of god. The driving motivation behind the work is L.'s desire to tidy up of the mineralogical, zoological, botanical nomenclature which is "imperfect" and "often too extensive." L.'s bent on accuracy, clarity, & brevity. Like a true gentleman of the Enlightenment he dreams of a greater, more enlightened future:

"May in the far future in the successive order of generations new and more accurate people arise, which I guarantee, considering my theory, will delete names, that often are absurd..."

I think Linnaeus' would have been delighted to see what progress modern-day naturalists have made, thanks to systems like his.

The most important edition of this scientific treatise is the tenth edition, a significantly expanded version, but this is the stuff of specialists, which I am not. The first edition, nevertheless, offers a fascinating glimpse of a man most know simply by name.

[Jessie Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so excited to finally page through an original printing of this seminal text in the biological canon (my Latin isn’t great except for biological/scientific terms so this was perfect). I wish I could’ve read this at the Linnaeus statue on campus, but it certainly deserves to live in the special collections. My favorite critter to read about here, besides the Vermes obviously, was the pelagic seahorse, which I’ve seen before on a blackwater dive and is extremely rare (I love the description of it as having no anus. Early zoology was just scientists going “I don’t know man that’s just the vibe”). Of course, almost this entire book is about fish because all vertebrates are fish. But now we get into the Vermes (invertebrates, minus insects) including MOLLUSCA, LITHOPHYTA, AND ZOOPHYTA RAAAAAAAA (these three categories contain pretty much all of Cnidaria). I have to give flowers to the actual mollusks because I’m so impressed people knew even back then that slugs and squids were the same phylum, even if Linnaeus mistakenly leaves off argonauts and nautilus (counting them as Testacea, or shells, like scallops and clams) and includes polychaetes (which by the way took so many beautiful scientific names; it’s crazy that Nereis and Aphrodita are worms and not jellyfish, though I’ll happily give Scyllaea to the nudibranchs because they earned it). They also include the Holothuria (sea cucumbers and, confusingly, some siphonophores) and, of course, MEDUSAE. Linnaeus pretty correctly grouped Coelenterata, keeping comb jellies and more standard jellies together, which is remarkable. Then Lithophyta is corals and Zoophyta is solitary polyps, including hydra! Man if I ever get rich and famous, my first $1500 is going towards this book. It is the best book of the year, and one of the best books ever, but not necessarily the best to read if that makes sense. I’ve spent the past twenty years becoming obsessed with biology, taxonomy, evolution, literature, and even teaching myself scientific Latin, so this book in many ways represents the culmination of my whole life and thus has to top Rhythm of War, much to my brother’s chagrin.

The 10th edition of Systema Naturæ is of course the most complete, but tragically it lacks the “Paradoxa” section of earlier versions, where you can find the hydra (in the dragon sense), rana-piscis (Pseudis paradoxa, the shrinking frog, thought then to change from frog to fish within its lifespan), monoceros (unicorn, closely related to the monodon or narwhal), satyr (Linnaeus postulates that it’s a monkey), Borometz (the iconic vegetable lamb of Tartary, which Linnaeus chocks up to a description of a fetal sheep), phoenix (Linnaeus is like “it’s just a date palm”), Bernicla (a goose which grows from driftwood; that’s where goose barnacles get their name), draco (either a gliding lizard or a ray), death-watch (a beetle which burrows into wood and clicks regularly, maybe the inspiration behind Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart), manticore (man/lion/scorpion hybrid, Linnaeus fully believes it), lamia (scaly woman/cow hybrid, again one that Linnaeus thinks is legit), siren (manatee/dugong), antelope (truly just an antelope, probably an eland, gazelle, impala, or ibex), and the most fantastical of all, the pelican (the only of these for which Linnaeus is like “this truly could not exist and everyone who explores the New World is insane because there is no world in which this is believable”).