[tt] Linnaeus Tercentenary Packagge

Wed May 23 21:49:28 UTC 2007

Linnaeus Tercentenary Package
sent 7.5.23

He was a Creationist. Here are 38 pieces, all thanks to the first one. 
What would be great to have is a general article on the various 
taxonomic methods. Help me find one. How to define and classify 
cultures, races, religions, crimes, mental diseases--everything--gets 
into the philosophy of taxonomy. Lots of things have no definition, in 
the Aristotelian^ and Linneaun sense, only what Wittgenstein called 
"family resemblances." What this means is that (taking religion as an 
example) not all religions have gods (ex. Jainism) or a separate realm 
of the sacred (certain forms of Protestantism that regard the created 
world as sacred) or even moral codes. But, if you know something about 
godly religions, you know something about the others. You know less, 
when the putative religion shades off from worship to respect for 
ancestors, or from belief to custom, but still you know something. And 
to say Marxism is a religion is to make claims about how Marxists 
behave (intolerant, fit the facts to their ideas, refuse to refine 
them), even if they are atheist.

^It is odd that Aristotle and Linnaeus would use the living world as 
the basis for the set theoretic hierarchy species-genus--etc. because 
this is precisely where it works only imperfectly.

It's a pragmatic thing, too. If the DSM defines major depression as 
meeting five or seven criteria (but no one of them necessarily), it 
means that those meeting them *tend* to do better with certain listed 
treatments. Bipolar disorder, on the other hand, will have a different 
set of criteria and will *tend* to do better with different listed 
treatments. Now some of the treatments may be recommended for both 
major depression and bipolar disorder. But in general it's a good idea 
to get an accurate diagnosis.

The upshot is that mental diseases can get redefined, not always 
because we understand them better or regroup disorders after 
discovering brain scans (anyone know about the history of this), but 
because new treatments come down the pike. That's good pragmatics, if 
not good science. Sometimes, as widely claimed in the case of 
homosexuality being purged from the DSM, it was successful 
rent-seeking and not pragmatics or science that was responsible.

The other thing to note is that, in an evolving world of continuous 
change, lots of things will not fit, that the world is not neatly 
grouped by intelligible essences. Now one characterization of the 
difference between Classical and Western Civilizations (but better 
maybe between Classical and pre-Occam Medieval Civilization together 
and Occam and later is essentialism vs. nominalism. You can even 
define conservatives as essentialists and liberals as nominalists. I 
went into this in my economics dissertation, revamped as _The 
Metaphysics of Liberty_ (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic, 1989). 
Available at http://www.panix.com/~checker/meta.htm . What I would now 
say is that this has been replaced with population thinking, whence 
the Occident has moved from Western to Darwinian civilization.

Still, we do need to cut up a continuous world discretely. Indeed, 
much of the work of lawyers consists of deciding whether an act falls 
on the legal or illegal side of the line. This does not mean that 
culture does not exist because there is no agreement on how to count 
them, and not just because there are splitters and lumpers.

Some of these pieces are here mostly for their good set of links than 
for their profundity. (You will have to click the original URL to get 
some of the links.) Others are just to entertain.

+++++++++++++++

A Blog Around The Clock : Linnaeus Birthday Celebration
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_birthday_celebration.php

Profile

bora.png I am a Red-State Serbian Jewish atheist liberal PhD student
with Thesis-writing block and severe blogorrhea trying to understand
the world by making strange connections between science, religion,
brain, language and sex. My specialty is chronobiology (circadian
rhythms and sleep). I teach introductory biology to adults at a
community college. You can contact me at: Coturnix AT gmail DOT com

[92]Linnaeus Birthday Celebration

Category: [93]History of Science
Posted on: May 23, 2007 10:07 AM, by [94]Coturnix

As promised, I will gather here (and update a couple of times during
the day) some of the most interesting posts from around the
blogosphere about the celebrations of the 300th birthday of Carl von
Linne aka Carolus Linnaeus, the guy you cussed at when, back in high
school, you had to memorize the order of taxonomic categories:
Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species (and you
all know the mnemonic, don't you?).

So, what's with the name? Is it [95]Linnaeus or von Linne?
Merriam-Webster explains:

But today we come not to praise Linnaeus but to parse his various
names. When Linnaeus was born, surnames were not common in
Sweden. His father had been known as Nils Ingemarsson (Nils, son
of Ingmar) until he attended the University at Lund with the goal
of becoming a clergyman. Needing a proper surname, Nils gave
himself the Latinized name Linnaeus, after the Linden tree on the
family property (which was a warden tree, a very old tree
believed to protect the land and people from bad luck).

So when Carl was born, he was given the surname Linnaeus. When
he, in turn, enrolled at his father's alma mater, he registered
in full Latin form: Carolus Linnaeus. Then, in 1761, after he had
earned some measure of renown for his work Latinizing and
simplifying scientific nomenclature, Linnaeus was raised to the
rank of nobility and took yet another name: Carl von Linne.

The main webpage for the tricentennial celebration is [96]here. But
let's now move to blogs....

I just have to start with the best essays first! John Wilkins on
Linnaeus' [97]views of classification and [98]species.

A brief biography by [99]Michael Ryan of Paleoblog.

The Dispersal of Darwin looks at the [100]origins of natural history
and the associated cultural imperalism.

Bleimanimal of Zooillogix, of course, has to do something different
- here is [101]Amphibsaenia

John Lynch tries to [102]rescue old Carl from the threat of
Phylocode.

Annotated Budak at the [103]Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium

After the initial [104]announcement I posted my [105]favourite
Linnaeus quote and will post another one later today.

Listen to the podcast of the [106]NPR story.

Do you know the English names of [107]these species?

Here is the [108]NYTimes article about Linne. If you can't see
NYTimes (or after the article hides behind the subscription wall),
the entire birthday article is reprinted [109]here as well as
[110]by Matt Dowling.

[111]From a fellow Swede.

Tyra is a fellow [112]gardener.

An [113]article in Wired on Linne, taxonomy and nomenclature.

A Swedish family compares and contrasts [114]Linne and Ken Ham
(guess who wins?).

[115]The New Scientist:

He's more influential than ABBA, more famous than Bjorn Borg and
Sweden is celebrating today the 300th birthday of its most
illustrious son....

See the [116]wooden statue of Linnaeus in Stockholm (I remember
seeing it when I visited in 1990).

Matthew Cob wrote the article for LATimes and kindly [117]reprinted
it on his blog.

[118]Bromus tectorum is the Botany Photo of the Day.

An American in Sweden [119]explains it succintly.

A biology teacher uses the opportunity to [120]criticize that awful
article in The Economist.

Here is one in Russian, with a nice illustration of [121]Linnaea
borealis.

Flatbush Gardener [122]reproduces a portrait of Linne.

A nice biography by [123]Daddicade.

Gardeners love Linne, including [124]Molly Day

A [125]tribute by Leigh Andrew.

Green Chameleon compiled a [126]small linkfest as well.

What is the connection between [127]Linne, apples and Rambo?

[128]A clip from "The Linnaeus Expedition"

Japanese Emperor [129]visits Sweden to celebrate.

Apparently, Linnaeus himself [130]gave an interview yesterday.

[131]This one is bilingual: English and Spanish.

[132]PhiloBiblos

[133]The Independent

A [134]write up on The Writer's Almanac.

[135]News From The Field on naming plants.

Voltage Gate on sex, God and human origins: [136]Carl Linnaeus, in
His Own Words

A photo of a Linnaeus sculpture from the [137]Chicago Botanical
Garden taken in 1988.

Skepchick and Linnaeus are [138]obsessed with sex.

Interested in [139]books on taxonomy and systematics?

On [140]ravens and crows, Cheerios and cupcakes for the300th
birthday.

[141]So, LINNEAUS NAMED US

For a Swede, [142]he was pretty funny!

Use Linnaeus to [143]learn some Swedish.

And don't even get me [144]started on the banana.

If you have written or seen elsewhere a good contribution, let me
know so I can include it here.

Comments

Mrs MartinC, who works as a preschool teacher here in Stockholm, was
out yesterday with her class for a nature walk to the local park -
where the Stockholm Botanical Garden is located - when she noticed a
crowd of Japanese journalists. She asked one of them what was
happening and suddenly found herself and class whisked to the front
and introduced to the Emperor of Japan, King of Sweden and their
wives, the Empress and Queen ! Apparently the Japanese regents are
visiting this week to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of
Carl von Linne.
Posted by: [154]MartinC | [155]May 23, 2007 11:54 AM

References

93. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/history_of_science/
94. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/
95. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/wftw.pl
96. http://www.linnaeus2007.se/
97. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/05/happy_birthday_linnaeus.php
98. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/05/linnaeus_on_species_1.php
99. http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/born-this-day-carl-linnaeus.html
100. 
http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html
101. http://zooillogix.blogspot.com/2007/05/kingdom-phylum-class-meet-giant.html
102. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/05/linneaus_at_300.php
103. http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2007/05/biodiversity_an.html
104. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_tricentennial_tomorro.php
105. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_birthday_celebration.php
106. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10285885
107. http://al-fruitbat.livejournal.com/91077.html
108. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/23/nyregion/23linnaeus.html
109. http://nucifera.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/nytimes-the-300th-birthday-of-the-man-who-organized-all-of-nature/
110. http://mattdowling.blogspot.com/2007/05/300th-birthday-of-man-who-organized-all.html
111. http://thebigswede.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/grattis-linne/
112. http://waxholm.blogspot.com/2007/05/hip-hip-hurra-linnaeus.html
113. http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/05/linnaeus
114. http://pondpond.blogspot.com/2007/05/in-honor-of-linne-linnaeus.html
115. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426043.500-sweden-celebrates-300th-birthday-of-linnaeus.html
116. http://regnans.blogspot.com/2007/05/har-den-ran-carl-linne.html
117. http://matthewcobb.vox.com/library/post/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html
118. http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/potd/2007/05/bromus_tectorum.php
119. http://informationhunger.blogspot.com/2007/05/classifying-species.html
120. http://musingsfromtheivorytower.blogspot.com/2007/05/economist-carolus-linnaeus.html
121. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_birthday_celebration.php
122. http://flatbushgardener.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-tercentenary-birthday-carolus.html
123. http://daddicade.livejournal.com/1120297.html
124. http://muskogeephoenixonline.com/blogs/MollyDay/2007/05/hard-to-beet-this-catch-of-day-and.html
125. http://needlefrish2.blogspot.com/2007/05/our-hats-off-to-carl-von-linn.html
126. http://greenchameleon.com/gc/blog_detail/happy_300th_birthday_charles/
127. http://albaal.blogspot.com/2007/05/rambo-apples-sweden.html
128. http://joneri.blogspot.com/2007/05/i-just-saw-beautiful-nature-film-by.html
129. http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-JyQFhoo8erTnBHpk.EP7YHBckuD2?p=884
130. http://physicalityofwords.blogspot.com/2007/05/carolus-linnaeus-festival-week.html
131. http://gmt-3.blogspot.com/2007/05/gratulera-med-dagen.html
132. http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2007/05/linnaeus-turns-300.html
133. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2574446.ece
134. http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/uncategorized/event-day-birth-happy-linnaeus-carolus/
135. http://www.beesongrows.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html
136. http://scienceblogs.com/voltagegate/2007/05/carl_linnaeus_in_his_own_words.php
137. http://annieinaustin.blogspot.com/2007/05/carolus-and-clerk.html
138. http://skepchick.org/blog/?p=567
139. http://www.nhbs.com/biblio-blog/?p=177
140. http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2007/05/wednesday_sprog_blogging_raven.php
141. http://verbumlogos.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html#6864291064670840011
142. http://hylebos.typepad.com/hyleblog/2007/05/happy_birthday_.html
143. http://francisstrand.blogspot.com/2007/05/nomina-si-pereunt-perit-et-cognitio.html
144. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_birthday_celebration.php

Merriam-Webster Online
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/wftw.pl
Topic: Carl Linnaeus

300 years ago today (according to our present-day calendar) Carl
Linnaeus was born. The great botanist--who is remembered as both a
father of modern ecology and as the father of modern taxonomy--was
praised by such notables as the French political philosopher
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, and
German writer Johannes von Goethe.

But today we come not to praise Linnaeus but to parse his various
names. When Linnaeus was born, surnames were not common in Sweden.
His father had been known as Nils Ingemarsson (Nils, son of Ingmar)
until he attended the University at Lund with the goal of becoming a
clergyman. Needing a proper surname, Nils gave himself the Latinized
name Linnaeus, after the Linden tree on the family property (which
was a warden tree, a very old tree believed to protect the land and
people from bad luck).

So when Carl was born, he was given the surname Linnaeus. When he,
in turn, enrolled at his father's alma mater, he registered in full
Latin form: Carolus Linnaeus. Then, in 1761, after he had earned
some measure of renown for his work Latinizing and simplifying
scientific nomenclature, Linnaeus was raised to the rank of nobility
and took yet another name: Carl von Linne.

Evolving Thoughts
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/05/happy_birthday_linnaeus.php

Grumpy John Wilkins is an aged, eternal student, who thinks
philosophy of biology is at least as interesting as politics or
sport and twice as important. He has a PhD from the University of
Melbourne and a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University
of Queensland, in Australia. After a varied career, involving
factories, gardening, civil service, publishing, graphics, public
relations but not, unfortunately for the CV, driving a truck, John
finally completed his thesis on species concepts, which he is
working into two books. He is also interested in cultural evolution,
philosophy of religion, Macintosh computers and his kids (they sort
of make it a necessity, you know?).

If anyone knows of a tenurable, or even medium term, job in
philosophy of biology, let me know. Have library, will travel. The
contract runs out soon...

Happy birthday Linnaeus

Category: Evolution o General Science o History o Philosophy of
Science o Species and systematics
Posted on: May 21, 2007 10:21 AM, by John S. Wilkins

In honour of Linnaeus' 300th birthday, and to rescue him from the
canard that he merely applied Aristotelian logic to biology, I offer
up this essay on his view of classification and species. I do not
think Linnaeus was an essentialist in the Mayrian sense - he nowhere
specifies that species have essences, only that there are diagnostic
descriptions or definitions that allow naturalists to identify
species in the field or in museum collections. But I'm no Linnaean
scholar, so if anyone has information to the contrary, let me know.

Not much is known about the early education of poor Swedish student
named Carl Linnaeus.^1 Born in 1707, Linnaeus died in 1770, the most
celebrated Swede of his day. In 1761, he was knighted with the
vernacular name Carl von Linné, and took the Latinized name Carolus
Linnaeus. Linnaeus was a medical student turned botanist, and
trained in Holland where he published his first botanical works.
Before Linnaeus, species were given all kinds of descriptive names,
usually in Latin, up to ten words or so long. Each author made up
their own terms, and there was no real convention for referring to
species. On Linnaeus' account, both species and genera were fixed,
real and known by definitions. He apparently believed that the genus
was more real that species, and he allowed late in life that species
may occasionally arise, but only within genera, through
hybridization. Some (e.g., Stafleu 1971; Mayr 1969, 1982) consider
Linnaeus to be an essentialist regarding species. This was due to
the fact that, unlike the medieval logical conception, for Linnaeus
all species (at least in botany, zoology and mineralogy) were
infimae species. He attempted to provide a diagnostic definition for
each species, although his practice and adopted motto "In scientia
naturali principia veritatis observationibus confirmari debent" (in
natural science, the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by
observation, Stafleu 1971) suggests that he was not firmly wedded to
a priori essentialism.

In the Systema Naturae (10th edn, 1759, p7, Linne 1956) Linnaeus
proposed a system of five ranks under the summum genus of the Empire
of Nature (Imperium Naturae):

Regnum (Kingdom),

Classis (Class),

Ordo (Order),

Genus,

Species,

the last three of which corresponded to the logical ranks of genus
intermedium, genus proximam, and (infimae) species. He also added a
subspecific category of Varietas, which was the logical individuum.
Later taxonomic conventions added the ranks of Phylum between
Kingdom and Class, and Family between Order and Genus, giving seven
ranks.^^2 The philosophical notion of species was not entirely
helpful in botany, so Linnaeus changed it a little. Instead of there
being any number of subaltern genera, he made the scale of classes
absolute, and instead of working downwards, he started in the middle
(at the genus). Linnaeus' ranks began at species, and these existed
in genera. Hence, to name a species you needed to give the generic
name and the species name. Humans are members of the genus Homo (or
Man; according to Linnaeus, one of several^^3) and our species is
called sapiens (the wise one)^^4. So in Latin our "name" is "the
wise man". Humans, under his initial system, are:

Animals (Regnum Animale),

Mammals (Classis Mammalia),

Primates (Ordo Primates),

Man (Genus Homo),

Wise or rational (Species sapiens).

What Linneaus did was to make species and genera fixed ranks. He
established this universal system for the naming and classification
of all organisms. There were, for example, various kingdoms - plants
(Plantae) and animals (Animalia). Each species had a street address
(its generic name, or genus) and a street number (its species name,
or epithet).^^5 Now, taxonomists (those who classify taxa, or groups
of organisms^6) could use a single and relatively simple system for
their organisms, and all could agree on how to name them, and what
to name.

Linnaeus was definitely a special creationist - that is, he believed
that each species was created specially by God, and Haller famously
said of him that he thought himself a "second Adam" (Ramsbottom
1938: 195n), and he personally said the "God creates, Linnaeus
disposes". He wrote:

"There are as many species as the Infinite Being produced diverse
forms in the beginning." (Species tot sunt diversae quot diversas
formas ab initio creavit infinitum Ens, Fundamenta botanica No.
157, 1736).

However, in 1744 he was forced to allow that some species are the
result of hybridization, at least in plants, because he thought he
observed it happening. A species of plant he placed in a genus
Peloria (from the Greek pelor, meaning monstrosity) was in stem and
leaf structure part of the Linaria genus, but the flower was clearly
different (Hagberg 1952: 196f; Glass 1959a). This admission was
widely known by subsequent writers (e.g., Lee 1810; Gray 1821).
Still, he thought that genera were real and the possibilities for
change limited. According to Larson (1967), Linnaeus imagined in the
Fundamenta fructifications "that God created one species for each
natural order of plants differing in habit and fructification from
all others. These species, mutually fertile, gave birth to as many
genera as there were different parents, their fructification
somewhat changed" (p317).

In the Pralectiones (1744), Linnaeus went further:

The principle being accepted that all species of one genus have
arisen from one mother through different fathers, it must be
assumed:
1. That in the beginning the Creator created each natural order
only with one plant with reproductive power.
2. That by their various mixings different plants have arisen which
belong to the mother's natural order as they are similar to the
mother with regard to their fructifications, and are, as it
were, species of the order, i.e., genera.
3. We may assume that plants have arisen within the orders, i.e. by
genera of one order, may mix with each other. In this way there
will arise species that should be referred to the mother's genus
as her daughters. [quoted in Larson, loc. cit.]

Linnaeus thus employed the Great Chain of Being in a rather unusual
way. Most "chainists" accepted what was later called the Principle
of Plenitude (the lex completio), which stated that God would create
everything that could be created, since he would not make an
incomplete creation (Lovejoy 1936; Glass 1959a). This usually meant
that species graded into each other is a series of varieties.
Linnaeus instead represented species using the metaphor of countries
adjoining each other (in the Philosophia botanica §77). In his early
writing, all the territory is pretty much filled - as he said,
nature does not make jumps - but the countries are discrete and
distinct from one another. In the later work, this strict fixism of
the first edition of the Systema Naturae has been modified. All
hybrids did was fill in a rare empty bit of territory in God's time
and plan. The borders were set by the genera, and all genera arose
from a single species created by God. At the end of the 1750s, says
Hagberg (1952: 199), Linnaeus was in a state of perplexity with
respect to species. In 1755, he published Metamorphosis plantarum,
dealing primarily with the development of plants, but also with
monstrosities and varieties. Such later hybrids he called the
"children of time" in an anonymous entry in a competition at St
Petersburg in 1759 (Hagberg 1952: 201f), and also in the Species
plantarum (1753, 2nd edition 1762-63), where he speculated that a
species of Achillea (yarrow, or staunchweed), alpina, might have
formed from another, ptarmica, "[an] locus potuerat ex praecedenti
formasse hanc?" ("Could this have been formed from the preceeding
one by the environment?", in volume II, 1266 of the second edition,
quoted in Greene 1959: 134). Hagberg says, "Linnaeus never succeeded
in pin-pointing his new conception of species. But the old one, that
formed the basis of Systema Naturae, was utterly and irrevocably
abandoned."

Moreover, Linnaeus also noted that species grew differently
according to the conditions of their locale. Of the genera Salix,
Rosa, Rubus, and Hieracium, (willows, roses, brambles, and
hawkweeds), Linnaeus said that their description was problematic
because of variability ("metamorphosis") of form in different soils
and climates (Ramsbottom 1938: 200f). Habitat-induced variability
will become an issue under Göte Turesson's investigation in the
early 20th century (see below). Linnaeus also experimented on
propagating a hybrid geranium, with success, in 1759 (Ramsbottom
1938: 210f); he believed that maternal influences of hybrids
affected the "medullary substance" and fructification of plants, but
the leaf structure was due to the paternal species As time went on,
he removed the statement that there were no new species from his
1766 edition of the Systema Naturae, and crossed out the statement
natura non facit saltum from his own copy of his Philosophia
Botanica. A full account of Linnaeus' various pronouncements on
species can be found in Ramsbottom (1938).

When Linnaeus was working, European trade and exploration was
limited. Linnaeus himself classified around 6,000 species of mainly
Mediterranean and northern European plants, and later animals
(Stafleu 1971). This was more than had been done before, but still
it was a fraction of what we know today. His students and adherents
sent him specimens from around the world, and there was a steady
"trade" in specimens between him and other taxonomists and
collectors (Müller-Wille 2003). Linnaeus hoped that his system would
enable taxonomists to list all actual species, but he also knew that
his system was artificial - that is, not the pure result of studying
the actual characters of organisms, but also imposing an a priori
scheme on them for convenience. He hoped there would be a "natural"
scheme developed on the basis of an aggregation of characters, but
he was never able to do more than a partial sketch of one. In his
later work, he set up a "rational" system that allowed for there to
be 3,600 genera in plants, each of which could generate species
through hybridization. Although this was supposed to be a "natural"
system (one based on the closeness of resemblance of all traits of
the organisms and not just a single character), in fact he chose
just three features of plants and restricted the varieties to 60
types of each (hence 60^3 = 216,000 maximum of plant species).
However, this was fragmentary and in an appendix, and not developed
further.

In summary, Linnaeus proposed a five rank taxonomic system, and
there were only a set number of species possible, although later he
was forced by various observations, including his own, to accept
that new species could be created through hybridization. All that
remains of his taxonomy are the names and general ranks of his
system, but even this has been dramatically modified, with such
groups as tribes, sub-families, and so on being added to deal with
the massive increase in species discovered since.

Linnaeus distinguished between the diagnostic characters
(characters) and actual traits (notae) of organisms, but it seems
not much came of this distinction. He appears to have despaired of a
natural system in his foreseeable future, and so promoted a purely
diagnostic and hence conventional taxonomy, even though he believed
that species were themselves natural, along with genera. This
tension underlies much of later taxonomy.

Notes

1 I am informed by Staffan Müller-Wille (pers. comm.) that Linnaeus,
being from a relatively poor district of Sweden, Småland, known
(presumably by an Englishman) as the "Scotland of Sweden", was
taught from old standard textbooks, and not out of the
neo-Platonists early or late, as far as is recorded (see also
Frängsmyr 1983; Koerner 1999; Goerke 1973). According to Hagberg
(1952: 44ff), he was greatly influenced by Aristotle's Historia
Animalium as a young student.

2 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, phylum is a term first
coined by Cuvier, in Regne Animal (1817), to cover his four
embranchements, later adopted and made popular by Ernst Haeckel.
Family is most probably Adanson's term (Judd et al. 1999: 40). The
Strickland Code of 1842 (Strickland et al. 1843: 119) mentions
"families", noting they ought to be ended in -idea, and this implies
families were in common use by that time. It also allows
subfamilies. Mayr, Linsley and Usinger (1953: 272) give the
introduction of "family" to Latrielle in 1796, but do not give any
information regarding phylum. In botany, phylum is not used, and
instead the rank is division, probably introduced in Alphonse de
Candolle's 1867 Rules submitted to the Paris meeting that year of
the International Botanical Congress. The present International Code
of Zoological Nomenclature does not regulate higher taxon ranks
above superfamily (Winston 1999: 32), and so phylum is in effect an
informal rank. Recent attempts to revise the rank of kingdom and add
empire, or domain (Woese 1998; Syvanen and Kado 1998; Margulis and
Schwartz 1998; Williams and Embley 1996; Baldauf, Palmer, and
Doolittle 1996) are thus legitimated by tradition even if not widely
accepted.

Late note: I just found a copy of De Candolle's "lois", or laws of
botanical nomenclature via Gallica ((bless the Biblioteque
Nationale!) and yes, it was there these terms were introduced, but
it was accepted in 1868, not '67. "Phylum" was, I recall,
instroduced to zoology in the 1870s.

3 Huxley describes the initial history of hominoid classification,
and notes that while there had been some excellent descriptions of
orangutans and chimpanzees in the 18th century, Linnaeus relied on
second-hand sources, and classified four species under the genus
Homo: Under the specific epithet of troglodytes, he combined the
prior "species" of Homo sylvestris (probably a juvenile chimp), and
Homo nocturnus (a badly-represented orangutan) (cf. Huxley 1906:
10-13) in the 1758 (tenth edition) Systema naturae (p25), apart from
Homo sapiens. Huxley also lists Homo caudatus (a cat tailed ape,
either mythical or a misunderstanding of a description of a baboon),
but by the tenth edition at least, this was no longer in evidence.
It is occasionally noted that by the established rules of
nomenclatural priority, chimpanzees should therefore be included in
Homo on Linnaean grounds as well as on cladistic grounds (which is
argued in, for instance, Diamond 1991). However, troglodytes
explicitly mentions the Orangutan in the Systema Naturae, while the
chimp is more likely to be Simia satyrus, in another genus
altogether (p25).

4 It is sometimes thought that sapiens means "the knowing one", but
a check of various Latin dictionaries of the Latin of the time and
earlier indicates that it means "wise" or "sage".

5 In modern practice, the genus name is always capitalized and the
species epithet is always lower case, and both are always
italicized. Other taxonomic ranks are capitalized but not
italicized.

6 According to Mayr (1982: 870n), the term taxon was proposed in
1926 by Meyer-Abich (see also Lam 1957, who discusses the term in
more detail, noting that it is a nomenclatural term for a
phylogenetic group). Hence in this context it is an anachronism.
Stafleu notes that Linnaeus' own general term for taxa was phalanx,
but that it did not catch on.

References

Baldauf, S.L., J.D. Palmer, and W.F. Doolittle. 1996. The root of
the universal tree and the origin of eukaryotes based on elongation
factor phylogeny. Vol. 93: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.

Diamond, Jared M. 1991. The rise and fall of the third chimpanzee.
London ; Sydney: Radius.

Frängsmyr, Tore, ed. 1983. Linnaeus, the man and his work. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Glass, Bentley. 1959. Heredity and variation in the eighteenth
century concept of the species. In Forerunners of Darwin, 1745-1859,
edited by B. Glass, O. Temkin and W. L. Straus Jr. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press.

Goerke, Heinz. 1973. Linnaeus. New York: Scribner.

Gray, Samuel Frederick. 1821. A natural arrangement of British
plants: according to their relation to each other, as pointed out by
Jussieu, De Candolle, Brown, & c. including those cultivated for
use: with an introduction to botany in which the terms newly
introduced are explained. London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy.

Greene, John C. 1959. The death of Adam: evolution and its impact on
Western thought. Ames: Iowa State University Press.

Hagberg, Knut. 1952. Carl Linnaeus. Translated by A. Blair. London:
Jonathan Cape.

Huxley, T. H. 1906. Man's place in nature and other essays.
Everyman's Library ed. London; New York: J. M. Dent/E. P. Dutton.

Judd, Walter S., Christopher S. Campbell, Elizabeth A. Kellog, and
Peter F. Stevens. 1999. Plant systematics: A phylogenetic approach.
Sunderland MA: Sinauer Associates.

Koerner, Lisbet. 1999. Linnaeus: nature and nation. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press.

Lam, H. J. 1957. What is a taxon? Taxon VI (8):213-215.

Larson, James L. 1967. Linnaeus and the Natural Method. Isis 58
(3):304-320.

Lee, James, 1715-1795. 1810. An introduction to the science of
botany: chiefly extracted from the works of Linnaeus; to which are
added, several new tables and notes, and a life of the author / by
... James Lee. 4th ed., corr. and enl. / by James Lee, son and
successor. ed. London:: Printed for F.C. and J. Rivington; Wilkie
and Robinson; J. Walker ...,.

Linne, Carl von. 1956. Caroli Linnaei Systema naturae: a
photographic facsimile of the first volume of the tenth edition
(1758): regnum animale. London: Printed by order of the Trustees,
British Museum (Natural History).

Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1936. The great chain chain of being: a study of
the history of an idea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Margulis, Lynn, and Karlene V. Schwartz. 1998. Five Kingdoms: an
illustrated guide to the phyla of life on Earth. 3rd ed. San
Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

Mayr, Ernst. 1969. Principles of systematic zoology. New York:
McGraw-Hill.

------. 1982. The growth of biological thought: diversity,
evolution, and inheritance. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press.

Mayr, Ernst, E. Gorton Linsley, and Robert L. Usinger. 1953. Methods
and principles of systematic zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Müller-Wille, Staffan. 2003. Nature as a Marketplace: The Political
Economy of Linnaean Botany. History of Political Economy 35 (Annual
Supplement):154-172.

Ramsbottom, John. 1938. Linnaeus and the species concept.
Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London 150 (192-220).

Stafleu, Franz Antonie. 1971. Linnaeus and the Linnaeans. The
spreading of their ideas in systematic botany, 1735-1789, Regnum
vegetabile, v. 79. Utrecht,: Oosthoek.

Strickland, Hugh. E., John Phillips, John Richardson, Richard Owen,
Leonard Jenyns, William J. Broderip, John S. Henslow, William E.
Shuckard, George R. Waterhouse, William Yarrell, Charles R. Darwin,
and John O. Westwood. 1843. Report of a committee appointed "to
consider of the rules by which the nomenclature of zoology may be
established on a uniform and permanent basis". Report of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science for 1842:105-121.

Syvanen, Michael, and Clarence I. Kado, eds. 1998. Horizontal gene
transfer. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Williams, David M, and T. Martin Embley. 1996. Microbial diversity:
domains and kingdoms. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics
27:569-595.

Winston, Judith E. 1999. Describing species: practical taxonomic
procedures for biologists. New York: Columbia University Press.

Woese, C. R. 1998. Default taxonomy - Ernst Mayr, view of the
microbial world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of
the United States of America 95 (19):11043-11046.

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Comments

#1
Cool, a post from the future. Can you tell us how the basketball
playoffs turn out?
Posted by: justawriter | May 21, 2007 09:38 AM

#2
Who won Belmont Stakes 2008?
Posted by: coturnix | May 21, 2007 09:54 AM

#3
Rickin rackin Ecto-Moveable Type interface. It's supposed to be
scheduled. Oh well, it's there now...
Posted by: John Wilkins | May 21, 2007 10:07 AM

#4
Linnaeus also mused on the idea of a 'flower clock garden.' He never
got around to planting one himself, but Truman State recently
created a kick-ass clock garden/sundial hybrid.
Flower opening times arent usually listed in gardening books, as it
varies according to latitude, so it must have taken a wonderfully
clever undergrad to help with such a project...**cough cough**
hehehe!
Posted by: ERV | May 21, 2007 10:10 AM

#5
Dear John Wilkins:
You provided very timely info on 'Linnaeus' helping me save time to
looking up on my own from scratch. Your main introduction and
references are so very helpful at a time when I was just to embark
on collecting info for my own need. What a good luck did land on my
way! Thanks!
Sincerely,
AriSan
Posted by: AriSan in New York | May 21, 2007 11:04 AM

#6
Thanks for the timely posting! I invite everyone over to Sweden to
participate in the celebratory year. The Imperial Majesty Akihito is
currently visiting.
If you make it all the way up to Uppsala, where Linneaus established
his system and were later buried, I can recommend the pastry at the
coffee shop in the Linneaus Garden in the towns center. There are
many more places to visit and much else to do, see
http://www.linnaeus2007.se/ .
Linnaeus had more apostles than the christian bible, 17 of them (see
the above link). Their travels were mostly financed by new The Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences giving out a calendar - in lieu of good
scientific intentions they had to give in and include the
superstition of the farmers schedules of weather predictions.
One apostle was Daniel Solander, traveling among the botanists that
were first on Australia with James Cooks first voyage. 7 of the
apostles died on the trip; one of those had bankrupted and his
research material had to be bought free.
(http://www.nyteknik.se/art/50437 ; in swedish.)
being from a relatively poor district of Sweden, Småland, known
(presumably by an Englishman) as the "Scotland of Sweden"
AFAIK the similarities also goes to the entrepreneurial spirit,
inventiveness and cooperation of the people and their small scale
businesses.
There is an old series of humor movies about an original inventor
and his dog, ... ehrm, excuse me, faithful friend, being a
caricatured archetype from Småland. Yes, there are cars, rockets and
Rube Goldberg devices. :-)
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | May 21, 2007 05:02 PM

#7
I have a question that I will address to both Mess'rs Wilkins and
Larson. Linnaeus was Swedenï¿½s most significant scientist in the
18th century in fact he was one of Europe's most significant
scientists in the 18th century. This fact was even acknowledged in
his own lifetime in that he was granted a knighthood. This being the
case, how come his Nachlass i.e. his natural historical collections
and his papers were flogged off to the first Englishman who happened
to pass by with a couple of quid to spare? Just curious!
Posted by: Thony C. | May 22, 2007 06:21 AM

#8
Swedenï¿½s should of course read Sweden's
Posted by: Thony C. | May 22, 2007 06:23 AM

#9
According to this site his wife sold it after her son's death, and
James Edward Smith (a very well known botanist of the day) managed
to buy it. But the myth that the King of Sweden sent a ship to chase
the one carrying the collection to London is false.
Posted by: John Wilkins | May 22, 2007 06:35 AM

#10
Great essay!
An interesting additional tidbit is that "Peloria" is not really a
new species or a hybrid, but a mutant form of Linaria vulgaris with
a strange flower shape.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/tp36336815147048/
So the hybridisation idea was something of a red herring for
Linnaeus in this specific case, although it turned out to be correct
in other plant species.
Posted by: windy | May 22, 2007 09:04 AM

#11
Yes; as I understand it, Peloria was an autopolyploid of Linaria.
But Linnaeus thought it was a hybrid, and hybridisation was
traditionally the mode for the generation of new species, as far
back as Aristotle in the History of Animals.
Posted by: John Wilkins | May 22, 2007 09:09 AM

#12
Yes; as I understand it, Peloria was an autopolyploid of Linaria.
Actually some people recently suggested that it could be an
epigenetic thing:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v401/n6749/full/401157a0.html
But a Swedish botanist that has looked into Peloria thinks that this
variant methylation pattern in the Lcyc gene depends on an ordinary
DNA mutation. Either way, it seems to be dependent on a single gene
and not polyploidy.
Posted by: windy | May 22, 2007 10:03 AM

#13
According to this site his wife sold it after her son's death,
and James Edward Smith (a very well known botanist of the day)
managed to buy it. But the myth that the King of Sweden sent a
ship to chase the one carrying the collection to London is false.
The real question is why didn't the Swedish government secure
Linnaeus' Nachlass for the nation?
Posted by: Thony C. | May 22, 2007 03:26 PM

#14
According to the biography I have by Knut Hagberg, which is
generally pretty reliable, though under referenced, the collection
was to be sold at Carl's death, but his son managed to hang onto it
by renouncing his claim to the estate. He died young, and so Carl's
wife contact Joseph Banks, who made an offer at Carl's death, but
Banks was not interested as he now had a large collection of his
own. But Banks was dining with Smith, and mentioned it. Smith wrote
to the executor, J. G. Acrel and made the offer. Hagberg notes:
For some unaccountable reason, no one in Sweden was sufficiently
interested to make a bid for the collections, and Smith
energetically pushed forward the negotiations.
Smith then went abroad, and when he returned two years later he got
together with Banks and others to form the Linnean Society [note
that they spelled Carl's name the way he spelled it after being
knighted in 1761] in 1788. Smith had Linnaeus' diary and
correspondence translated and published.
In 1858, Darwin's paper was read before the Society, along with
Wallace's letter.
I think it likely that governments generally did not fund scientific
ventures much, outside France, at the time.
Posted by: John Wilkins | May 23, 2007 01:13 AM

#15
By one of those strange cases of sychronocity I visited the
Department for the History of Medicine here at the University this
morning, in order to extend a book that I had borrowed from their
library, and whilst I was there, and the secretary was feeding my
dog, I happened to notice the following book amongst the new
acquisitions; From Private to Public: Natural Collections And
Museums (Uppsala Studies in the History of Science) Ed. Marco
Beretta. One of the papers is The Swedish Natural History Museum and
Collections in the Linnean Tradition! There is also a paper on
Charles Darwin as a collector that might be of interest to you.
Unfortunately it hasn't yet been catalogued and so I couldn't borrow
it, which I will definitely do at some point as it has several
papers that are of interest to me.
Thony C. FCD
Posted by: Thony C. | May 23, 2007 06:40 AM

Evolving Thoughts
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/05/linnaeus_on_species_1.php

Currently Reading

"Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" (Daniel C.
Dennett)
"Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular
Biology" (Alex Rosenberg)
"The Selfish Meme: A Critical Reassessment" (Kate Distin)
"God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not
Exist" (Victor J Stenger)
"The God Delusion" (Richard Dawkins)
"Negotiating Darwin: The Vatican Confronts Evolution, 1877--1902
(Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context)" (Mariano
Artigas, Thomas F. Glick, Rafael A. MartÃnez)

Linnaeus on species

Category: General Science o History o Philosophy of Science o
Species and systematics
Posted on: May 22, 2007 8:29 AM, by John S. Wilkins

Since Linnaeus' birthday is tomorrow, my time, and I stuffed up the
last post, here's another little treat for you:

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1770, from 1761 Carl von Linné, or Carolus
Linnaeus)

There are many myths about Linnaeus that are due to the properties,
real or imagined, of the system named after him (Cain 1994; Koerner
1999; Larson 1968; Winsor 2006). In fact the so-called "Natural
System" as it came to be known, was on Linnaeus' own view an
artificial one (Cain 1995), and it did not spring forth fully formed
from his brow, no matter how much he saw himself as a "second Adam".
His view on species was initially fairly standard, based on John
Ray's previous definition (perhaps not consciously), and which
included fixity. But not, it seems, because of essentialism, but
piety.

Linnaeus seems to have defined each species diagnostically, not
materially. That is to say, given that species are fixed from the
creation, what are the marks of species so we can recognise them?
However, he famously discovered what he thought was a novel hybrid
species, and so towards the end of his life, began to backpedal the
extreme fixity of the earlier writings, calling one such apparent
novel species a "daughter of time" (Gustafsson 1979). This was
widely known among the botanical community, and was widely accepted.
For him, constancy (not essence) of generation was the key to
species.

Below the fold are his definitions of "species", or rather, his
comments about species. So far as I know, he never actually defined
the term.

There are as many species as the Infinite Being produced diverse
forms in the beginning. [Species tot sunt diversae quot diversas
formas ab initio creavit infinitum Ens, Fundamenta botanica No.
157, 1736 (quoted in Ramsbottom 1938:196)]
We reckon as many species as there were diverse forms created in
the beginning. [Species tot numeramus, quot diversae formae in
principio sunt creatae, Philosophia Botanica, 1751 (loc. cit.)]
Species are as many as there were diverse [and constant*] forms
produced by the Infinite Being; which forms according to the
appointed laws of generation, produced more individuals but
always like themselves. Therefore there are as many species as
there are different forms or structures occurring today. [Species
tot sunt, quot diversas [& constantes*] formas ab initio producit
Infinitum Ens; quae formae, secundum generationis inditas leges,
produxere plures, at sibi semper similes. Ergo species tot sunt,
quot diversae formae s. structurea hodienum occurrant. Classes
Plantarum, 1738 (loc.cit.). *Added in 1764, see Genera Plantarum
I: ¶5]
The principle being accepted that all species of one genus have
arisen from one mother through different fathers, it must be
assumed:

1. That in the beginning the Creator created each natural order
only with one plant with reproductive power.
2. That by their various mixings different plants have arisen
which belong to the mother's natural order as they are similar to
the mother with regard to their fructifications, and are, as it
were, species of the order, i.e., genera.
3. We may assume that plants have arisen within the orders, i.e.
by genera of one order, may mix with each other. In this way
there will arise species that should be referred to the mother's
genus as her daughters. [Pralectiones (Lectures, 1744), quoted in
Larson, (1967:317)]

We say there are as many genera as there are similarly
constituted fructifications of different natural species. [Genera
tot dicimus, quot similes contructae fructifications proferunt
diversae Species naturales. Fundamenta Botanica 1736, No 159
(quoted in Ramsbottom 1938:197)]
Every genus is natural, created as such in the beginning, hence
not to be rashly split up or stuck together by whim or according
to anyone's theory. [Genus omne est naturale, in primordio tale
creatum, hinc pro libitu & secundem cujuscimque theoriam non
proterve discindendum aut conglutinandum. Systema naturae, 1735,
(quoted in Ramsbottom 1938:197)]
Species are most constant, since their generation is a true
continuation. [Species constantissimae sunt, cum earum generatio
est vera continuatio. Systema naturae, 1735 (quoted in Ramsbottom
1938:197)]
There are as many varieties as there are different plants,
produced from the seed of the same species. [Varietates tot sunt,
quot differentes plantae ex ejusdem speciei semine sunt
productae. Philosophia Botanica 1751(quoted in Ramsbottom
1938:199)]
Is the plant [Thalictrum lucidum] sufficiently distinct from T.
flavum? It seems to me a daughter of time. [Planta, an satis
distincta, a T. flavo? Videtur temporis filia. Species plantarum
1753 (quoted in Ramsbottom 1938:201)]

References

Cain, A. J. 1995. Linnaeus's natural and artificial arrangements of
plants. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 117 (2):73.

Cain, Arthur J. 1994. Numerus, figura, proportio, situs: Linnaeus's
definitory attributes. Archives of Natural History 21:17-36.

Gustafsson, Ö. 1979. Linnaeus' Peloria: The history of a monster.
TAG Theoretical and Applied Genetics 54 (6):241-248.

Koerner, Lisbet. 1999. Linnaeus: nature and nation. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press.

Larson, James L. 1967. Linnaeus and the Natural Method. Isis 58
(3):304-320.
------. 1968. The Species Concept of Linnaeus. Isis 59 (3):291-299.

Ramsbottom, John. 1938. Linnaeus and the species concept.
Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London 150 (192-220).

Winsor, Mary P. 2006. Linnaeus' biology was not essentialist. Annals
of the Missouri Botanical Garden 93 (1):2-7.

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Comments

#1
Thanks for the exposition.
As I write this Uppsala (Linneaus and mine alma mater) is visited by
the King (Carl XVI Gustaf, Carl Gustaf) and by his guest His
Imperial Majesty the Emperor (Heisei, Akihito). The dudes are going
to party at Uppsala castle.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | May 23, 2007 10:04 AM

PALAEOBLOG: Born This Day: Carl Linnaeus
http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/born-this-day-carl-linnaeus.html

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Born 23 May 23, 1707 - Jan. 10, 1778.
From the Linnean Society:
Linnaeus was born in 1707 in Sweden. He headed an expedition to
Lapland in 1732, travelling 4,600 miles and crossing the
Scandinavian Peninsula by foot to the Arctic Ocean. On the journey
he discovered a hundred botanical [clinnaeusinred.jpg] species. He
undertook his medical degree in 1735 in the Netherlands. In 1735, he
published Systema Naturae, his classification of plants based on
their sexual parts.
His method of binomial nomenclature using genus and species names
was further expounded when he published Fundamenta Botanica (1736)
and Classes Plantarum (1738). This system used the flower and the
number and arrangements of its sexual organs of stamens and pistils
to group plants into twenty-four classes which in turn are divided
into orders, genera and species.
In his publications, Linnaeus provided a concise, usable survey of
all the world's plants and animals as then known, about 7,700
species of plants and 4,400 species of animals. These works helped
to establish and standardize the consistent binomial nomenclature
for species which he introduced on a world scale for plants in 1753,
and for animals in 1758, and which is used today.
[syn.jpg]
image
His Systema Naturae 10th edition, volume 1(1758), has accordingly
been accepted by international agreement as the official starting
point for zoological nomenclature. Scientific names published before
then have no validity unless adopted by Linnaeus or by later
authors. This confers a high scientific importance on the specimens
used by Linnaeus for their preparation, many of which are in his
personal collections now treasured by the Linnean Society.
He was granted nobility in 1761, becoming Carl von Linné. He
continued his work of classification and as a physician, and
remained Rector of the University until 1772.

posted by Michael J. Ryan, Ph.D. at 9:39 AM

About Me

Name: Michael J. Ryan, Ph.D.

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The Dispersal of Darwin: Happy Birthday Linnaeus!
http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

[9]Carolus Linnaeus (May 23, 1707-Jan 10, 1778)
from [10]Today in Science History:
"Swedish botanist and explorer who was the first to frame principles
for defining genera and species of organisms and to create a uniform
system for naming them."
Currently I am reading [11]Paul Farber's introduction to to the
history of natural history as a discipline, [12]Finding Order in
Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E.O. Wilson. The
writing is done very well. The first chapter discusses Linnaeus' and
[13]Buffon's contributions to [14]natural history, and their
differing perspectives on ordering life. In reference to Linnaeus
encouraging his students to travel in order to collect more plants,
and that only European naturalists could rightly name and classify
species (for local inhabitants are lacking in knowledge), Farber
writes, "Just as missionaries attempted to save the souls of
indigenous peoples, Linnaeus's apostles sought to save the species
of the world for a second naming." (p. 12)
Farber refers to this as a type of [15]cultural imperialism, as well
as naturalists aiding in the imperial expansion of European powers.
[16]A Quote from Darwin from [17]Evolving Thoughts

Posted by darwinsbulldog at [18]7:55 AM

Who is darwinsbulldog (besides T.H. Huxley)?

I am an undergraduate student at [26]Montana State University in
Bozeman, MT, majoring in the [27]History of Science and minoring in
[28]Museum Studies. My interests are with Charles Darwin, the
development of evolutionary theory, natural history, the
evolution-creation debate and the general history of science.
Currently I have been reading about [29]Joseph Dalton Hooker, and
the correspondence between Darwin and Hooker on seed dispersal was
the subject of a recent research paper. This summer, besides taking
a [30]field ornithology class, I will be an intern at the new
[31]Heritage and Research Center in [32]Yellowstone National Park,
working with the park's historian, [33]Lee Whittlesey, on
researching journals from the late-19th and early-20th centuries. I
am also excited for the courses I will be taking this fall: the
first half of western civilization, museum practices (at the
[34]Museum of the Rockies), and an independent research on "Museums,
Collecting, and Natural History." I can be contacted at
[35]darwinsbulldog at gmail.com. [36]Curriculum Vitae / [37]Picture
Website

Nature, like a careful gardener, thus takes her seeds from a bed of
a particular nature, and drops them in another equally fitted for
them. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)

Re:Design

A play about the [38]correspondence of Charles Darwin and Harvard
Professor of Botany [39]Asa Gray. More information at the [40]Darwin
Correspondence website, [41]here, and a video [42]here. UPDATE: The
new Darwin Correspondence webiste has much [43]more information on
the play, including the [44]script.

Darwin Exhibit

The recent [45]exhibit on Darwin began at the [46]American Museum of
Natural History, then had a running at the [47]Franklin Institute.
Currently the exhibit is at the [48]Boston Museum of Science. Then
it will travel to the [49]Field Museum in Chicago (June 15,
2007-January 1, 2008), the [50]Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto
(March 8, 2008-August 4, 2008), and finally to the [51]Natural
History Museum in London in late 2008 to be part of the 2009 events
celebrating the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (February 12,
2009). Let me know if you're interested in a review of the exhibit
by [52]Richard Bellon from the journal [53]Museums & Social Issues:
A Journal of Reflective Discourse.

Important Darwin Websites

* [54]About Darwin
* [55]Alfred Russel Wallace Page
* [56]Beagle Project Blog
* [57]Charles Darwin Forum
* [58]Charles Darwin Online
* [59]Charles Darwin Trust
* [60]Darwin 200
* [61]Darwin 2009: A Festival
* [62]Darwin Correspondence Project
* [63]Darwin Correspondence Project (new)
* [64]Darwin Day
* [65]Darwin Digital Library of Evolution
* [66]Darwin Museum Exhibit
* [67]Darwin Papers at Cambridge
* [68]Darwin Wikipedia
* [69]Darwin Wikiquote
* [70]Down House
* [71]Dr. Niles Eldredge, Evolutionist
* [72]Friends of Charles Darwin
* [73]Huxley File
* [74]Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: works and heritage
* [75]Joseph Dalton Hooker Website
* [76]Lefalophodon
* [77]Museums and Public Understanding of Evolution
* [78]Museums and Public Understanding of Evolution
* [79]National Center for Science Education
* [80]PBS Evolution Series
* [81]Red Notebook: a Darwinian weblog
* [82]Shrewsbury 2009
* [83]Sulloway's Darwin Page
* [84]TalkOrigins Archive
* [85]Understanding Evolution
* [86]Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive
* [87]Victorian Science: An Overview

Other Websites

* [88]British Journal for the History of Science
* [89]British Society for the History of Science
* [90]Columbia History of Science Group
* [91]Encyclopedia of Life
* [92]History of Science (journal)
* [93]History of Science Society
* [94]International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social
Studies of Biology
* [95]Isis
* [96]Journal of the History of Biology
* [97]Linnean Society
* [98]NPR: Science Friday
* [99]Royal Society
* [100]Society for the History of Natural History
* [101]Tree of Life Web Project

Darwin in the Media

* [102]Charlie Rose: Edward O. Wilson & James Watson on Charles
Darwin
* [103]Charlie Rose: Niles Eldredge on the Darwin Exhibit
* [104]Michael Shermer: "Why Darwin Matters"
* [105]NPR: Charles Darwin and the Racing Asparagus (David
Quammen)
* [106]NPR: Janet Browne and her book "Darwin's Origin of Species"
* [107]Speaking of Faith: Understanding Charles Darwin (James
Moore)

Blog Archive

* [108]v [109]2007 (67)
+ [110]v [111]May (48)
o [112]Happy Birthday Linnaeus!
o [113]If I Had an Unlimited Book Budget
o [114]Museums & Social Issues
o [115]Mucho Darwin for Tuesday
o [116]Darwin Quote & Darwin Skeptics
o [117]Darwin for a Monday Morning
o [118]A Nice Photograph
o [119]Blog Posts on Darwin Correspondence Project
o [120]Charles Darwin on WikiQuote
o [121]The New York Times on Darwin's Letters
o [122]Stephen Jay Gould Dies in 2002
o [123]Recent Blog Posts
o [124]"Letters reveal Darwin's caring, comic side"
o [125]"Darwin had Stinky Feet"
o [126]Butler Act Repealed
o [127]Darwin Letters Online
o [128]"Prisoner of Scientific Parentheses"
o [129]Revamped Darwin Correspondence Project
o [130]Darwinism after Darwin: new historical
perspective...
o [131]More on Linnaeus
o [132]Linnaeus: The Name Giver
o [133]"What's New" at Darwin Online
o [134]Darwin Begins Writing Big Species Book
o [135]Darwin on Chloroform
o [136]Happy Birthday Beagle
o [137]"What's New" at Darwin Online
o [138]Flock of Dodos
o [139]Reviews of Intelligent Design/Dover Trial Books
o [140]"What's New" at Darwin Online
o [141]Darwin Exhibit in Chicago Soon
o [142]Darwin at Down
o [143]Encyclopedia of Life
o [144]Reports of the Challenger Expedition
o [145]Seeds, Intermediate Forms & Pigeons
o [146]Recent Metascience Article on Darwin & Geology
o [147]Blog Posts
o [148]"What's New" at Darwin Online
o [149]John T. Scopes Arrested for Teaching Evolution
o [150]Evolution and Presidential Debates
o [151]More on the Discovery Institute Linking Darwin
wit...
o [152]Review of Janet Browne's Origin Biography
o [153]Thomas Henry Huxley Born
o [154]Darwin's at His Deathbed
o [155]Recommended Reading
o [156]Parody Chick Tract
o [157]Eureka Moments? Newton and Apples & Darwin and
Fin...
o [158]Alfred Russel Wallace Article & Collections
o [159]"What's New" at Darwin Online
+ [160]|> [161]April (19)
o [162]Robert Fitzroy Dies
o [163]Darwin Quotes on Expression of Emotions

References

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolus_Linnaeus
10. http://www.todayinsci.com/cgi-bin/indexpage.pl?http://www.todayinsci.com/5/5_23.htm
11. http://oregonstate.edu/cla/history/faculty/farberp/
12. http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Order-Nature-Naturalist-Introductory/dp/0801863902/ref=sr_1_4/002-0075596-7034438?ie=UTF8&s=books&amp;qid=1179932473&sr=8-4
13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_de_Buffon
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism
16. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/05/a_quote_from_darwin.php
17. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/
18. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html
26. http://www.montana.edu/
27. http://www.montana.edu/history/options/history-major-sets
28. http://www.montana.edu/history/options/museum-studies-minor
29. http://www.jdhooker.org.uk/
30. http://www.flickr.com/photos/7230309@N05/sets/72157600156300675/
31. http://www.nps.gov/yell/historyculture/collections.htm
32. http://www.nps.gov/yell/index.htm
33. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/002-2804731-2332844?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Lee+Whittlesey
34. http://www.museumoftherockies.org/
35. mailto:darwinsbulldog at gmail.com
36. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgvtfw8j_7db2zd9
37. http://public.fotki.com/darwinsbulldog/
38. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2432460.ece
39. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Gray
40. http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Departments/Darwin/
41. http://www.suffolkhumanists.org.uk/node/406
42. http://www.sciencelive.org/component/option,com_mediadb/task,play/idstr,CU-CSF-PC07-05_DarwinCorrespondence/Itemid,52
43. http://darwin1.caret.cam.ac.uk/content/view/99/83/
44. http://darwin1.caret.cam.ac.uk/content/view/89/74/
45. http://www.nileseldredge.com/darwin_exhibition.htm
46. http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/
47. http://www2.fi.edu/exhibits/traveling/darwin.php
48. http://www.mos.org/exhibits_shows/current_exhibits&d=1226
49. http://www.fieldmuseum.org/exhibits/temporary_exhib2.htm
50. http://www.rom.on.ca/exhibitions/special/darwin.php
51. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/
52. http://www.lbs.msu.edu/personnel/fac_bios/bellon.html
53. http://www.lcoastpress.com/journal_issue.php?id=6
54. http://www.aboutdarwin.com/index.html
55. http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/index1.htm
56. http://www.thebeagleproject.com/beagleblog.html
57. http://www.darwinforum.org.uk/education_topics.htm
58. http://darwin-online.org.uk/
59. http://www.darwinforum.org.uk/trust.htm
60. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/darwin-200/index.html
61. http://www.darwin2009.cam.ac.uk/
62. http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Departments/Darwin/
63. http://darwin1.caret.cam.ac.uk/index.php
64. http://www.darwinday.org/
65. http://darwinlibrary.amnh.org/index.php?globalnav=scope
66. http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/
67. http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/manuscripts/darwin.html
68. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
69. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Darwin
70. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/conProperty.102
71. http://www.nileseldredge.com/
72. http://darwin.gruts.com/
73. http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/
74. http://www.lamarck.cnrs.fr/?lang=en
75. http://www.jdhooker.org.uk/
76. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~alroy/lefa/lophodon.html
77. http://www.lcoastpress.com/journal_issue.php?id=6
78. http://www.lcoastpress.com/journal_issue.php?id=6
79. http://www.natcenscied.org/
80. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/
81. http://darwin.gruts.com/weblog/
82. http://www.darwinshrewsbury.org/darwinbirthplace
83. http://www.sulloway.org/Darwinpubs.html
84. http://www.talkorigins.org/
85. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
86. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/
87. http://www.victorianweb.org/science/sciov.html
88. http://www.cambridge.org/journals/journal_catalogue.asp?mnemonic=bjh
89. http://www.bshs.org.uk/
90. http://www.msu.edu/~largent/chsg/
91. http://www.eol.org/
92. http://www.shpltd.co.uk/hs.html
93. http://www.hssonline.org/main_pg.html
94. http://www.ishpssb.org/
95. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/Isis/home.html
96. http://www.springerlink.com/content/102950/
97. http://www.linnean.org/
98. http://www.sciencefriday.com/
99. http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/
100. http://www.shnh.org/index.html
101. http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html
102. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7687091117015926410&q=tvshow%3ACharlie_Rose+edward+wilson
103. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-965538023447447767&q=tvshow%3ACharlie_Rose+eldredge
104. http://mms//198.239.32.152/VideoArchives/200609/2006090090.wmv
105. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6105541
106. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9316654
107. http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/darwin/index.shtml
108. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html?widgetType=BlogArchive&widgetId=BlogArchive1&action=toggle&dir=close&toggle=YEARLY-1167634800000&toggleopen=MONTHLY-1178002800000
109. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=50
110. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html?widgetType=BlogArchive&widgetId=BlogArchive1&action=toggle&dir=close&toggle=MONTHLY-1178002800000&toggleopen=MONTHLY-1178002800000
111. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html
112. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html
113. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/if-i-had-unlimited-book-budget.html
114. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/museums-social-issues.html
115. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/mucho-darwin-for-tuesday.html
116. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-quote-darwin-skeptics.html
117. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-for-monday-morning.html
118. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/nice-photograph.html
119. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/blog-post-on-darwin-correspondence.html
120. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/charles-darwin-on-wikiquote.html
121. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/new-york-times-on-darwins-letters.html
122. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/stephen-jay-gould-dies-in-2002.html
123. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/recent-blog-posts.html
124. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/letters-reveal-darwins-caring-comic.html
125. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-had-stinky-feet.html
126. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/butler-act-repealed.html
127. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-letters-online.html
128. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/prisoner-of-scientific-parentheses.html
129. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/revamped-darwin-correspondence-project.html
130. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwinism-after-darwin-new-historical.html
131. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/more-on-linnaeus.html
132. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/linnaeus-name-giver.html
133. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/whats-new-at-darwin-online_15.html
134. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-begins-writing-big-species-book.html
135. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-on-chloroform.html
136. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-beagle.html
137. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/whats-new-at-darwin-online_11.html
138. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/flock-of-dodos.html
139. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/reviews-of-intelligent-designdover.html
140. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/whats-new-at-darwin-online_10.html
141. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-exhibit-in-chicago-soon.html
142. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-at-down.html
143. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/encyclopedia-of-life.html
144. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/reports-of-challenger-expedition.html
145. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/seeds-pigeons.html
146. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/recent-metascience-article-on-darwin.html
147. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/blog-posts.html
148. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/whats-new-at-darwin-online_05.html
149. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/john-t-scopes-arrested-for-teaching.html
150. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwin-and-presidential-debates.html
151. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/more-on-discovery-institute-linking.html
152. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/review-of-janet-brownes-origin.html
153. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/thomas-henry-huxley-4-may-1825-29-june.html
154. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/darwins-at-his-deathbed.html
155. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/recommended-reading.html
156. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/parody-chick-tract.html
157. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/newton-and-apples-darwin-and-finches.html
158. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/alfred-russel-wallace-article.html
159. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/whats-new-at-darwin-online.html
160. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/05/happy-birthday-linnaeus.html?widgetType=BlogArchive&widgetId=BlogArchive1&action=toggle&dir=open&toggle=MONTHLY-1175410800000&toggleopen=MONTHLY-1178002800000
161. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
162. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/04/robert-fitzroy-dies.html
163. http://thedispersalofdarwin.blogspot.com/2007/04/darwin-quotes-on-expression-of-emotions.html

Zooillogix - Don't Stick Your Fingers in the Cage...: Kingdom, Phylum, 
Class... Meet Giant Reptilian Worm Monster
http://zooillogix.blogspot.com/2007/05/kingdom-phylum-class-meet-giant.html

Zooillogix - Don't Stick Your Fingers in the Cage...

bizarre zoology, animal science, new species, exotic pets, news,
photography, videos, sophomoric humor, the Fabulous Flying Bleiman
Brothers...

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Kingdom, Phylum, Class... Meet Giant Reptilian Worm Monster

This month marks Carl Linnaeus' 300th birthday and biology textbooks
still look much the way he imagined they should. Linnaeus is the
father of the ranking system of classifying the living world. You
might remember kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, species from
the back of your hand in 9th grade biology class. Indeed, this
system has stood up surprisingly well for almost two and a half
centuries despite revolutionary advances in other scientific fields
like medicine, where we now know that flu is not caused by a small
gnome living in your stomach. Unfortunately for Linnaeus' legacy,
ranking is finally under attack by that most pesky of new fields:
DNA science. The new system, called cladistics, would compare
species based on genetic similarity and expand and refine groups
when new organisms were identified. It's all terribly uncouth if you
ask us.
One mammoth example of an organism improperly classified by
Linnaeus' ranking system is the Amphisbaenia or wormlizard, a
creature resembling an earthworm but more closely related to
lizards.
Once you go wormlizard... (photo credit Adeline Goss)
Amphibsaenia are burrowing creatures whose behavior is poorly
understood. They move through the earth by expanding and contracting
their segments in much the same way as earthworms. They have no
outer ears and their eyes are deeply recessed and covered with skin
and scales. Although there is one species in North America and they
have been found in Europe, the majority of Amphibsaenia live in
South America and Africa, where terrifying beasties seem to prefer
to reside.
Inspiration for Tremors?

Stranger Fruit: Linneaus at 300
http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/05/linneaus_at_300.php

Who am I?

[10]John M. Lynch is an evolutionary biologist and a historian of
biology at Arizona State University.

Categories

* [45]Anti-evolution
+ [46]In Their Own Words
+ [47]Intelligent Design
+ [48]Young Earth Creationism
* [49]Biology
+ [50]Evolution
o [51]Human Evolution
+ [52]Fish
+ [53]Mammals
o [54]Carnivores
* [55]Bits and Pieces
+ [56]Ask A ScienceBlogger
+ [57]Blog Memes and Such
+ [58]Friday Random Ten
+ [59]Poetry
+ [60]Sports
o [61]Irish Rugby
o [62]Maroon and Gold
+ [63]Weirdness
* [64]Books
* [65]Earth and Planetary Sciences
* [66]History and Philosophy (often of Science)
* [67]Humor
* [68]Math and Physics
* [69]Politics
* [70]Pseudoscience
* [71]Science Education
* [72]Technology
* [73]The Life Academic
+ [74]Conference Blogging
+ [75]Teaching

Some non-Sb sites

* [93]Panda's Thumb The source for information on evolutionary
biology and anti-evolutionism.
* [94]Sunbeams from Cucumbers Steve Reuland, a fellow PTer.
* [95]De Rerum Natura Reed Cartwright, another PTer.
* [96]Austringer Wes Elsberry, yet another PTer.
* [97]Astroblog Ian Musgrave is also a PTer.
* [98]Lippardblog Jim Lippard, a fellow Phoenix-area skeptic.
* [99]Red State Rabble Pat Hayes fighting the good fight in
Kansas.
* [100]Paleoblog Michael J. Ryan on evolution, extinction, and
fossilization.
* [101]Ocellated Biology from a Christian viewpoint.
* [102]hpb etc. Rob Skipper, philosopher of biology at Cincinnati.
* [103]Stridulations Julie's adventures with bugs.
* [104]Ontogeny Matt Dowling and ants.
* [105]Thoughts in a Haystack John Pieret edits the Talk Origins
Quote Mine project.
* [106]Unscrewing the Inscrutable Brent Rasmussen is "a
second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division
of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy".

Sciblings I have met

* [107]Adventures in Ethics and Science Janet Stemwedel
* [108]Aetiology Tara Smith
* [109]evolgen RPM
* [110]Evolving Thoughts John Wilkins
* [111]The Intersection Chris Mooney
* [112]Living the Scientific Life GrrlScientist
* [113]Neurotopia Evil Monkey
* [114]Pharyngula PZ Myers
* [115]The Voltage Gate Jeremy Bruno
* [116]The World's Fair David Ng and Ben Cohen

Linneaus at 300

As, no doubt, many will be posting today, [130]Linnaeus (the "father
of modern taxonomy") was born 300 years ago. It's a pity [131]a tiny
minority of taxonomists still dont get the genius of what he
achieved under the guise of "[132]complet[ing] the Darwinian
revolution".

Comments

#1
I think you are being unfair to the Phylocode. When De Candolle
formalised the present Linnaean scheme in 1867, he mentioned
explicitly that one day it would need to be abandoned as a patchwork
system. I don't agree with the Phylocode myself, but it is not
because they lack appreciation for Linnaeus.
Posted by: [142]John Wilkins | [143]May 23, 2007 06:56 AM

#2
Yeah, I guess I spent too much time with Quentin Wheeler last week
:)
Posted by: John Lynch | [144]May 23, 2007 12:58 PM

References

10. http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/
45. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/antievolution/
46. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/antievolution/in_their_own_words/
47. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/antievolution/intelligent_design/
48. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/antievolution/young_earth_creationism/
49. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/biology/
50. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/biology/evolution/
51. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/biology/evolution/human_evolution/
52. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/biology/fish/
53. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/biology/mammals/
54. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/biology/mammals/carnivores/
55. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/
56. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/ask_a_scienceblogger/
57. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/blog_memes_and_such/
58. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/friday_random_ten/
59. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/poetry/
60. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/sports/
61. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/sports/irish_rugby/
62. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/sports/maroon_and_gold/
63. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/bits_and_pieces/weirdness/
64. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/books/
65. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/earth_and_planetary_sciences/
66. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/history_and_philosophy_often_of_science/
67. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/humor/
68. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/math_and_physics/
69. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/politics/
70. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/pseudoscience/
71. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/science_education/
72. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/technology/
73. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/the_life_academic/
74. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/the_life_academic/conference_blogging/
75. http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/the_life_academic/teaching/
93. http://www.pandasthumb.org/
94. http://stevereuland.blogspot.com/
95. http://www.dererumnatura.us/
96. http://www.austringer.net/wp/
97. http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/
98. http://lippard.blogspot.com/
99. http://redstaterabble.blogspot.com/
100. http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com/
101. http://www.ocellated.com/
102. http://drrob.typepad.com/hpb_etc/
103. http://stridulations.blogspot.com/
104. http://mattdowling.blogspot.com//
105. http://dododreams.blogspot.com/
106. http://www.brentrasmussen.com/log/
107. http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience
108. http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/
109. http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen
110. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/
111. http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/
112. http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/
113. http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia
114. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula
115. http://scienceblogs.com/voltagegate
116. http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/

The annotated budak: Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium II - opening 
remarks
http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2007/05/biodiversity_an.html

Since the task began nearly three centuries ago, about 1.8 million
species of animals, plants, fungi and members of the other kingdoms
of life have been described. The art of assigning names to living
things and placing them in a systematic hierarchy that reflects
their relation to other taxa on the tree of life continues today in
the cluttered halls of natural history museums and  laboratories
such as [14]Systematics and Ecology Lab of NUS and the [15]Raffles
Museum of Biodiversity Research. Dried and alcohol-preserved
specimens from Singapore and the nearby region are prodded and
picked apart to reveal cryptic identities and a mind-boggling
variety of creatures with no names and fewer prospects. What is one
to make of the nearly [16]150 species of flies from a single family
(Dolichopodidae, the long-legged flies) discovered and described by
a Belgian entomologist in Singapore's freshwater swamps and
mangroves in a single year?

In the time of [17]Carl von Linnaeus about 300 years ago, some 7,700
species of plants and 4,400 species of animals were known. Since
then, scientists have embarked on a worldwide frenzy for collection
and taxonomy, aided in recent decades by new tools that revealed the
existence of hitherto hidden creatures whose status became apparent
when one looks at their genotype, phenology or even overlooked
traits such as  the distinctive courtship songs of apparently
conspecific [18]grasshoppers. But even this massive effort pales
before the enormity of the task that lies before a tiny army of
workers (the number of taxonomists working on liverworts and
hornworts worldwide could probably fit into a single bus);
biodiversity experts estimate that there are [19]at least 100
million living species present on the earth today. Many of these are
becoming extinct without a trace as species-rich habitats
(particularly in the tropical regions) such as rainforests,
wetlands, coral reefs, freshwater and peat swamps and mangroves are
cleared in the name of progress daily. A fortunate few may end up
with a name thanks to the last-ditch effort of researchers who
sampled a habitat before its demise. But most perish without a
chance to offer even a glimpse at their form and function in the
chain of life; in turn, [20]their extinction is likely to have
unpredictable consequences on the plants and animals they feed upon
as well as those that prey upon them.

Singapore likes to present itself as a model country, whatever that
means. In assessing the global threat to biodiversity, this island
nation serves as a prime exhibit of how headlong development can
swamp what once was an isle of near infinite biological wealth.
[21]Up to 73 percent of Singapore's plant and animal species are now
extinct and over three-quarters of those that remain are threatened
with habitat loss, poaching and other activities such as the release
of non-native species that prey on or outcompete indigenous
wildlife. The tigers and elephants are gone, but so are countless
smaller creatures and plants, some of which were wiped out along
with their entire habitats. Out of seven endemic plants, only one
remains, an aquatic aroid that clings to a tenuous existence in one
small jungle pool. A prolonged drought, perhaps brought upon by more
extreme weather patterns, would mean the end for this little herb.
The trogons and broadbills, with their dazzling plumage of reds,
blues and greens, are long gone, having no means of surviving in the
fragmented and degraded forests whose fringes are yet threatened by
luxury apartments and golf courses. In the depths of Upper Seletar
Reservoir lie the remains of Mandai's wetlands, where the giant
fighting fish [22]Betta tomi once thrived. Now locally extinct, this
species faces a precarious existence in Johor, where its habitat of
coastal peat swamps are being drained.

[23][509121032_3fdefa22c4_m_d.jpg]
[24]41BoSS_II-22may2007.jpg
Originally uploaded by [25]habitatnews.

What then is left, other than the mynahs, house crows, pigeons,
red-eared sliders and changaeble lizards that landed on these shores
thanks to man? "What remains is still very substantial," stressed
Ambassador-At-Large Professor Tommy Koh, in his opening address at
the 2nd [26]Biodiversity of Singapore Symposium on 22 May 2007. And
this is true, he added, despite the fact that up to 95% of
Singapore's original natural habitats, from freshwater swamps and
lowland coastal rainforests to reefs richer than those in the
Caribbean and mangroves with myriad secrets, have been destroyed.
The quote may be blasé to nature enthusiasts, but it bears repeating
the observation of botanist and conservationist David Bellamy that
Bukit Timah Reserve alone contains [27]more species of trees than
the entire North American continent.

The seas surrounding Singapore, often regarded as lifeless, harbour
more than 800 species of fish and nearly 200 species of hard corals.
On land, there remain 2,500 species of plants, 360 bird species, 270
species of butterflies, 120 species of reptiles, 75 mammalian
species, 25 species of amphibians and many more are being
discovered, especially in the [28]freshwater swamp forest of Nee
Soon, a locality that is probably richer in biodiversity than the
more famous reserve of Bukit Timah. The swamp forest also shelters
three endemic freshwater crabs as well as [29]two of Singapore's
most threatened endemic mammals, the cream-coloured giant squirrel
(Ratufa affinis affinis) and banded leaf monkey (Presbytis femoralis
femoralis). Only about 10 of these cat-size squirrels are thought to
remain and a single troupe of leaf monkeys is all that survives.
Their extinction would be "a great shame" to Professor Koh, who
notes that at some point in history, mankind has "lost the balance
between the human enterprise and the natural world" to his peril.

[30]The occasion, which also commemorated the [31]International Day
for Biological Diversity as well as the  [32]Linnaean Tercentenary
(more of that in a later post), was also Professor Koh's to tout the
2nd edition (with colour!) of the book [33]The Natural Heritage of
Singapore, co-authored by a quartet of local biodiversity
luminaries. Though it masquerades as a textbook, this volume
probably achieves the most successful balance to date between
ecological comprehensiveness and lay accessibility, with a
substantial plea for the preservation of [34]what remains in the
name of the environmental and human services provided by local
biodiversity. Taken together with earlier resources such as the
BP-Science Centre pocket guides ([35]some of which are now available
online) and live channels such as [36]HabitatNews, [37]Wild
Singapore and the [38]Bird Ecology Study Group blog, it is a perfect
antidote to the stupefying mentality that the natural environment is
absent and therefore meaningless to the Singapore equation.

[39][510743615_18f780e717_m.jpg]
[40]Tommy Koh at BoSS
Originally uploaded by [41]habitatnews.

Professor Koh, who is also the patron of the [42]Nature Society of
Singapore, recently penned an op-ed, "[43]Mother Earth Is Sick" that
was published in the Straits Times on Earth Day. Pursuing the theme
of his article, in which he outlined a good handful of low-hanging
fruits that could be plucked locally, Professor Koh made an appeal
to developing nations, notably China and India, which are currently
not obligated to meet the emissions quotas set by the Kyoto
Protocol, to set aside ideological differences and initiate
unilateral targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Though latecomers
to the industrialised state-of-being, these nations have as much
right to develop and aspire to higher living standards as any other
country, he noted. But the [44]sheer scale and pace of modernisation
of China and India - with the [45]consequent output of pollutants
and emissions that affect lives far beyond their borders - create a
[46]compelling case for these nations to "accept their correlative
obligations as global citizens."

"What is the point of getting rich if you [47]create an environment
in which [48]you cannot live?" asks Professor Koh. Improving energy
efficiency ([49]coal still dominates in Chinese plants) would be a
[50]clear priority as well as a target with tangible benefits for
both the economy and environment. In the long term, China could
lower its dependence and vulnerability to [51]fossil fuels as well
as volatile energy markets by emulating the post oil crisis efforts
of Japan, which now uses [52]just one-ninth of the energy used by
China to generate every unit of GDP. (Singapore [53]isn't exactly
the top performer in this arena either, added Professor Koh). The
[54]Yangtze River Dolphin is now [55]functionally extinct (the first
cetacean to face this dubious fate, although others could follow as
well as [56]climate change disrupts their food chain) and with a
[57]third of fish species in the river also extirpated, China may
face [58]a future of undrinkable and barren waterways, encroaching
[59]deserts and foul air.

In its own way, Singapore is now embarking on such a path, with the
Singapore Green Plan 2012, and Professor Koh sees a potential for
greater use of clean and renewable energy sources. The island's
deep-pocketed financial sector could also serve as a self-serving
force for positive change, in promoting carbon trading, underwriting
clean energy projects as well as broader investments that
incorporate steps to mitigate [60]climate change.  "It's time for
Singapore and Asean to rise to the challenge" of global warming, he
said in closing, pointing out that environmental sustainability and
climate change is now a key agenda for Asean in its forthcoming
summit. Will this sudden surge of urgency be too little, too late,
or more talk than walk? The next decade will tell.

References

14. http://www.dbs.nus.edu.sg/lab/sys_lab/home.htm
15. http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/
16. http://budak.blogs.com/the_annotated_budak/2006/03/a_tale_of_twopt.html
17. http://www.linnean.org/index.php?id=47
18. http://www.iitp.ru/personal/vedenina/HYBRID/hybrid_e.htm
19. http://sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=11&article=newspecies
20. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/05/gone.html
21. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0723_030723_singapore.html
22. http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=27198
23. http://flickr.com/photos/habitatnews/509121032/
24. http://flickr.com/photos/habitatnews/509121032/
25. http://www.flickr.com/people/habitatnews/
26. http://boss2.rafflesmuseum.net/
27. http://www.sochaczewski.com/ARTbeetles-geographical.htm
28. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112677009/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
29. http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/media/Archives2002/Going___%20brGoing___%20brGone%20-%20APRIL%208,%202002.htm
30. http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/news/index.php?entry=/meetings/20070522-boss2_photos.txt
31. http://www.cbd.int/programmes/outreach/awareness/biodiv-day-2007.shtml
32. http://www.linnean.org/index.php?id=82
33. http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/index.php?entry=/news/20070508-natural_heritage_singapore.txt
34. http://www.wildsingapore.com/news/20050708/050809-3.htm
35. http://www.wildsingapore.com/links.htm#guide
36. http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/
37. http://www.wildsingapore.com/
38. http://besgroup.talfrynature.com/
39. http://flickr.com/photos/budak/510743615/
40. http://flickr.com/photos/budak/510743615/
41. http://www.flickr.com/people/habitatnews/
42. http://www.nss.org.sg/
43. http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/biodiversitysymposium2/tommy_koh.html
44. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/07/news/warm.php
45. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/China_India_Lead_15_Percent_Rise_In_CO2_Emissions.html
46. http://www.oycf.org/Perspectives/8_103100/downside_of_growth.htm
47. http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/state/chinaeco/intro.htm
48. http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln270/FEER-environment.htm
49. http://www.chinaembassy.org.in/eng/zgbd/t266267.htm
50. http://www.conservation.org/xp/frontlines/2007/01230702.xml
51. http://conservationfinance.wordpress.com/2006/12/04/chinas-staggering-environmental-crisis/
52. http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Amid_tension_Japan_China_talk_about_energy-saving.html
53. http://www.nccc.gov.sg/Newsroom/speeches_5.shtm
54. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_River_Dolphin
55. http://www.baiji.org/fileadmin/pdf/131206_YFDE_Nrelease.pdf
56. http://www.panda.org/news_facts/newsroom/index.cfm?uNewsID=102980
57. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070119-fish-china.html
58. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China
59. http://www.gluckman.com/ChinaDesert.html
60. http://worldwildlife.org/globalwarming/

A Blog Around The Clock : Linnaeus Tricentennial tomorrow
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_tricentennial_tomorro.php

Tomorrow is 300th birthday of Carl von Linne (or Carlus Linnaeus)
and there will be celebrations in Sweden and around the world. So,
tomorrow is a good day for a post about him (and if I find enough
time and energy, I may compile the best ones into a mini-carnival).

Comments

Don't forget mine...

Posted by: [104]John Wilkins | [105]May 23, 2007 08:54 AM

The linkfest is already in the process of being made and your posts,
John, are coming first!

Posted by: [106]coturnix | [107]May 23, 2007 08:57 AM

I heard on today's Writer's Almanac that "Late in his life, Linnaeus
said that the introduction of rhubarb to Sweden was his proudest
achievement." He weren't no dummy. rb

Posted by: arby | [108]May 23, 2007 10:33 AM

References

104. http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/
105. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_tricentennial_tomorro.php#comment-441509
106. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/
107. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_tricentennial_tomorro.php#comment-441512
108. http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2007/05/linnaeus_tricentennial_tomorro.php#comment-441610

NPR : DNA Science Challenges Sweden's Famed Botanist
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10285885

DNA Science Challenges Sweden's Famed Botanist

[29]Listen to this story... by Addie Goss

Carl Linnaeus

Swedish physician and botanist Carl Linnaeus was the founder of the
modern system of binomial nomenclature for plants. Hulton
Archive/Getty Images

[30]This earthworm-like creature at the National Museum of Natural
History is a lizard.
[31][icon_enlarge.gif] Enlarge
Adeline Goss

This earthworm-like creature at the National Museum of Natural
History is a lizard.

[32]All Things Considered, May 20, 2007 · This month marks the 300th
birthday of Carl Linnaeus, Sweden's beloved botanist who gave order
to the plant and animal kingdoms.

The Swedes will celebrate on Wednesday with a jubilee in Uppsala,
complete with Linnaeus cream cakes.

Why all the fuss? Linnaeus created the words that describe the
living world. "Homo sapiens," for example, is a Linnaeus "binomial"
to describe humans. The botanist and his disciples traveled the
world collecting species, naming them, and organizing them.

Linnaeus' organizing principle -- called ranking -- is alive today
in every high school biology classroom, where students learn
mnemonics for ranking living beings: kingdom, phylum, class, order,
family, genus and species. Within these ranks, organisms are lumped
together by common traits.

But modern science is complicating Linnaeus' ranking system. DNA
analysis often shows that two organisms, thought to be distant
relatives, are actually first cousins. There are now sub-orders,
super-orders, even "tribes."

Kevin de Queiroz, curator of the reptile and amphibian collection at
the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., says
that the most recent example in his collection is something
nicknamed a "worm lizard."

With no arms and no legs, the lizards, called Amphisbaenia, look
like bloated earthworms. Their name comes from Amphisbaena, a
mythical serpent with a head at each end. De Queiroz didn't know
which shelf to put them on until recently, when DNA analysis showed
they were related to some of the most common lizards in Europe.

These changes have made the evolutionary "tree" somewhat messy. Some
taxonomists are moving away from the ranking system, and instead
organizing species strictly by how they evolved. Others, faithful to
Linnaeus, say the ranks make taxonomy easier to understand.

Related NPR Stories

* Feb. 8, 2005
[33]Scientists Auction Right to Name Monkey Species
* May 11, 2007
[34]The Encyclopedia of Life
* Feb. 9, 2003
[35]Cataloging the World of Plants

References

30. javascript:void(0);
31. javascript:void(0);
32. http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2
33. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4490716
34. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10136879
35. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=988858

NPR : Scientists Auction Right to Name Monkey Species
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4490716

Listen to this story... by Alex Chadwick

Day to Day, February 8, 2005 · Field biologist Robert Wallace and a
team of researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have
discovered a new species of monkey in Bolivia's Madidi National
Park. A charity auction is being held for the rights to name the
monkey. NPR's Alex Chadwick talks with Wallace about his rare find.

al_fruitbat: Happy Birthday Linnaeus!
http://al-fruitbat.livejournal.com/91077.html

Today is the 300th birthday of Carolus Linnaeus (aka Carl Linné),
the great biologist who invented binomial nomenclature.
Thanks to him, we refer to Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes,
Meganictiphanes norvegica, Lasius fuliginosus, Rattus rattus, Vespa
vulgaris, Felis libyca, Myrmica rufa and many more.
I typed those 8 from memory. How many can you identify without
google? Just so you know, they are heavily biased towards animals
that I like, although I'm shocked that I can't give the latin name
of two out of my three favourite animals!
[edit] Panthera tigris and Enhydra lutris complete my set of
favourites.
____________________________________________________________________

lanfykins
2007-05-23 12:50 pm UTC (link)
canis lupus, canis familiaris, rattus norwegicus, yersinia pestis,
plasmodiaum falciparum, plasmodium vivax, plasmodium malariae... I
think my bias may be showing too :)

lanfykins
2007-05-23 12:52 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and I recognise the so-called wise man, chimpanzee, rat and
tiger.

undyingking
2007-05-23 01:04 pm UTC (link)
I can add common wasp and red ant to those, on a "know your enemy"
basis.
But I thought tigers were Panthera tigris? Goodness knows what a
"Libyan cat" might be, a lynx perhaps?

al_fruitbat
2007-05-23 01:11 pm UTC (link)
Red ant? No, Myrmica rufa is a wood ant. It is a bit red though.
Felis libyca is the egyptian wild cat, the ancestor of all domestic
cats (which are called Felis catus)

al_fruitbat
2007-05-23 01:22 pm UTC (link)
Ooh! I'm wrong! You're right. Formica rufa is the wood ant. I've
gone and screwed up the genuses. D'oh!

cardinalsin
2007-05-23 04:51 pm UTC (link)
Hehe, ants are made of formica!

al_fruitbat
2007-05-23 05:08 pm UTC (link)
Formica is latin for 'ant'.

undyingking
2007-05-23 05:19 pm UTC (link)
I always thought formica was so called because it was derived from
formic acid somehow, maybe via a urea-formaldehyde resin. But it
seems it was because it was designed as a substitute "for mica".
Boring fact of the day!

bateleur
2007-05-23 01:15 pm UTC (link)
I was thinking possibly some kind of domestic cat. They're not all
Felis Cattus are they ? I have some vague idea that all the big cats
are Panthera <something>.

lanfykins
2007-05-23 01:39 pm UTC (link)
Panthera tigris is listed :)

undyingking
2007-05-23 02:01 pm UTC (link)
Curse you and your ability to read all the way to the bottom of a
post! ;-)

elethiomel
2007-05-23 01:40 pm UTC (link)
Specifically the black rat, rather than the altogether cuter
brown/norwegian/wharf rat

lanfykins
2007-05-23 01:43 pm UTC (link)
I thought it was the Norwegian rat that was black, and rattus rattus
was brown?
Help, someone who knows about rats!

al_fruitbat
2007-05-23 01:47 pm UTC (link)
Gotta go with the one most associated with plague ;-)

elethiomel
2007-05-23 03:00 pm UTC (link)
Krill are amongst your favourite animals?

al_fruitbat
2007-05-23 03:11 pm UTC (link)
They're krilliant! [sorry]
I dunno why I remember the latin name for 'em, I just do. That said,
I like most invertebrates.

cardinalsin
2007-05-23 04:50 pm UTC (link)
The three I can ID are man, the chimpanzee and black rat. I think
the last is some sort of mushroom, but don't actually recognise.
Obviously, the second-last is a feline of some kind. The clue didn't
help at all!

al_fruitbat
2007-05-23 05:15 pm UTC (link)
Sorry that the clue didn't help. My favourite animals are the ant,
the tiger and the sea otter, but I don't expect anyone (apart from
[info] _alanna to know this ;-)

cardinalsin
2007-05-23 07:05 pm UTC (link)
Well, I guessed the ant, but didn't actually know which name it was.
Myrmica would have been my guess, if I hadn't inexplicably believed
it to be a mushroom :o/

Grattis Linné « Returning to my roots...a year in the ancestral 
homeland
http://thebigswede.wordpress.com/2007/05/23/grattis-linne/
Grattis Linné May 23, 2007

Posted by thebigswede in Uncategorized. trackback

"Gud skapade, Linné ordnade"

"God created, Linnaeus arranged"

Today, the 23rd of may, is Carl Linnaeus's 300th birthday. While
there are many Swedes who have shaped science, medicine, math, art,
politics and our world in general, there is only one Carl Linnaeus.
In Uppsala, 2007 has been a perpetual celebration of this man and
his work at this university. As a biologist myself, I feel
privileged to be a part of honoring this great man in the city and
country that he loved. Today there are leaders from around the world
that have gathered in Uppsala, including the emperor and empress of
Japan. The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, and somewhere
I'm sure Carl is looking down and is