Definition/Introduction
Among early modern naturalists, “systems of nature” are the methods used by naturalists to classify living beings. Taxonomy, a word coined only in 1813 by de Candolle, refers to the classes or taxa that are obtained by applying one or another method of classification. In order to illustrate their variety, some such methods are presented in section “The Variety of Systems.” The following sections explain the difference between natural and artificial systems (section “Artificial and Natural Systems”) and summarize contemporary debates on early modern taxonomy and essentialism (section “Essentialism”). Early modern taxonomists are indeed not the only humans to classify natural beings (section “The Classificatory Mind”). What however could be the specificity of their activity? That question is addressed in sections “The Lack of a Communal Experience,” “Abstraction from the...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Atran S (1990) Cognitive foundations of natural history: towards an anthropology of science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Berlin B (1992) Ethnobiological classification: principles of categorization of plants and animals in traditional societies. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Cook A (2010) Linnaeus and Chinese plants: a test of the linguistic imperialism thesis. Notes Rec R Soc 64:121–138
Daston L (2004) Type specimens and scientific memory. Crit Inq 31:153–182
Earle R (2016) The pleasures of taxonomy: Casta paintings, classification, and colonialism. William Mary Q 73:427–466
Ellen R (2017) Categorizing natural objects: some issues arising from recent work in cognitive anthropology and ethnobiological classification. In: Pommerening T, Bisang W (eds) Classification from antiquity to modern times: sources, methods, and theories from an interdisciplinary perspective. Gruyter, Berlin, pp 263–277
Funk H (2014) Describing plants in a new mode: the introduction of dichotomies into sixteenth-century botanical literature. Arch Nat Hist 41:100–112
Goody J (1977) The domestication of the savage mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Harrison P (2009) Linnaeus as a second Adam? Taxonomy and the religious vocation. Zygon 44:879–893
Hoquet T (2014) Biologization of race and racialization of the human: Bernier, Buffon, Linnaeus. In: Bancel N, David T, Thomas DRD (eds) The invention of race: scientific and popular representations. Routledge, New York, pp 17–32
Hull DL (1965) The effect of essentialism on taxonomy–two thousand years of stasis (I). Br J Philos Sci 15:314–326
Latour B (1988) Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Laudan R (1989) Individuals, species and the development of mineralogy and geology. In: Ruse M (ed) What the philosophy of biology is. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 221–233
Margócsy D (2014) Commercial visions: science, trade, and visual culture in the Dutch Golden Age. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
McClellan JE, Regourd F (2000) The colonial machine: French science and colonization in the ancien regime. Osiris 15:31–50
Müller-Wille S (2013) Systems and how Linnaeus looked at them in retrospect. Ann Sci 70:305–317
Müller-Wille S, Charmantier I (2012) Natural history and information overload: the case of Linnaeus. Stud Hist Philos Sci Part C Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 43:4–15
Needham J (1986) Science and civilisation in China, vol 6, part 1. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Ogilvie BW (2003) The many books of nature: renaissance naturalists and information overload. J Hist Ideas 64:29
Richards RA (2016) Biological classification: a philosophical introduction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Romero A (2012) When whales became mammals: the scientific journey of cetaceans from fish to mammals in the history of science. In: Romero A, Keith E (eds) New approaches to the study of marine mammal. Intech, London, pp 3–30
Schiebinger L (1993) Why mammals are called mammals: gender politics in eighteenth-century natural history. Am Hist Rev 98:382–411
Schiebinger L, Swan C (eds) (2007) Colonial botany: science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia
Sloan PR (1972) John Locke, John Ray, and the problem of the natural system. J Hist Biol 5:1–53
Sloan PR (1976) The Buffon-Linnaeus controversy. Isis 67:356–375
Smith JEH (2015) Nature, human nature, and human difference: race in early modern philosophy. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Winsor MP (2003) Non-essentialist methods in pre-Darwinian taxonomy. Biol Philos 18:387–400
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
De Meyer, T. (2020). Nature and Taxonomy, Systems of. In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_157-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_157-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities