Dubbed the “Father of Modern Taxonomy,” Carolus Linnaeus (aka Carl Linnaeus, or Carl von Linné) is as much of a legend to geeky scientists as The Boss is to American music lovers. Linnaeus orchestrated a unifying element that was missing prior to his work by answering the proverbial question, “how are we going to name all the critters we discover?” To understand how his work came about, let’s recap a bit of pre-Linnaean history.

The oldest system of naming animals is called folk taxonomy, or the traditional practice of naming species. Each culture has unique names and categories for the plants and animals that surround its people. Depending on your language, a monkey is a mono (Spanish) or singe (French) or scimmia (Italian), or izinkawu (Zulu), just to name a few.

Some scientists even believe that the human tendency to name and group other life forms is actually based on a genetic, instinctual fondness for nature. Good “nature genes” are especially important for people living in primitive conditions, where understanding animal behavior and plant biology could mean the difference between life and death.

While folk taxonomy was (and still is) extremely important and valuable in local communities, scientists began sensing its limitations to research as the scientific community slowly became more interconnected beginning  around 300 BC. During this time, scholars in Europe began to take interest the study of plants and animals sent back from soldiers such as Alexander the Great, who were out patrolling the planet on conquering missions. The scholars plodded away, intent on drawing, naming, and sorting every plant and animal specimen they were given.

Slow progress in naming organisms continued with time, but things were about to get a little more exciting for researchers. During the late 16^th century, dubbed the Age of Exploration, adventurous trailblazers, such as Hudson, Magellan, and Cortez began traveling far around the globe, sending back formerly undescribed plant and animal specimens to scientists and also bringing back vivid depictions of organisms that they encountered on their journeys. Scientists called “naturalists” were commissioned by royalties to journey with the explorers, collecting and describing all the species they came upon while traveling. Infamous naturalist Charles Darwin collected vast amounts of information as he traveled on the H.M.S. Beagle, an English ship chartered as a science expedition around the world.

Now, as you can imagine, these discoveries presented great opportunities for eager scientists back in Europe. However, you can also envision thousands and thousands of organisms being examined by hundreds of scientists without the modern conveniences of conference calls or internet chat rooms for quick discussions. At that time, there was not a common standard for composing the names of the organisms, and there were no methods for grouping all these organisms together in a logical manner. Some scientists were using folk taxonomy terms to construct names, while some were simply naming organism after themselves. Some organisms were given long names composed of a string of flowery Latin words, while some only had names made up of a single syllable.

The Father of Modern Taxonomy

Enter Linnaeus. Luckily, he understood that science needed a system of taxonomy (naming all the critters) and an easy method of grouping organisms into appropriate categories. Unlike others before him, Linnaeus said that each organism should have two specific names, which he termed the “genus” and “species” names.  The chic term for his system is binomial nomenclature, or the practice of assigning each living thing a two-part name (that would be the scientific name). The scientific name is always written in Latin, with the first word of the name capitalized and the second word in lower case. Both the Latin names are either italicized or underscored. Let’s look at an example. To me, my furry four-legged pet’s name is “dog”, specifically “cocker spaniel”, and even more specifically “Cosette.”  These are some of her common names, but in every part of the world, her only scientific name is Canis familiaris. Thank you Mr. Linnaeus for giving scientists everywhere a way to unite!

Linnaeus also said we should group all the organisms of the world based on their similarities and differences. (One of these things is not like the other… ) Although he was primarily a botanist, Linnaeus took all the species known at that time (about 7,700 plant and 4,400 animals) and grouped them into certain categories you probably had to memorize in 5th grade. Remember King Philip Came Over for Grape Soda?  Now what does that stand for? Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species.  Very good! So, according to Linnaeus, me and my dog and all the other primates we’ve talked about belong to Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Chordata, and Class Mammalia.  Linnaeus put together this information (well, minus the part about me and my dog) into one of the great classic works in the history of science, Systema Naturae. Revised and published in 1758, this book is seen as official start of modern taxonomy and the first formal biological classification. Basically, this book has enabled scientists all over the globe to communicate more effectively with each other, without language and methodological barriers.

Now, most scientists agree on the approach of the Linnaean system, but do they agree on which organisms actually belong to which groupings? Not by a long shot, as taxonomy is one of the most contentious fields within science, full of titillating scandal and heated arguments between different camps of thought. Taxonomy is not static, since new discoveries can completely alter former classification groupings. I suppose it’s kind of like Linnaeus invented the game, but modern players can alter the rules.  While this is a good thing in many ways, it may not be surprising that the players fiercely disagree on how and when the rules should change.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 10th, 2010 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Primate Blog.