Page 13 - Pharmacy History 32 July 2007

Order from chaos system and beauty
A paper to mark the occasion of the tercentenary of the birth of Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)
By Professor John Pearn AM RFD FLS
Department of Paediatrics & Child Health, Royal Children’s Hospital, Herston Qld 4029
T he Swedish doctor-botanist, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778)
invented the binomial system of biological nomenclature
– the brilliant concept of giving every living thing two simple names, a genus and a species within it.
Perhaps taken for granted today,
this single invention has been hailed as one of the 20 most significant inventions in the history of science. It brought order and system to our understanding of the living world. It made possible an understanding of the relationships of living things one to another, and group to group. Linnaeus was born on 23 May 1707; and in May 2007 scores of special tercentenary celebrations are being held in scientific institutions throughout the world, to both acknowledge and reappraise the significance of his work.
As Professor of Medicine and Botany at Uppsala, in Sweden, Linnaeus
was described as being ‘brown-
eyed, nimble, hasty and one who
did everything promptly’. He was much-loved by the medical students whom he taught and whom he led on Sunday botanical collecting trips in the woods near the University. After a famous journey to Lapland, he graduated in medicine in Holland in 1735. Whilst he was a medical student he conceived the idea of simplifying the classification, initially of plants, using the male reproductive organs of flowers. In 1735, having completed this pioneering research whilst still a medical student, he published Systema Naturae which ran to 18 editions over the next century. The 10th edition of that work, published in 1758, contained the entry for Homo sapiens, thus bringing
humankind into a new relationship with all living things. This work established the scaffolding which has proved to be one of the most enduring contributions to science. Of the billions of people who have lived on planet Earth, there are
few who can truly be described as esteemed members of ‘The Hall of Fame of the History of Ideas’. One such person, who brought order to the understanding of the living world, was Professor Carl Linnaeus, who
for the last 17 years of his life, used the Latin form of his name, Carl von Linné.
A Swede of humble birth, it is
now accepted that he was one of
the world’s greatest inventors. His central contributions – the binomial naming of animals and plants, of distinguishing every living thing
by two Latin words so that anyone throughout the world could recognise and identify them – this great advance has been said to be ‘as great an invention as the locomotive or the telephone’.
The year 2007 is the tercentenary
of Linnaeus’ birth. Throughout the world, and particularly throughout the halls of education, science and knowledge, his Tercentenary is being celebrated in May 2007. With
that celebration has come a critical appraisal and audit of the significance of his work and his place in the history of the cultural evolution of humankind.
Linnaeus’ life is well known and more than 30 biographies have been written about this singular man.
He himself was to write that: ‘I was born on the night between the 22nd and 23rd May, 1707, just in the finest part of the spring, when the cuckoo had proclaimed the arrival
of summer’. He was born the son of a village pastor in the impoverished village of Rashault in the district of Smaland in Sweden. It was a time of uproar and turmoil in the Swedish Nation. In 1710, when Linnaeus was three years of age, plague was rife and the harvests poor; and the burden
of crippling taxation ‘had reduced the material conditions of life to less even than the reasonable minimum to which the poor of that region were already accustomed’
His early passion for plants and animals in the countryside led to many travels in the local woods.
The influence of the dramatically- changing Swedish seasons remained with him forever. Even after he had become a famous medical teacher, many of his early experiences of poverty influenced his persona.
His orthodox religious upbringing engendered in him a religious orthodoxy. He recorded that ‘I never really left the Smaland milieu of my childhood’.
volume 3 ■ no 32 ■ JULY 2007
Pharmacy History Australia ■ 13
Carl von Linné