Staffan Müller-Wille (Sociology and
Philosophy, University of Exeter)
Taxonomic Wars: Seventeenth Century Debates
from the Point of View of Linnaeus
A
famous debate between John Ray, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort and Augustus
Quirinus Rivinus at the end of the seventeenth century has often been portrayed
as signalling the beginning of a rift between classificatory methods relying on
logical division and classificatory methods relying on empirical grouping.
Interestingly, a couple of decades later, Linnaeus showed very little
excitement in reviewing this debate, and this although he was the first to
introduce the terminological distinction of artificial vs. natural methods. In
my paper, I will explain Linnaeus's indifference by the fact that earlier
debates were revolving around problems of plant identification. From Linnaeus's
perspective, they were therefore concerned with artificial methods alone --
diagnostic tools, that is, which were artificial no matter how many different
characters were taken into consideration. The natural method Linnaeus proposed,
on the other hand, was not about identification, but about relations of
equivalence which played a vital, although largely implicit role in the
practices of specimen exchange on which naturalists relied to acquire knowledge
of the natural world.
