Scientist Carl Linnaeus. Carl Linnaeus short biography

In the characteristics scientific activity Linnaeus, in his biography itself, described in some detail all of his main works on botany, and each of them was characterized separately. Very little was said about Linnaeus' work in the fields of zoology, mineralogy and medicine.

The significance of Linnaeus's works can be more clearly understood when considering them in connection with the general state of natural science at the beginning of his scientific activity.

Before moving on to this issue, it would be appropriate to familiarize yourself with Linnaeus’s own assessment of his own activities, following the example of how this was done when considering his individual works. Of exceptional interest in this regard is the chapter “Linnaei merita et inventa” published by Afzelius in his autobiography. We provide the translation of this chapter here.

Merits and discoveries of Linnaeus

He built botany from its foundations on a site that had previously been in ruins, so we can assume that since his time this science has taken on a completely different appearance and begun a new era.

He designated in precise terms, first of all, the Leaves of plants, thanks to which all descriptions of plants received the new kind and lighting.
He was the first to possess Plant Divination (Prolepsin Plantarum), a rare discovery in nature, in which traces of the Creator himself appear.

He looked at the transformations (changes) of plants in a new way and thereby proved the basis of reproduction.
He presented in a clear light the gender of plants, which had been subject to doubt, and showed the effect of pollen on the moisture content of the stigma.
He constructed the Reproductive System as a result of countless observations of stamens and pistils in all plants, which had been neglected until that time.
He first introduced into botany many Parts of Reproduction under their own names, such as Calyx, Perianth, Involucre, Scale, Wing, etc. Corolla and Nectaries, Anthers, Ovary, Style, Stigma, Pod and Bob, Drupe and Receptacle, besides many words, also Stipule and Bract, Arrow, Pedicel and Petiole.
He described anew, in accordance with the number, appearance, position and proportionality of all parts of fruiting, the Genera, which were thought to be impossible to determine accurately enough - and they became recognized; he discovered twice as many genera as had been found by all the authors before him.
He was the first to distinguish plant species by fundamental differences and also identified most Indian ones.
He introduced for the first time in all natural science simple names, for its clarity and brevity.
He reduced the varieties that swamped botany to their species.
He added the habitat of plants (Loca plantarum) to the species as a basis for plant culture.
He explored plant habitats (Stationes plantarum) as a basis for agriculture.
He first developed the Floral Calendar as a guide for all agricultural activities and from the Blossoming of the Trees he showed the time of sowing.
He first saw and described the Flora Clock.
He first discovered the Dream of Plants.
He dared to talk about plant hybrids and gave posterity indications of the Cause of species (Specierum causam).
He set Pan suecicus and Pandora suecica as works that should be continued by all strata of the people, since previously they did not know how to properly manage the economy. (These names refer to Linnaeus’ extensive work on the study of Swedish food plants.)
He understood better than anyone else before him the generation of minerals and showed that crystals arise from salts and that hard stones come from soft (rocks), confirmed the decrease of water and proved 4 uplifts of land, not to mention the fact that he first established the true method in the mineral kingdom.
He alone discovered more animals than all before him, and he was the very first to give their generic and specific characteristics using a natural method. He should be credited with knowledge of insects and their characteristics, not to mention the fact that he was the first to discover an artificial method for recognizing fish by their fins, mollusks by their shells, and snakes by their scutes. He classified whales as mammals, naked reptiles as amphibians, and separated worms from insects.
He showed in physiology the living nature of the medullary (core) substance, endless in reproduction and multiplication; that it can never be reproduced in offspring except as belonging to the maternal organism; that what is reproduced according to the appearance of the body belongs to the father, and according to the medullary system belongs to the mother; as complex animals (Animalia composita) should be understood; and the brain is derived from electrical influences perceived through the lungs.
In pathology he gave the most distinct Signs of disease, based on the principles of Sauvage, but greatly improved; he awakened the idea of glandular infarction as a cause of painful deaths; he was the first to clearly see that Fever comes from an internal disease, spread by cold and contracted by heat, and he proved the contagiousness of living peelings of the skin. He was the first to correctly recognize tapeworms.
He first introduced Dulcamara, Herb into practice among Swedish doctors. Brittanica, Senega, Spigelia, Cynomorium, Conyza, Linnaea.
He was the first to show the properties of plants, substantiate with this the active principles of medicinal agents that had previously been mysterious, showed their mode of action and refuted the idea of toxicity among practitioners.
He presented the diet according to his own method, based on observations and experience, and gave it the form of experimental physics.
He never neglected the economic use of plants, but collected [information about this] with the greatest attention to species, which was previously only rarely taken into account by naturalists.
He discovered the Organization of Nature (Politia Naturae) or Divine Economy, and thereby opened the way for descendants into an immeasurable new region.
He put Fauna in first place for science and was the first to explore the naturalities of the northern regions of Scandinavia down to the smallest; not to mention the fact that here in the country he established the first and largest Botanical Garden, which before him was not even worthy of mention, and that here he founded the first museum of animals in wine spirit.

Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. scientific botany and zoology consisted most of all in a simple acquaintance with living organisms and describing them, listing them in one order or another. Towards a factual knowledge of the plants and animals that inhabited European countries, over time, more and more overseas ones were added. This is the increasing diversity of living organisms covered by the science of the time, in high degree contributed to the accumulation of factual knowledge of them and made their review more and more difficult over time.

At the beginning of the 17th century. Swiss botanist Caspar Baugin published a compendium (Pinax theatri botanici, 1623) of all then known plants, the total number of which was about six thousand. This work was of very great scientific importance in its time, as it summed up everything that had previously been done in getting acquainted with plants. It should be noted, however, that in our time this book is little understood by us, despite the fact that actual knowledge of plants has increased immeasurably over these centuries. Its low accessibility for readers of our time is explained by the fact that the descriptions of plants here are very often so inaccurate and confusing that it is often impossible to imagine from them the plant about which we're talking about. At the same time, the verbosity of the descriptions does not at all make it easier for the reader to form a clearer idea of the plant being described. Verbose plant names that cannot be remembered can also only in rare cases be understood.

This book and similar works of that time were very difficult for their contemporaries to use, precisely because of the inaccuracy of the description of plant organs, the vagueness of descriptive terms, the lack of generally understood plant names, etc. One can imagine the difficulties of 17th-century botanists who would like to compare plants, taken from nature, with descriptions of them in these works.

The plant, not recognized from such a code, was again described by other authors and, of course, also inexpressively and received a new cumbersome name. Thus, subsequent readers were placed in even more predicament due to terminological vagueness and heteroglossia of authors. The number of such descriptions increased over time and the accumulation of descriptive materials became increasingly chaotic.

The difficulties confronting naturalists in this connection were increased further by the fact that this multitude of vaguely characterized forms was very poorly classified. The need for classification was truly an extreme necessity at that time, since without it there was no possibility of reviewing the descriptive material. It must be said that the need to classify organisms at the level of science of that time was a purely logical necessity for the formal ordering of the forms being studied. Only in this way could the latter be placed within a certain framework that would allow them to be viewed.

There is no need to recall here the classifications of plants that have replaced one another over time. They, of course, gradually improved, but were very far from perfect, primarily due to the lack of clarity of their very basis and the fact that they could only be applied to high categories. The fruiticists, calicists or corollists were equally mistaken and fell into equal difficulties, primarily because they did not have a sufficiently clear idea of the characteristics of the plant organs on which their classifications were based, i.e., respectively, on the fruits, calyxes or corollas of flowers.

At the very end of the 17th century. and in the first years of the 18th century. Some advances were made in the practical delineation of plant genera (Tournefort) and in attempts to identify species (John Ray). Both were determined by the same logical necessity.

In this regard, the general situation in science improved, but only slightly, since the accumulation of descriptive material completely suppressed science and the material itself often did not fit into the classification framework. The situation in natural science became completely critical, and it already seemed that there was absolutely no way out.

Some reflection of this situation may be the definition of botany we mentioned, given by the famous Leiden professor Burgaw. He said: “Botany is a part of natural science through which plants are successfully and with the least difficulty learned and retained in memory.”

From this definition, the tasks facing botany of that time and the catastrophic state of terminology and nomenclature in it are completely clear. In essence, zoology was in the same position.

Linnaeus, perhaps more deeply than Burgaw, back in student years in Uppsala he realized all this and set out to reform natural science.

We have already said that Linnaeus proceeded from the fact that “the basis of botany is the division and naming of plants,” that “Ariadne’s thread of botany is classification, without which there is chaos,” and “natural science itself is the division and naming of natural bodies.”

But before proceeding with the classification itself, it was necessary to do a lot of preparatory work, which, as was said, he coped brilliantly. This work is terminological reform and the creation of a universal classification scheme.

In the “Principles of Botany” a precise, very expressive and simple terminology was developed, and in the “System of Nature” and in the “Classes of Plants” a comprehensive sexual classification system was amazing in its elegance and simplicity. The completion of these works brought extremely rapid success. A strictly thought-out terminology and a simple classification scheme made it possible to delineate with previously unknown expressiveness about a thousand genera (“Genera plantarum”) and give unprecedented clarity in the characteristics of many hundreds of species (“Hortus Cliffortianus”, “Flora Lapponica”). In these works, as was previously said, the binomial nomenclature of polynomials was brought to perfection, precisely due to the fact that the category “genus” was defined.

The works of this period (1735-1738) completed most of Linnaeus's reform work, but only the first stage was achieved with regard to nomenclature.

As a result of further work, by 1753, Linnaeus was able to “extend Ariadnine’s thread of taxonomy” to species, delineated this classification category with certainty, and in “Species plantarum” proposed a new nomenclatural technique in connection with this - simple names, which became the basis of modern binomial nomenclature . We have already spoken about all this in sufficient detail. Here it is only appropriate to recall that the methodological basis of this work was the principles of Aristotelian logic concerning concepts, their classification, division, etc.

Linnaeus quite rightly credits himself with the creation of botany in the place of the chaos that preceded him.

We have seen that he developed terminology and a precise diagnostic language, he proposed a strict nomenclature, he developed a comprehensive and practically very convenient classification. Based on all this, he revised a huge amount of factual material previously accumulated by science. Having selected everything that was reliable and discarded the erroneous and doubtful, he systematized the previously obtained information, that is, he made it scientific.

It is appropriate to say here that some researchers, when assessing the work of Linnaeus, often say that he only “summarized the past, and did not outline the future,” or, what is the same, “wrote an epilogue, not a prologue.”

Before objecting to this, it should be pointed out that it is necessary to take into account the fact that the reformatory activity of Linnaeus contributed exceptionally to the progress of research work and the accumulation of factual knowledge of organisms. Suffice it to say that in the half century that has passed since its publication most important works Linnaeus on botany (1753) and zoology (1758), the number of reliably known organisms more than tenfold.

When they say that Linnaeus did not outline the future, but only summed up the past, they usually mean that he developed only an artificial plant system and did very little for the natural system. Linnaeus understood, as was said earlier, the need for a natural method and for his time did a lot in this regard. It must be said, however, that by the natural method in our time we mean a natural, or phylogenetic, system, completely forgetting at the same time that the natural method in the 18th century. is nothing more than establishing similarities between organisms and classifying them according to this principle. Then what was meant was similarity, and not kinship in the sense of common origin. The fact is that the idea of development was not yet known at that time. Having flashed in Kant’s “Theory of Heaven” (1755), it was only half a century later that it became the basis of cosmogony (the Kant-Laplace hypothesis). It took another half a century for it to manifest itself in all its greatness when applied to living nature in Darwin's evolutionary teachings.

The natural method of Linnaeus and the natural classifications of later authors of the late 18th and early XIX V. essentially did not differ. Their task is to establish similarities between organisms in order to comprehend the creative plan of the “creator”, expressed in the natural order of nature.

The desire to find the beginning of the evolutionary idea in the writings of Linnaeus is also unfounded, as are the reproaches against him for not being an evolutionist.

We should, of course, pay very close attention to § 16 of the list of his discoveries, from which we learn about Linnaeus’ deep interest in the question of the origin of species and his understanding of the extreme importance of this issue. A little later, in the thirteenth edition of Systema Naturae (1774), Linnaeus wrote the following: “... almighty God in the beginning, in moving from simple to complex and from small to many, at the beginning of plant life, created as many different plants as there are natural orders. That he himself then mixed these plants of the orders so much with each other by crossing that as many plants appeared as there were various distinct genera. That then Nature mixed these generic plants, through changing generations, but without changing the floral structures, mixed among themselves and multiplied into existing species, all possible hybrids should be excluded from this number of generations - after all, they are sterile.”

We see that the creative role of the “creator” is now limited. It turns out that he created only representatives of the detachments (of which there were 116), which formed genera by hybrid mixing, and the latter by Hybridization, without the participation of a “creator,” was propagated by nature itself into existing species. It is appropriate to recall that forty years earlier Linnaeus wrote: “We count as many species as there are different forms that were first created.”

It is also known, based on the work of Linnaeus’s student, Giesecke, who outlined his teacher’s views on the issue of signs of natural orders, that Linnaeus dealt with these issues until his old age. He told Giesecke: “I have worked for a long time on the natural method, I have done what I could achieve, there is still more to be done, I will continue this as long as I live.”

The doctrine of sex in plants, strict organography, clear terminology, development of the reproductive system, reform of nomenclature, description of about one thousand two hundred genera of plants and the establishment of more than eight thousand species constitute the most important part of Linnaeus’s botanical work, but not the only one, as can be seen from his list.

He was widely involved in plant biology (“Flora’s Calendar”, “Flora’s Clock”, “Plant Dream”) and many practical issues, of which he especially highlighted the study of Swedish food plants. How wide his scientific interests were can be seen from the ten-volume collection of dissertations of his students (“Amoenitates Academicae”). Of the ninety botanical dissertations, almost half are represented by floristic-systematic topics; about a quarter is devoted to medicinal, food and economically useful plants; about a dozen relate to topics in plant morphology; several dissertations are developed various questions plant biology; separate topics are devoted to plant habitats, botanical bibliography, terminology, scientific gardening, and one dissertation is devoted to a topic that has recently been extremely topical for us - the degeneration of cereals.

The significance of Linnaeus's work as a zoologist is almost as great as his botanical work, although he was most of all a botanist. His fundamental zoological works date back to the same Dutch period of activity and are especially associated with the work “Systema Naturae”. Although the classification of animals developed by him was in significant parts more natural than the botanical one, it was less successful and existed for a shorter period of time. We have already said earlier that the particular success of botanical classification was brought about by the fact that it was at the same time an extremely simple determinant. Linnaeus divided the animal kingdom into six classes: mammals, birds, reptiles (now reptiles and amphibians), fish, insects (now arthropods) and worms (many invertebrates, including worms).

A great classification achievement for that time was the precise definition of the class of mammals and the inclusion of whales in it, which even the father of ichthyology, Artedi, classified as fish.

What seems surprising in our time is that already in the first edition of Systema Naturae (1735), Linnaeus placed man among the anthropoids.

The very first edition of “System of Nature” gave impetus to the development of systematic zoology, since the classification scheme outlined here and the terminology and nomenclature developed facilitated descriptive work.

Increasing from edition to edition, this section of “Systems of Nature” reached 823 pages in the tenth edition, published in 1758 and remarkable in that it consistently carried out the binomial nomenclature of organisms, and therefore this edition is the starting point in modern zoological nomenclature.

Linnaeus worked especially hard on the classification of insects, and he described most genera and about two thousand species (twelfth edition 1766-1768). He also developed the foundations of organography, and in special essay“The Foundation of Entomology” (1767) outlined the body structure of this class of animals. In parallel with “Flora of Sweden,” Linnaeus wrote “Fauna of Sweden,” the significance of which for faunistics was the same as the publication of his “Flora” had for floristic works. Subsequent works on fauna were written on the model of how it was done by Linnaeus in The Fauna of Sweden.

Being engaged in the art of assay, as applied mineralogy, the search for minerals, the study of mineral springs, caves, mines, the study of crystals and the classification of stones - lithology, Linnaeus was not only completely at the level of his time in matters related to this, but greatly advanced the development of some of them forward . Geologists believe that if he had not written anything other than those related to paleontology and geology, his name would have been glorified anyway.

In the “Museum Tessinianum”, among other things, trilobites were described, which marked the beginning of the study of this group of fossil crustaceans, and in a special work “On Baltic Corals” he described and depicted the corals of the Baltic Sea.

In connection with the study of both, he correctly understood the significance of fossils for establishing the distant past of the land, just as he correctly assessed the significance of the last marine terraces for a more recent time. From his descriptions of the outcrops, with their alternating strata, it can be seen that he was deeply interested in the origin of sedimentary rocks (System of Nature, 1768). In addition to the classification of minerals, he also gave a classification of crystals; the collection of the latter in his museum amounted to one and a half hundred natural specimens.

A doctor by training and at the beginning of his career practical activities, Linnaeus enjoyed extreme popularity in Stockholm as a practicing physician in the years 1739-1741, while at the same time being the head of the Admiralty Hospital. When he moved to Uppsala, he almost left his medical practice. As a professor who taught three medical courses, he was extremely popular. These courses are “Materia medica” (“The study of medicinal substances”), “Semiotica” (“Semiologia” - “The study of the signs of diseases”) and “Diaeta naturalis” (“The study of nutrition”).

In connection with the reading of these courses, Linnaeus wrote detailed study guides. “Materia medica” has been discussed in detail previously, and here it is only sufficient to recall that this work of Linnaeus (1749) became classical guidance in pharmacology.

The work “Genera Morborum” (“Generations of Diseases,” 1759) is a classification of diseases according to their symptoms. The basis of the classification was borrowed by Linnaeus from the work of the French physician and naturalist Sauvage, slightly revised and expanded. In total, eleven classes of diseases have been identified here. The purpose of this book is to provide guidance for recognizing diseases by their external manifestations.

The book “Clavis Medicinae duplex” (“Double Key to Medicine”, 1766), which Linnaeus highly valued, outlines his lecture notes and data on general pathology and therapy.

Linnaeus's lectures on dietetics were particularly successful, and this course itself was perhaps his most favorite. Begun by him back in 1734, in the form of rough notes, it was supplemented and expanded more and more over the course of decades. These lectures were not published during Linnaeus's lifetime. The success of the course among students may have increased due to the fact that, in addition to setting out the rules of therapeutic nutrition and everything related to this, the professor provided a lot of sanitary and hygienic information, advice and purely practical instructions regarding Everyday life, etc.

Linnaeus's personal merits in practical medicine were the introduction into medical practice of some herbal remedies, partly preserved in the modern pharmacopoeia, as well as the development of a method for combating tapeworms.

Speaking about the significance of Linnaeus’s work as a physician, one cannot help but point out what is usually associated with his name - the beginning of the study of animal diseases. Linnaeus paid some attention to this during his Lapland trip, being interested in damage to the skin of deer. One of his students later became the first veterinarian in Sweden.

In conclusion, it should be said that Linnaeus, with his reforms and organizing influence, determined the development of the main directions in botany and zoology for decades.

Carl Linnaeus

Linnaeus Karl (1707-1778), Swedish naturalist, creator of the system of flora and fauna, first president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences (from 1739), foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1754). For the first time he consistently applied binary nomenclature and constructed the most successful artificial classification of plants and animals, described approx. 1500 plant species. He defended the constancy of species and creationism. Author of “System of Nature” (1735), “Philosophy of Botany” (1751), etc.

Linnaeus Karl (1707-78) - Swedish naturalist, formulated the foundations of plant taxonomy, the creation of which is his main scientific merit. Despite the fact that this system was artificial, the binomial naming principle introduced by Linnaeus retained its meaning and became generally accepted. Being a supporter creationism, Linnaeus also suggested the hybrid origin of some forms and allowed limited variability of species under the influence of the conditions of their existence.

Philosophical Dictionary. Ed. I.T. Frolova. M., 1991, p. 222.

Linne (Linne, Linnaeus), Karl (1707-1778) - Swedish naturalist and naturalist. Born in Roshult. He received his education at Uppsala University. From 1741 until the end of his life, he taught a number of biological and medical disciplines and headed the department at this university. The center of Linnaeus' scientific interests was botany, but he dealt with a wide range of natural science issues - zoology, mining and mineralogy, medicine, etc. Linnaeus's main achievement was the creation of systems for classifying plants and animals. Its first presentation was presented by Linnaeus in the book “System of Nature”.

Philosophical Dictionary / author's comp. S. Ya. Podoprigora, A. S. Podoprigora. - Ed. 2nd, erased - Rostov n/a: Phoenix, 2013, p. 193.

Famous naturalist

Carl Linnaeus, the famous naturalist, was born in Sweden, in the village of Rozgult, on May 13, 1707. He was of humble origin, his ancestors were simple peasants; father, Nile Linneus, was a village priest. My father was a great lover of flowers and gardening; in picturesque Stenbrogult he planted a garden, which soon became the first in the entire province. This garden and his father’s activities played, of course, a significant role in the spiritual development of the future founder of scientific botany. The boy was given a special corner in the garden, several beds, where he was considered the complete master; They were called that way - “Karl’s kindergarten”.

When the boy was ten years old, he was sent to elementary school in the town of Vexier.

After graduating from high school, Karl entered Lund University, but soon transferred from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala.

June 24, 1735 in the university town of Harderwick, in Holland Linnaeus passed the exam and defended his dissertation on a medical topic - about fever, which he wrote in Sweden. At the same time, Linnaeus compiled and published the first draft of his work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology. This was the first edition of his "Systema naturae". His new works, published in 1736-1737, already contained in a more or less complete form his main and most fruitful ideas: a system of generic and species names, improved terminology, an artificial system of the plant kingdom.

At this time he received an offer to become the personal physician of Georg Clifford with a salary of 1000 guilders and full content. Clifford was one of the directors of the East India Company and burgomaster of Amsterdam. He was a passionate gardener and a lover of botany. On his estate there was a garden famous in Holland, in which he cultivated and acclimatized plants from Southern Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.

In 1739, the Swedish Diet allocated him one hundred ducats of annual support with the obligation to teach botany and mineralogy. At the same time, he was given the title of “royal botanist.” Linnaeus took part in the founding of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and was its first president. In 1742, Linnaeus became a professor of botany at his home university. The scientist bought himself a small estate, Gammarba, near Uppsala, where he spent his summers in the last 15 years of his life. He described all the medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effects of medicines made from them. It was during this time that he invented the thermometer using the Celsius temperature scale.

Home work The Plant System took a full 25 years, and only in 1753 did Linnaeus publish his main work.

At the time when Linnaeus began his work, zoology was in a period of exceptional dominance of taxonomy. The task that she then set for herself was to become familiar with all the breeds of animals living on the globe, without regard to their internal structure and the connection of individual forms with each other. The descriptions that the author gave of new animals or plants were usually inaccurate. The second main drawback of the science of that time was the lack of classification.

The scientist proposed a binary nomenclature - a system of scientific names for plants and animals. Based on their structural features, he divided all plants into 24 classes, also highlighting individual births and types. Each name had to consist of two words - generic and species designations.

Linnaeus was the first to introduce into science a strictly defined, precise language and precise definition of characteristics. His work “Fundamental Botany,” published in Amsterdam during his life with Clifford and the result of seven years of work, sets out the foundations of the botanical terminology that he used when describing plants.

Last years Linnaeus's life was overshadowed by senile decrepitude and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his age.

Used materials from the site http://100top.ru/encyclopedia/

Swedish naturalist

LINNEAUS, CARL (Linnaeus, Carolus, also Linn, Carl von) (1707–1778), Swedish naturalist, "father of modern botanical taxonomy" and creator of modern biological nomenclature. Born on May 23, 1707 in Roshult in the province of Småland in the family of a village pastor. His parents wanted Karl to become a clergyman, but from his youth he was fascinated by natural history, especially botany. These activities were encouraged by a local doctor, who advised Linnaeus to choose a medical profession, since at that time botany was considered a part of pharmacology. In 1727, Linnaeus entered the University of Lund, and the following year he moved to Uppsala University, where the teaching of botany and medicine was better. In Uppsala he lived and worked with Olaf Celsius, a theologian and amateur botanist who participated in the preparation of the book Biblical Botany (Hierobotanicum), a list of plants mentioned in the Bible. In 1729, as a New Year's gift to Celsius, Linnaeus wrote the essay Introduction to the Engagements of Plants (Praeludia sponsalorum plantarun), in which he poetically described their sexual process. This work not only delighted Celsius, but also aroused the interest of university teachers and students. It predetermined the main range of Linnaeus' future interests - the classification of plants according to their reproductive organs. In 1731, having defended his dissertation, Linnaeus became an assistant to professor of botany O. Rudbeck. The following year he traveled to Lapland. For three months he wandered around this then wild country, collecting plant samples. The Uppsala Scientific Society, which subsidized this work, published only a short report about it - Flora Lapponica. Detailed work Linnaeus on the plants of Lapland was published only in 1737, and his vividly written diary of the expedition Lapland Life (Lachesis Lapponica) was published after the author’s death in Latin translation. In 1733–1734, Linnaeus lectured and conducted scientific work at the university, and wrote a number of books and articles. However, pursuing a medical career traditionally required obtaining an advanced degree abroad. In 1735 he entered the University of Harderwijk in Holland, where he soon received his doctorate in medicine. In Holland, he became close to the famous Leiden doctor G. Boerhaave, who recommended Linnaeus to the burgomaster of Amsterdam, Georg Clifford, a passionate gardener, who by that time had collected a magnificent collection of exotic plants. Clifford made Linnaeus his personal physician and instructed him to identify and classify the specimens he bred. The result was the excellent treatise Clifford's Garden (Hortus Cliffortianus), published in 1737.

In 1736–1738, the first editions of many of Linnaeus’s works were published in Holland: in 1736 – System of Nature (Systema naturae), Botanical Library (Bibliotheca botanica) and Fundamentals of Botany (Fundamenta botanica); in 1737 – Critique of botany (Critica botanica), Genera of plants (Genera plantarum), Flora of Lapland (Flora Lapponica) and Cliffortian garden (Hortus Cliffortianus); in 1738 – Classes plantarum, Collection of genera (Corollarium generum) and Sexual method (Methodus sexualist). In addition, in 1738 Linnaeus edited a book on fish, Ichthyologia, which remained unfinished after the death of his friend Peter Artedi. Botanical works, especially plant genera, formed the basis of modern plant taxonomy. In them Linnaeus described and applied new system classification, which greatly simplified the identification of organisms. In his method, which he called "sexual", the main emphasis was on the structure and number of reproductive structures of plants, i.e. stamens (male organs) and pistils (female organs). Although Linnaeus's classification is largely artificial, it was so much more convenient than all the systems existing at that time that it soon received universal recognition. Its rules were formulated so simply and clearly that they seemed to be the laws of nature, and Linnaeus himself, of course, considered them as such. However, his views on the sexual process in plants, although they were not original, also found their critics: some accused Linnaeus’s teaching of immorality, others of excessive anthropomorphism.

An even more daring work than botanical work was the famous System of Nature. Its first edition of about a dozen printed pages, representing a general outline of the intended book, was an attempt to distribute all the creations of nature - animals, plants and minerals - into classes, orders, genera and species, and also to establish rules for their identification. Corrected and expanded editions of this treatise were published 12 times during Linnaeus's life and were reprinted several times after his death.

In 1738, Linnaeus, on behalf of Clifford, visited the botanical centers of England. By that time, he had already earned international recognition among naturalists and received invitations to work in Holland and Germany. However, Linnaeus chose to return to Sweden. In 1739 he opened a medical practice in Stockholm and continued to study natural history. In 1741 he was appointed professor of medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1742 he also became professor of botany there. In subsequent years, he mainly taught and wrote scientific works, but at the same time he made several scientific expeditions to little-studied areas of Sweden and published a report on each of them. Linnaeus's enthusiasm, his fame, and most importantly his ability to infect those around him with the desire to find something new attracted many followers to him. He collected a huge herbarium and a collection of plants. Collectors from all over the world sent him specimens of unknown forms of life, and he described their findings in his books.

In 1745 Linnaeus published the Flora of Sweden (Flora Suecica), in 1746 - the Fauna of Sweden (Fauna Suecica), in 1748 - the Uppsala Garden (Hortus Upsaliensis). New editions of The System of Nature continue to be published in Sweden and abroad. Some of them, especially the sixth (1748), tenth (1758) and twelfth (1766), significantly supplemented the previous ones. The famous 10th and 12th editions became encyclopedic multi-volume works, not only representing an attempt to classify natural objects, but also providing brief descriptions, i.e. distinctive features of all species of animals, plants and minerals known at that time. The article about each species was supplemented with information about its geographical distribution, habitat, behavior and varieties. The 12th edition was the most complete, but the 10th edition acquired the greatest importance. It was from the moment of its publication that the priority of modern zoological nomenclature was established, because it was in this book that Linnaeus first gave double (binary, or binomial) names to all animal species known to him. In 1753 he completed his great work Species plantarum; it contained descriptions and binary names of all plant species, which determined modern botanical nomenclature. In his book Philosophia botanica, published in 1751, Linnaeus aphoristically outlined the principles that guided his study of plants. German writer, the thinker and naturalist Goethe admitted: “Besides Shakespeare and Spinoza, Linnaeus had the strongest influence on me.”

The meaning of Linnaeus and the binary system of biological nomenclature. Linnaeus is the author of more than 180 books and numerous articles, mainly on natural history and medicine. For his contemporaries highest value had lists, classifications and descriptions of plants and animals known at that time. He systematized the scattered and often contradictory data of earlier authors and himself described a large number of new species. His publications stimulated further research because they enabled scientists to clearly distinguish the known from the unknown.

Modern naturalists see Linnaeus primarily as the founder of the binary system of scientific nomenclature, recognized today throughout the world. The binary system assumes that each species of plants and animals has one thing that belongs only to it scientific name(binomen), consisting of only two words (Latin or Latinized). The first of these is the generic name, which is common to a whole group of species close to each other that make up one biological genus. The second, a species epithet, is an adjective or noun (in the genitive case or in the application function) that refers to only one species of a given genus. Thus, the lion and tiger, included in the genus “cat” (Felis), are called Felis leo and Felis tigris, respectively, and the wolf from the genus dog (Canis) is called Canis lupus. The simplicity and clarity of such a system, which simultaneously determines the family relationships and species uniqueness of organisms, together with the authority of Linnaeus himself, a recognized expert in identifying living forms, led to the universal acceptance of the binary names he proposed. To be fair, it should be recognized that they have been used before by some other authors, but not systematically. Although Linnaeus included many of them in his works, the species names in his Species of Plants (1753) and System of Nature (1758) are considered precisely “Linnaean”, since in these books the binary system first found its consistent embodiment.

It is curious that Linnaeus himself did not attach much importance to the binary system. He emphasized the polynomial, i.e. a verbose name-description, and the corresponding binomen he himself considered to be a simple name (nomen trivialis), which had no scientific meaning and only made it easier to remember the species.

The Linnaean classification system subsequently underwent a radical revision, but its basic principles remained. His ideas about the taxonomic relationships of organisms are far from modern, since they are based on very limited factual data and outdated philosophical concepts. He proposed his classification long before the advent of Darwin's theory of evolution, which established that biological systematics should reflect the sequential origin of various forms of living things from common ancestors. Comparative anatomy and morphology in the 18th century. were just emerging, paleontology as a science did not exist, no one thought about genetics. However, Linnaeus's classification of the facts accumulated by his time became the foundation on which the edifice of modern biology grew.

Materials from the encyclopedia "The World Around Us" were used

Literature:

Linnaeus K. System of nature. Animal Kingdom, parts 1–2. St. Petersburg, 1804–1805

Bobrov E.G. Carl Linnaeus, 1707–1778. L., 1970

Linnaeus K. Philosophy of Botany. M., 1989

The life and work of Carl Linnaeus.

Linne (Linne, Linnaeus) Karl (23.5.1707, Rosshuld, - 10.1.1778, Uppsala), Swedish naturalist, member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1762). He gained worldwide fame thanks to the system of flora and fauna he created. Born into the family of a village pastor. He studied natural and medical sciences at Lund (1727) and Uppsala (since 1728) universities. In 1732 he made a trip to Lapland, the result of which was the work “Flora of Lapland” (1732, complete publication in 1737). In 1735 he moved to Hartekamp (Holland), where he was in charge of the botanical garden; defended his doctoral dissertation “New hypothesis of intermittent fevers.” In the same year he published the book “The System of Nature” (published during his lifetime in 12 editions). From 1738 he practiced medicine in Stockholm; in 1739 he headed the naval hospital and won the right to autopsy corpses to determine the cause of death. He participated in the creation of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and became its first president (1739). From 1741 he was the head of the department at Uppsala University, where he taught medicine and natural sciences.

The system of flora and fauna created by Linnaeus completed the enormous work of botanists and zoologists of the 1st half of the 18th century. One of Linnaeus's main merits is that in the System of Nature he applied and introduced the so-called binary nomenclature, according to which each species is designated by two Latin names - generic and specific. Linnaeus defined the concept of “species” using both morphological (similarity within the offspring of one family) and physiological (presence of fertile offspring) criteria, and established a clear subordination between systematic categories: class, order, genus, species, variation.

Linnaeus based the classification of plants on the number, size and location of the stamens and pistils of a flower, as well as the sign of a plant being one-, two-, or multi-homogenous, since he believed that the reproductive organs are the most essential and permanent parts of the body in plants. Based on this principle, he divided all plants into 24 classes. Thanks to the simplicity of the nomenclature he used, descriptive work was greatly facilitated, and species received clear characteristics and names. Linnaeus himself discovered and described about 1,500 plant species.

Linnaeus divided all animals into 6 classes:

1. Mammals 4. Fish

2. Birds 5. Worms

3. Amphibians 6. Insects

The class of amphibians included amphibians and reptiles; he included all forms of invertebrates known in his time, except insects, into the class of worms. One of the advantages of this classification is that man was included in the system of the animal kingdom and assigned to the class of mammals, to the order of primates. The classifications of plants and animals proposed by Linnaeus are artificial from a modern point of view, since they are based on a small number of arbitrarily taken characters and do not reflect the actual relationship between in different forms. So, based on only one common feature- beak structure - Linnaeus tried to build a “natural” system based on a combination of many characteristics, but did not achieve his goal.

Linnaeus was opposed to the idea of true development of the organic world; he believed that the number of species remains constant, they did not change over the time of their “creation,” and therefore the task of systematics is to reveal the order in nature established by the “creator.” However, the vast experience accumulated by Linnaeus, his acquaintance with plants from various areas could not help but sway him metaphysical ideas. In his last works, Linnaeus very cautiously suggested that all species of the same genus initially constituted one species, and allowed the possibility of the emergence of new species formed as a result of crossings between pre-existing species.

Linnaeus also classified soils and minerals, human races, diseases (by symptoms); discovered the poisonous and healing properties of many plants. Linnaeus is the author of a number of works, mainly on botany and zoology, as well as in the field of theoretical and practical medicine (“ Medicinal substances", "Kinds of diseases", "Key to Medicine").

Linnaeus's libraries, manuscripts and collections were sold by his widow to the English botanist Smith, who founded (1788) the Linnean Society in London, which still exists today as one of the largest scientific centers.

By the 18th century Scientists and nature lovers have done a great job collecting and describing plants and animals all over the world. But it became increasingly difficult to navigate the ocean of information they had accumulated. The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus generalized and systematized this knowledge. He laid the foundations of modern taxonomy.

Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707 in the family of a village priest. From childhood, Karl’s mother instilled in him a love for all living things, especially flowers.

But the future president of the Swedish Academy of Sciences remained very indifferent to schoolwork. He was never good at Latin. The teachers said that education was apparently beyond the boy's ability - it would be better to teach him some kind of craft. The angry father decided to send Karl to be trained by a shoemaker.

And a career as a shoemaker would have awaited Liney if a doctor he knew had not persuaded the boy’s father to allow him to study medicine. In addition, he helped Karl finish high school.

Karl studied medicine and biology at the universities of the Swedish cities of Lund and Uppsala. During his student years he lived poorly.

When Karl turned 25 years old, the leadership of Uppsala University invited him to go on a scientific trip to northern Scandinavia - Lapland to explore its nature. He carried all his luggage on his shoulders. During this journey, he ate whatever he could find, barely got out of the swamps, and fought with mosquitoes. And once he encountered a more serious enemy - a robber who almost killed him. Despite all the obstacles, Linnaeus collected samples of Lapland plants.

At home, Linnaeus was unable to find a permanent job in his specialty, and for several years he moved to Holland, where he was in charge of one of the best botanical gardens in the country.

Here he received his doctorate, and here in 1735 his most famous work, “The System of Nature,” was published. During Linnaeus's lifetime, 12 editions of this book were published. All this time, Linnaeus constantly supplemented it and increased its volume from 14 pages to 3 volumes.

Carl Linnaeus system:

The concept of a species.

In order to “sort out” the huge number of descriptions of plants and animals, some kind of systematic unit was needed. Linnaeus considered species to be such a unit common to all living things. Linnaeus called a species a group of individuals similar to each other, like children of the same parents and their children. A species consists of many similar individuals that produce fertile offspring. For example, wild raspberries are one species, stone fruits are another, and cloudberries are a third type of plant. All domestic cats are one species, tigers are another, lions are a third species of animals. Therefore, the entire organic world consists of various types plants and animals. All Live nature consists, as it were, of separate links - species.

Linnaeus discovered and described about 1,500 species of plants and over 400 species of animals, he distributed all types of plants and animals into large groups - classes, he divided each class into orders, each order into genera. Each genus of Linnaeus was composed of similar species.

Nomenclature.

Linnaeus began to give names to species in the same Latin that was so bad for him in his school years. Latin was at that time the international language of science. Thus, Linnaeus resolved a difficult problem: after all, when names were given to different languages, the same species could be described under many names.

A very important achievement of Linnaeus was the introduction into practice of double species names (binary nomenclature). He suggested calling each species in two words. The first is the name of the genus, which includes closely related species. For example, lion, tiger, and domestic cat belong to the genus Felis (Cat). The second word is the name of the species itself (respectively, Felis leo, Felis tigris, Felis do-mestica). In the same way, the species Norway Spruce and Tien Shan (blue) Spruce are combined into the genus Spruce, and the species White Hare and Brown Hare into the genus Hare. Thanks to double nomenclature, the similarity, commonality, and unity of species forming one genus are revealed.

Taxonomy of animals.

Linnaeus divided animals into 6 classes:

Mammals

Amphibians (he placed amphibians and reptiles in this class)

Insects

The “worms” included mollusks, jellyfish, various worms, and all microorganisms (the latter were united by Linnaeus into one single genus - Chaos infusorium).

Linnaeus, quite boldly for his time, placed man (whom he dubbed “reasonable man,” Homo sapiens) in the class of mammals and the order of primates along with monkeys. He did this 120 years before Charles Darwin. He did not believe that humans descended from other primates, but he saw great similarities in their structure.

Plant taxonomy.

Linnaeus approached the systematization of plants in more detail than the systematization of animals. Among plants, he identified 24 classes. Linnaeus understood that the most essential and characteristic part of a plant is the flower. He classified plants with one stamen in a flower as 1st class, with two as 2nd, with three as 3rd, etc. Mushrooms, lichens, algae, horsetails, ferns - in general, everything devoid of flowers ended up in the 24th class ("cryptogamy").

The artificiality of Linnaeus' taxonomy.

Linnaeus' system of plants and animals was largely artificial. Plants that are far from each other (for example, carrots and currants) ended up in the same class only because their flowers have the same number of stamens. Many related plants ended up in different classes. Linnaeus' taxonomy is artificial, also because it helped to recognize plants and animals, but did not reflect the course of the historical development of the world.

Linnaeus was aware of this shortcoming of his system. He believed that future naturalists should create a natural system of plants and animals, which should take into account all the characteristics of organisms, and not just one or two characteristics. Trying to develop a natural plant system, Linnaeus became convinced that the science of that time did not provide the necessary knowledge for this.

Despite its artificiality, Linnaeus' system played a positive role in biology. The systematic divisions and dual nomenclature proposed by Linnaeus have become firmly established in science and are used in modern botany and zoology. Later two more divisions were introduced:

Type - the highest division, uniting similar classes;

Family - uniting similar genera

Innovations of Linnaeus.

Carl Linnaeus reformed the botanical language. He was the first to propose such plant names as: corolla, anther, nectary, ovary, stigma, filament, receptacle, perianth. In total, C. Linnaeus introduced about a thousand terms into botany.

Linnaeus' views on nature.

Science at that time was influenced by religion. Linnaeus was an idealist; he argued that in nature there are as many species of plants and animals “as many different forms as the Almighty produced at the beginning of the world.” Linnaeus believed that plant and animal species do not change; they have retained their characteristics “since creation.” According to Linnaeus, every modern species is the offspring of an original divinely created parent pair. Each species reproduces, but retains, in his opinion, unchanged all the features of this ancestral pair.

As a good observer, Linnaeus could not help but see the contradiction between the ideas of the complete immutability of plants and animals with what is observed in nature. He allowed the formation of varieties within a species due to the influence of climate change and other external conditions on organisms.

The idealistic and metaphysical doctrine of creation and the immutability of species dominated biology until the beginning of the 19th century, until it was refuted as a result of the discovery of many proofs of evolution.

Carl Linnaeus

(1707-1778)

Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish naturalist, was born in Sweden on May 13, 1707. He was of humble origin, his ancestors were simple peasants; father was a poor rural priest. On next year After the birth of his son, he received a more profitable parish in Stenbrogult, and the entire childhood of Carl Linnaeus passed until he was ten years old.

My father was a great lover of flowers and gardening; in picturesque Stenbrogult he planted a garden, which soon became the first in the entire province. This garden and his father’s activities played, of course, a significant role in the spiritual development of the future founder of scientific botany. The boy was given a special corner in the garden, several beds, where he was considered the complete owner; they were called that way - “Karl’s kindergarten”

When the boy was 10 years old, he was sent to elementary school in the city of Vexier. The gifted child’s schoolwork was going poorly; He continued to study botany with enthusiasm, and preparing lessons was tiresome for him. The father was going to take the young man from the gymnasium, but chance confronted him with the local doctor Rothman. Rothman’s classes at the “underperforming” gymnasium went better. The doctor began to gradually introduce him to medicine and even - contrary to the teachers' comments - made him fall in love with Latin.

After graduating from high school, Karl entered Lund University, but soon transferred from there to one of the most prestigious universities in Sweden - Uppsala. Linnaeus was only 23 years old when botany professor Oluas Celzki took him as his assistant, after which Karl himself, while still a student, began teaching at the university. A trip to Lapland became very significant for the young scientist. Linnaeus walked almost 700 kilometers, collected significant collections and as a result published his first book, “Flora of Lapland.”

In the spring of 1735, Linnaeus arrived in Holland, in Amsterdam. In the small university town of Hardwick, he passed the exam and on June 24 defended his dissertation on a medical topic - about fever. The immediate goal of his journey was achieved, but Karl remained. He remained fortunately for himself and for science: rich and highly cultured Holland served as the cradle for his passionate creative activity and his loud fame.

One of his new friends, Doctor Gronov, suggested that he publish some work; then Linnaeus compiled and published the first draft of his famous work, which laid the foundation for systematic zoology and botany in the modern sense. This was the first edition of his “Systema naturae”, which for now contained only 14 pages of a huge format, on which brief descriptions of minerals, plants and animals were grouped in the form of tables. This publication marks the beginning of a series of rapid scientific successes for Linnaeus.

His new works, published in 1736-1737, already contained in a more or less complete form his main and most fruitful ideas: a system of generic and species names, improved terminology, an artificial system of the plant kingdom.

At this time, he received a brilliant offer to become the personal physician of Georg Clifford with a salary of 1000 guilders and full allowance.

Despite the successes that surrounded Linnaeus in Holland, little by little he began to be drawn home. In 1738 he returns to his homeland and faces unexpected problems. He, accustomed for three years of life abroad to universal respect, friendship and attentions of the most prominent and famous people, at home, in his homeland, was just a doctor without a place, without practice and without money, and no one cared about his learning . So Linnaeus the botanist gave way to Linnaeus the doctor, and his favorite activities were stopped for a while.

However, already in 1739, the Swedish Diet allocated him one hundred lukat annual allowance with the obligation to teach botany and mineralogy.

Finally, he found an opportunity to get married, and on June 26, 1739, the five-year-delayed wedding took place. Alas, as often happens, his wife was the complete opposite of her husband. An ill-mannered, rude and grumpy woman, without intellectual interests, who was only interested in financial aspects husband. Linnaeus had one son and several daughters; the mother loved her daughters, and they grew up under her influence as uneducated and petty girls of a bourgeois family. The mother had a strange antipathy towards her son, a gifted boy, persecuted him in every possible way and tried to turn his father against him. But Linnaeus loved his son and passionately developed in him those inclinations for which he himself suffered so much in childhood.

In 1742, Linnaeus's dream came true, and he became a professor of botany at his home university. The rest of his life was spent in this city almost without a break. He occupied the department for more than thirty years and left it only shortly before his death.

Now Linnaeus stopped practicing medicine, he only practiced scientific research. He described all the medicinal plants known at that time and studied the effects of medicines made from them.

At this time, he invented a thermometer using the Celsius temperature scale.

But Linnaeus still considered the systematization of plants to be the main work of his life. The main work, “The Plant System,” took 25 years, and only in 1753 did he publish his main work.

The scientist decided to systematize the entire plant world of the Earth. At the time when Lineus began his work, zoology was in a period of exceptional dominance of taxonomy. The task that she then set for herself was simply to become familiar with all the breeds of animals living on the globe, without regard to their internal structure and the connection of individual forms with each other; The subject of zoological writings of that time was a simple listing and description of all known animals.

Thus, zoology and botany of that time were mainly concerned with the study and description of species, but there was boundless confusion in their recognition. The descriptions that the author gave of new animals or plants were confusing and inaccurate. The second main drawback of the science of that time was the lack of more or less basic and accurate classification.

These main shortcomings of systematic zoology and botany were corrected by the genius of Linnaeus. Remaining on the same ground of study of nature on which his predecessors and contemporaries stood, he became a powerful reformer of science. His merit is purely methodological. He did not discover new areas of knowledge and hitherto unknown laws of nature, but he created a new method, clear and logical. And with his help, he brought light and order where chaos and confusion reigned before him, which gave a huge impetus to science, powerfully paving the way for further research. This was a necessary step in science, without which further progress would have been impossible.

The scientist proposed a binary nomenclature - a system of scientific names for plants and animals. Based on structural features, he divided all plants into 24 classes, also highlighting individual genera and species. Each name, in his opinion, should have consisted of two words - generic and species designations.

Despite the fact that the principle he applied was quite artificial, it turned out to be very convenient and became generally acceptable in scientific classification, retaining its significance in our time. But in order for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary for the new nomenclature to be fruitful, it was necessary that the species given the conventional name should at the same time be so accurately and thoroughly described that they could not be confused with other species of the same kind. Linnaeus did just that: he was the first to introduce into science a strictly defined, precise language and a precise definition of characteristics.

His work “Fundamental Botany,” published in Amsterdam during his life with Clifford and the result of seven years of work, sets out the foundations of the botanical terminology that he used when describing plants.

Linnaeus's zoological system did not play such a major role in science as the botanical one, although in some respects it stood above it as less artificial, but it did not represent its main advantages - convenience in definition. Linnaeus had little knowledge of anatomy.

Linnaeus's work gave a huge impetus to systematic botany and zoology. The developed terminology and convenient nomenclature made it easier to cope with enormous material, which was previously so difficult to understand. Soon all classes of plants and the animal kingdom were subjected to careful systematic study, and the number of described species increased from hour to hour.

Linnaeus later applied his principle to the classification of all nature, in particular minerals and rocks. He also became the first scientist to classify humans and monkeys into the same group of animals - primates. As a result of his observations, the natural scientist compiled another book - “The System of Nature”. He worked on it all his life, republishing his work from time to time. In total, the scientist prepared 12 editions of this work, which gradually turned from a small book into a voluminous multi-volume publication.

The last years of Linnaeus's life were overshadowed by senile decrepitude and illness. He died on January 10, 1778, in the seventy-first year of his age.

After his death, the chair of botany at Uppsala University was given to his son, who zealously set about continuing his father’s work. But in 1783 he suddenly fell ill and died in his forty-second year. The son was not married, and with his death the lineage of Linnaeus in the male generation ceased.