THE PRINCIPLES OF TAXONOMY 145 



word. Since ihe specific name could no longer epitomize the species, 

 Linnaeus suggested that it was sufficient if it merely identified the species 

 among those oi the genus. Thus, he established the binomial system of 



nomenclature. 



Linnaeus also gave names to the groups higher than the genus. The 

 largest groups (similar to those established by Aristotle) he called classes, 

 and each class was divided into orders, which in turn were divided into 

 genera and species. Before 1800, other workers introduced the family 

 as a category between the order and the genus, and soon thereafter 

 classes were grouped into higher categories, the phyla. 



Since the 10th edition of the Systema Naturae is the first publication 

 to adhere strictly to binomial nomenclature, one of the International 

 Rules states that no name published prior to this is valid. Hence, the 

 4236 descriptions in this book include the earliest official species names. 

 The effect of Linnaeus on biology is difficult to measure. As with 

 most giants, the world was ready for hmi, and without him someone else 

 would certainly have done the work. But it is likely that taxonomy 

 would never have enjoyed the popularity it had without the force and 

 personality of Linnaeus behind it. Classification became an amateur as 

 well as a professional "sport," which still persists in the activities of the 

 many bird watchers and bug collectors. 



Taxonomy, and the study of nature that taxonomic work stimu- 

 lated, had between 1750 and 1850 an enormous influence upon the arts. 

 To be sure, the attention that man turned toward nature was but one 

 facet of his growing objectivity and curiosity, dwarfed beside the eco- 

 nomic and political reforms of the period. Nonetheless nature was a 

 prominent feature of literature, music and painting. The "new orderli- 

 ness" of taxonomy gave nature a pleasing aspect. The fact that organisms 

 could be neatly placed in groups and identified with labels lent a sense 

 of security. Problems of grouping led to thought about their patterns, 

 and this in turn developed into a search for harmony in nature. The 

 foreboding, secret aspect of nature, intimately bound with medicine and 

 magic and the devil, disappeared. The direct familiarity with nature 

 initiated by the popularization of collecting and classifying organisms 

 brought nature into the intellectual circles of the late 18th and early 

 19th centuries. The philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who was 

 a poet and a biologist among other things, more than any other person 

 developed this emphasis upon harmony, upon the inherent goodness of 

 nature. He established "nature-philosophy" as one approach to the 

 understanding of life. In all the art forms, the works of this period are 

 touched with his approach. Together with the new social philosophies 

 and the rise of the common man they characterize the period known as 

 19th century romanticism. 



If the highest external achievement of this generation of amateur 

 naturalists following Linnaeus is echoed in the poetry of Keats and 

 Shelley, it must be admitted that within the field of biology the "won- 

 derful" era came to a less satisfactory end. The crescendo of taxonomic 

 w^ork rose to a maximum in the early 19th century. At the same time that 

 Goethe was court philosopher and biologist in the German city-state of 



