Recognized as the greatest taxonomist of all time, Carl von Linné dedicated his life to the meticulous exploration of his homeland, acting as a true discoverer within the confines of his own Scandinavian nation (Montagud Rubio, 2020). Despite coming from a family of Lutheran pastors, the young Linné chose to diverge from the family tradition, directing his passion and curiosity toward the vast world of natural sciences. With the same determination and wonder that characterized the explorers of the New World, Montagud Rubio (2020) notes that Linné embarked on a mission of discovery and cataloging that would lead him to traverse the intricate and shadowy forests of his country.
Biography
Carl Nilsson Linnæus (1707 - 1778), later known as Carl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus, was born on May 23, 1707, in Råshult, Sweden, into a family with religious roots and an innate passion for botany (Montagud Rubio, 2020). His father, Nils Ingemarsson, a Lutheran pastor with a love for plants, and his mother, Christina Brodersonia, daughter of a Protestant pastor, laid the groundwork for the future naturalist who would revolutionize the classification of living beings. According to Montagud Rubio (2020), at the early age of two, the family moved to Stenbronhult, a region in southern Sweden characterized by its lush vegetation and diverse species, where he began to cultivate his fascination with the natural world around him.
In this environment, his father took on the responsibility of maintaining the local church garden, introducing plants from other regions and passing on his love for botany to his son (Montagud Rubio, 2020). This passion became his cornerstone, and from a young age, he showed an interest in studying plants and animals. In 1716, he began his Latin studies at the Vaxjö Cathedral, laying the linguistic foundations that would later allow him to delve deeper into scientific knowledge, as Latin was the vehicle for transmitting the highest knowledge. During his education, he met Johan Rothman, a botanist who introduced him to Tournefort's classification system, which organized plants according to the corolla of their flowers. According to Montagud Rubio (2020), this encounter, along with exposure to Sébastien Vaillant's work on plant reproduction and access to Herman Boerhaave's "Institutiones Medicae," laid the foundation for his scientific thinking.
Despite coming from a religious family, he showed no inclination toward an ecclesiastical vocation, preferring to dedicate his life to the study of natural sciences (Montagud Rubio, 2020). In 1727, he began studying medicine at the University of Lund, though this discipline did not interest him as much as the search and classification of insects and plants. According to Montagud Rubio (2020), his passion for nature caught the attention of Kilian Strobaeus, a local scholar who allowed him access to his library, an experience that would prove fundamental in his training and reinforce his scientific vocation.
After a year at the University of Lund, he was transferred to the University of Uppsala, the leading educational center in Sweden at the time (Montagud Rubio, 2020). To support himself financially, he began teaching botany, which not only allowed him to make a living but also deepened his knowledge. Despite his financial limitations, according to Montagud Rubio (2020), he managed to fund his first botanical and ethnological expedition to Lapland in 1731, an adventure he undertook with limited resources but with overflowing enthusiasm to discover and catalog new species.
This expedition to Lapland, a region encompassing the north of present-day Norway, Sweden, and Finland, allowed him to discover and catalog hundreds of species unknown to science (Montagud Rubio, 2020). Although he had not left his native country, he felt like an explorer of the New World, dedicating himself to naming and classifying every animal or plant specimen he encountered. Additionally, he studied the Saami cultures of the region, demonstrating skills as a naturalist and anthropologist. The findings and observations made during this expedition laid the groundwork for one of his most important works: "Flora Lapponica," a publication that would arouse the interest of the Swedish and European scientific community. Furthermore, according to Montagud Rubio (2020), his experiences in Lapland motivated him to study minerals more thoroughly and propose a classification system for rocks and crystals, thus expanding his field of study beyond botany and zoology.
Encouraged by the success of his first expedition, he organized a second one in 1734, this time accompanied by ten volunteers, to study the flora of the Dalarna region in central Sweden (Montagud Rubio, 2020). This expedition, funded by the regional governor, resulted in the publication of "Iter Dalecarlicum." In 1735, he met the family of Dr. Johan Moraeus and fell in love with his daughter Sara Lisa. Although he obtained permission to marry her, Dr. Moraeus required him to complete his medical studies. According to Montagud Rubio (2020), this requirement led him to travel to Holland in the spring of 1735 to complete his studies at the University of Harderwijk, where he earned his doctorate with a thesis on the origins of malaria titled "Febrium Inttermitentium Causa."
Subsequently, he moved to Leiden, where he published several of his works, including "Flora Lapponica" and "Systema Naturae" (Montagud Rubio, 2020). During his stay in the Netherlands, he met several Dutch botanists such as Jan Frederik Gronovius and George Clifford III, who commissioned him to reorganize and maintain his botanical garden, an experience that led to the work "Hortus Cliffortianus." In the following years, Linnaeus published a series of works that laid the foundation for his plant classification system, using the characteristics of plant reproductive organs as criteria. These works include "Fundamenta Botanica," "Bibliotheca Botanica," "Critica Botanica," "Genera Plantarum," and "Classes Plantarum." In these publications, according to Montagud Rubio (2020), he presented his plant classification method based on the characteristics of reproductive organs, marking a turning point in global botany.
In 1736, he traveled to Oxford and met several English naturalists, including J.J. Dillenius (Montagud Rubio, 2020). Taking advantage of his time in Europe, he also visited France, where he became the eighth foreign member of the Paris Academy of Sciences. These trips not only allowed him to exchange plant and animal specimens but also to obtain seeds to enrich the multiple botanical gardens he had founded. Montagud Rubio (2020) mentions that, upon returning to Sweden in 1738, he combined his medical practice with the study and specialization in the treatment of syphilis, which earned him recognition at the University of Uppsala for his outstanding work in medicine, in addition to receiving the important task of reorganizing the botanical garden of the institution, an opportunity he took to apply his now-famous binomial taxonomic system.
The year 1739 marked a milestone in his career, as he spearheaded the creation of the Stockholm Academy of Sciences, becoming its first president, and two years later, in 1741, he was appointed professor of practical medicine at the University of Uppsala, and the following year, he assumed the chair of botany, dietetics, and materia medica, titles that more accurately reflected his knowledge (Montagud Rubio, 2020). Under his leadership, according to Montagud Rubio (2020), the University of Uppsala became the epicenter of botanical study in Europe, and his scientific findings resonated so strongly in Swedish society that the political group known as the "hattar" ("hats" in Swedish) began to promote and support the expeditions led by the naturalist, in the context of imperial expansion and Sweden's search for commercial independence from the rest of Europe.
The Swedish bourgeoisie, recognizing the economic potential of new trade routes, began to support expeditions aimed at discovering resource-rich regions, coinciding with Linnaeus's rise to an influential position in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Montagud Rubio, 2020). Taking advantage of his position, he established connections with the Swedish East India Company, seeking the financial support necessary to organize botanical expeditions to unexplored regions, with the goal of documenting not only Sweden's flora and fauna but also those of Europe and ultimately the entire world. In his quest to achieve this goal, Montagud Rubio (2020) mentions that Linnaeus decided to recruit a group of young students, whom he called "apostles," to assist him in his expeditions, visiting both known and undiscovered places, under his own direction or that of other explorers like James Cook.
Despite the commercial and scientific success they achieved, Linnaeus's expeditions were fraught with dangers, resulting in the loss of many of the young "apostles," who succumbed to death or madness due to the extreme conditions they faced in unknown territories in South America or Asia (Montagud Rubio, 2020). After years of tireless exploratory and scientific work, he returned to Sweden to dedicate his final years to teaching as a professor of medicine and botany, settling in 1758 in a residence near Hammarby. According to Montagud Rubio (2020), in recognition of his scientific merits and his contribution to establishing Sweden as a renowned scientific center in Europe, he was granted a noble title in 1762, at which point he officially adopted the name Carl von Linné.
However, the decline of this scientist began in the early 1770s, when his strength started to wane (Montagud Rubio, 2020). The spring of 1774 marked a turning point in his life when he suffered a stroke from which, although he recovered, left significant sequelae. Over time, he experienced progressive paralysis and memory loss, to the point of being unable to recognize even the most common and simple plants. According to Montagud Rubio (2020), Carl von Linné died on January 10, 1778, at the age of 70, leaving a scientific legacy that would endure through the centuries and lay the foundation for the systematic study of biodiversity worldwide.
The Linnaean System in Taxonomy
The binomial system for species classification, attributed to Carl Linnaeus, represents a fundamental contribution to the field of botanical taxonomy. Its development and evolution spanned several decades, profoundly transforming the way naturalists identify and categorize plant and animal species (Montagud Rubio, 2020). According to Montagud Rubio (2020), Linnaeus's observations on plant morphology, particularly focusing on the reproductive organs of flowering species, laid the foundation for creating a botanical classification system. As the naturalist discovered and described new species, the system was refined and adapted to more accurately reflect natural reality.
Although Linnaeus initially held the belief in the immutability of species since Creation, his perspective evolved towards a more dynamic view, considering the possibility that new "species" could originate through processes such as hybridization and cross-pollination (Montagud Rubio, 2020). His work "Species Plantarum," published in 1753, represents the consolidation of his binomial system for plant classification, based on theoretical similarities between species and the distinctive characteristics of each variety, managing to name around 8,000 plant species (Montagud Rubio, 2020). According to Sadurní (2022), the importance of this system for botanical taxonomy lies in its ability to provide a more efficient and accessible plant identification method, which was valuable for naturalists exploring new territories in Africa and Oceania, constantly facing the discovery of unknown species.
The binomial nomenclature proposed by Linnaeus stands as an effective method for assigning "first and last names" to all living beings, thus simplifying a system that, before its implementation, was more complex and confusing (Sadurní, 2022). To illustrate the magnitude of the change brought by this system, consider the case of the wild rose, previously known by various names such as "Rosa sylvestris inodora seu canina" or "Rosa sylvestris alba cum rubore" by different botanists. Linnaeus, according to Sadurní (2022), in his effort to unify criteria, established that this plant should be universally known as Rosa canina, applying a specific format: the genus name (Rosa) written in uppercase and italicized, followed by the species name (canina) in lowercase and italicized.
Despite being a revolutionary idea for its time, the system has undergone refinements and adjustments over the past three centuries, adapting to advances in taxonomic knowledge (Montagud Rubio, 2020). A modern example of this system's application is the scientific naming of the wolf as "Canis lupus," where "Canis" represents the genus shared with other species like the fox, and "lupus" identifies the specific species within that genus. The taxonomic classification of the wolf, following the established hierarchical structure, is broken down as follows: Species (Canis lupus), Genus (Canis), Family (Canidae), Order (Carnivora), Class (Mammalia), Subphylum (Vertebrata), Phylum (Chordata), and Kingdom (Animalia). According to Montagud Rubio (2020), this taxonomic pyramid allows the wolf to be placed in the broader context of the animal kingdom and also facilitates understanding of its evolutionary relationships with other species.
The Foundation for Evolution
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which explains how species change over time in response to their environment and other living organisms, found its basis in the work of Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy. Although Linnaeus, a man of the 18th century and contemporary of King Charles III, could never have imagined such influence on the future of biology (Sánchez, 2018). Sánchez (2018) notes that, despite Linnaeus's view of species as immutable creations of God with no possibility of evolution, his hierarchical classification system laid the groundwork for the later development of evolutionary theory.
Today, advancements in genetics allow for the classification of living organisms using DNA barcodes, representing a qualitative leap in modern taxonomy (Sánchez, 2018). However, according to Sánchez (2018), the binomial nomenclature system established by Linnaeus remains relevant and important, as it provides biological entities with a tangible identity and a defined place in the classification of living beings, preventing them from becoming mere theoretical abstractions.
References
Montagud Rubio, N. (2020, septiembre 25). Carl von Linné: Biografía de Este Naturalista Sueco. Psicología y Mente. https://psicologiaymente.com/biografias/carl-von-linne
Sadurní, J. M. (2022, mayo 23). Carlos Linneo, el Botánico que Ordenó la Naturaleza. National Geographic. https://historia.nationalgeographic.com.es/a/carlos-linneo-botanico-que-ordeno-naturaleza_18012
Sánchez, G. L. (2018, enero 9). Linneo, el «Gran Hombre» que le Puso Nombre y Apellidos a Animales y Plantas. ABC.es. https://www.abc.es/ciencia/abci-linneo-gran-hombre-puso-nombre-y-apellidos-animales-y-plantas-201801092147_noticia.html?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.abc.es%2Fciencia%2Fabci-linneo-gran-hombre-puso-nombre-y-apellidos-animales-y-plantas-201801092147_noticia.html
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