NATURAL OR ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS

Natural classification or how to devise a natural system of classification was a prominent subject of controversy among naturalists of the eighteenth century. Classificatory work itself was one of the most important occupations of the naturalists of the time among whom we encounter such famous figures as Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707–1788), Michel Adanson (1727–1806), Antoin Laurent Jussieu (1748–1836), and Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829). Though every new botanical and zoological system was dismissed upon further biological1 insight, biologists and historians of biology take the classificatory efforts of these men to be crucial steps on the way towards modern taxonomy. How much eighteenth-century classificatory principles are still part of present thinking in biology is shown by the frequency with which eighteenth-century naturalists are invoked as forerunners of modern convictions or as original sources of combatted doctrines in today’s controversies on various topics of biological systematics.2