The history of classifications is really the history of botany for a long time. Aristotle didn't quite have a system of classification in his book, The History of Animals. He wanted to describe each one of them in as much detail as he could. As the number of species being described grew, there was a need for exactly the kind of order that Steve was just talking about.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and legacy of the pioneering Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778). The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth".
The son of a parson, Linnaeus grew up in an impoverished part of Sweden but managed to gain a place at university. He went on to transform biology by making two major innovations. He devised a simpler method of naming species and he developed a new system for classifying plants and animals, a system that became known as the Linnaean hierarchy. He was also one of the first people to grow a banana in Europe.
With
Staffan Muller-Wille
University Lecturer in History of Life, Human and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge
Stella Sandford
Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London
and
Steve Jones
Senior Research Fellow in Genetics at University College, London
Producer Luke Mulhall