May 23, 1707

Carl Linnaeus (May 23, 1707 to January 10, 1778), was the Swedish scientist who originated our modern system of taxonomy. Before we had the world wide web, intellectuals were excited to receive periodical digests of contemporary thinking, and the View of the History Politics and Literature of the Year 1759 was such a case. Here are some paragraphs from this particular series, specifically comment on the Linnaean classification of the natural world. They make vivid an earlier intellectual era with different and yet comprehensible objections to the new system.

WITH regard to the general order, and the method of distribution of the different subjects of natural history, it is purely arbitrary; and therefore we are. sufficiently at liberty to chuse that which appears the most commodious or the most commonly received. ...[First] we must, for a moment, divest ourselves of our prejudices, and even strip ourselves of our notions. Let us suppose a man who had actually forgot every thing, or who awakes quite fresh, to view the objects that surround him; let us place such a man in the field, where animals, birds, fishes, plants, stones, &c. present themselves successively to his eyes. In the first encounters he will distinguish nothing, and confound every thing; but let his ideas be gradually confirmed by reiterated sensations of the same objects, he will soon form to himself a general idea of animated matter: he will easily distinguish it from inanimated matter, and in a little time after, he will distinguish very well animated matter from vegetative, and naturally arrive at this first grand division, namely, animal, vegetable, and mineral; and as he shall have taken, at the same time, a clear idea of these grand objects that are so different, viz. the earth, the air, and the water,....... This is what a bare inspection must necessarily produce in him, and what with a very slender degree of attention, he cannot fail to know, and this is likewise what we ought to consider as real, and as a division which nature herself has made; let us put ourselves in the place of such a man,... he will always much better know those that are most familiar to him; in the next place, he will be taken up with such animals, as, though not so familiar to him, yet live in the same place and climate, as the deer, bares, and all the wild animals ; and it will be only after the acquisition of all this knowledge that his curiosity will lead him to find out what may be the animals of foreign climates, as the elephant, dromedary, &c.

... [I]t is much easier, and more agreeable and useful for us, to consider things with regard to ourselves, than under any other point of view. [An objection that], ... for instance, we are not certain, that a line of separation can be drawn betwixt the animal and vegetable kingdoms, or even betwixt the vegetable kingdom and the mineral,..[is not supported by commonsense]

... [I]n a treatise of natural history...perhaps it may be further urged, that it would be better to follow the ancient method of the division of animals into whole. footed, and cloven-footed, or the modern method of division, by their teeth, and teats, &c. This objection, which at first may appear pretty plausible, will vanish when we come to examine it. Were it not better to arrange, not only in a treatise of natural history, but even in a picture, or any where else, objects in the order and position in which "they are commonly found, than to force them to be joined together by virtue of any hypothesis...? Does a lion, because claw-footed, resemble a rat, which is so too, more than a horse resembles a dog ... And should we follow the new method, in which the teeth and the teats are the specific characters, and upon which the divisions and distributions are founded, [and then]we find that a lion is more like a bat, than a horse is like a dog?

... [W]e shall therefore here confine ourselves to examine the method of the celebrated Linnæus, which is the most modern, whereby we may be enabled to judge whether we had reason to reject it, and confine ourselves solely to the natural order in which all mankind are wont to view and consider things. Linnæus divides all animals into six classes, viz. quadrupeds, birds, amphibious creatures, fishes, insects, and worms. The first division is very arbitary and very incomplete:...[I]f, instead of making only six classes, he had made twelve, twelve, or more, ... the nearer we shall approach to the truth, since only individuals do really exist in nature, and since genuses, orders, and classes, only exist in our own imaginations.

...We may discover, by the bare enumeration of these orders, that this Division is not only arbitrary, but very injudiciously made; for he places in this first order, man, the monkey, the Guinea lubbard, ... Let us go on to the second order, which he calls wild beasts; and here indeed he begins with the lion and tiger, but he proceeds with the cat, the weazle, the otter, the sea-calf, the dog, the bear, the badger; and he ends with the hedgehog, the mole, and the hat. Who could ever have imagined, that the name of a wild beast could have been given to the bat, the mole, and the hedge-hog! that such domestic animals as the dog and the cat were wild beasts! and is there not herein as great an ambiguity with regard to good sense, as well as with regard to the words ? But let us proceed to the third class, namely, the wild rats of M. Linnæus, which are the porcupine, the hare, the squirrel, the beaver, and the common rat.... The fourth order is that of beasts of carriage, which are the elephant, the hippopotamus, or river horse, the shrew-mouse, the horse and the pig. What a strange, what a chimerical arrangement this! .... [W]e find that the lupus cervinus is no other than a species of cats; the fox and wolf a species of dogs; the civet a species of badger; the Indian pig a species of hare; the water-rat a species of beaver; the rhinoceros a species of elephant;... and all this for no other reason, but that there is some little analogy between the number of the teats and the teeth of these animals, or some like resemblance in the figure of their hoofs.

...Would it not be more simple, natural, and true, to say that an ass is an ass, and a cat a cat, than to make, without knowing for what reason, an ass a horse, and a cat a lynx, or wild spotted cat. One may, by this..., judge of all the rest of Linnæus's system. ... Is there then anything further necessary, to evince how arbitrary, how chimerical his divisions are, and how ill grounded his system is ?

These arguments are so clear, so thoughtful, and so ultimately silly: the arguments of this anonymous author lead to the choice of having no system at all.