Abstract

Linnaeus’s Geographical Legacy1 E l l io t M c I n t ir e Professor, Department of Geography California State University, Northridge, CA 91330-8249 Presidential address delivered to the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Sacramento, California, 11 June, 1996 REFERENCE TO CARL LINNAEUS immediately conjures up bo­ tanical images. Today he is best remembered in most of the world as the 18th-century scientist who standardized the classification ofplants by establishing two-part scientific names. Thousands of plants have the capital letter L. following their name because they were first named by Linnaeus, most notably in his Species Planterum of 1753, which serves as the starting point and the ultimate authority for modem scientific botanical nomenclature. There is no doubt that these con­ stitute Linnaeus’s most enduring contributions to science. However, such a focus tends to obscure his other contributions, for Linnaeus, reflecting the character of his time, was not merely a botanist. In addition to his botanical work, he published classifica­ tion systems for animals and minerals, conducted regional economic surveys, probably invented the Celsius thermometer, played a major role in establishing rigorous observation and precise data recording as the basis of scientific investigation; and through his own work and 9 10 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 59 • 1997 that of his students, contributed greatly to the growth of geographic knowledge of the world. Linnaeus, the son of a country parson, was bom in 1707 in a small village in Smalands, a poor province in southern Sweden. He was bom shortly before the dashing of Swedish imperial ambitions with their overwhelming defeat at the battle of Poltava (1709), an event which turned Swedish society inward, forcing an emphasis on development of the country’s own resources. Educated in Sweden, in 1735 he traveled to the Netherlands for his Doctor of Medicine degree, and remained there for 3 years, publishing a number of key botanical works. Returning to Sweden he briefly practiced medicine, and then took a chair at the University of Uppsala in 1741, where he remained until his death in 1778. His travels in northern Europe, and later the travels of his stu­ dents, provided him with a fund of botanical and geographical knowledge that enabled him to develop classification systems for a variety of natural phenomena, providing a basis for much of modem science. The most famous scientist of his time, he always spoke with the rustic Smalands accent, and communicated with those outside the country in Latin. Linnaeus viewed himself as a natural scientist, and instilled this view in his students. One of his students described his goal as “ob­ serving everything he saw in Nature and every aspect of life in which man made use of Nature” (Kalm, quoted in Kerkkonen 1959), an approach which falls squarely in the man-land tradition of geogra­ phy. Central to his approach was careful fieldwork, with attention to all aspects of the landscape, and the sharing of this information through publication. It is this aspect of his work that I want to em­ phasize here. One of his biographers has divided his pupils into two groups, “the ‘botanistes-voyageurs’ and the ‘botanistes de cabinet’” (Stafleu 1971). Linnaeus considered the former group his “apostles,” a term MCINTIRE: Linnaeus’s Geographical Legacy 11 he initially applied in 1750, as he came to depend more and more on them for basic field data (Goerke 1973). The age of discovery was drawing to a close in mid-18th cen­ tury, but scientific knowledge of many parts of the world remained extremely sketchy, and details of the flora and fauna, the local econo­ mies, and the lives of their inhabitants were largely unknown. Linnaeus’s goal of cataloging every vascular plant was a driving force for him and his students. At the time, Linnaeus’s expectation seemed quite reasonable. He included some 7,000 species in his Species Planterum in 1753, and estimated that the total number of all plant species probably did not exceed 10,000. Several factors may account for Linnaeus’s underestimation of the number of plant species. Northern Europe, which he knew best, has comparatively few plant species and he had no reason to suspect that plant...

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