Carolus Linnaeus's Influence On The Field Of Biology

Charles Darwin is one the most influential scientists in our history. Without his speculation and theories on evolution, the way we look at evolution today may have been very misguided. Darwin created new ideas and theories that dramatically changed the way we see science today. His impact on the scientific community was both exciting yet controversial.

Many of the disease and condition names first used by Galen have been retained. This accounts for the fact that the second most common source of medical root words is the Greek Language. Other older roots have their Arabic. This is due to the fact that Arabic scholars were important teachers of medicine through the middle ages. Some modern roots are taken from the English language. This reflects the pre-eminence of the English language in medicine and biomedical sciences for the past half century. The Latin language adds suffixes to nouns to denote different syntax constructions. Since suffixes were commonly used by Italian scientists, their use in medical settings were also retained. Some prefixes are adaptations of Latin words. In medical descriptions and terminology, they were attached to root words rather than being separate from the word that they were modifying. Prefixes are often used to indicate locations on the body or directions relative to planes or structures in the body. Some words in modern medical terminology have been borrowed from biology. Many of these are names of genus and species of pathogens. The use of Latin for these names dates to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) who founded the modern system of taxonomy. Finally, from approximately 1650 through to 1850 – while the system of medical terminology currently in use was being developed-Latin was the language of educated persons. This is another reason for the inclusion of so many linguistic elements

As the book progresses, we are introduced to the three most influential people on western biological thought that emerged from ancient Greece, and the classical world. First came Socrates (470 – 399 B.C.) who was revered as the “moral philosopher” rather than a “natural philosopher,” as his ideas contributed towards two jurisdictions of thought – philosophy and natural science. Although he left little proof of his written accounts, his ideology has made it through centuries of history in the form of “Socratic dialogues” by his pupil, Plato (429 – 347 B.C.). Plato contributed to the transcription, of the dialogues between himself and Socrates and the members of Athenian

In the Linnaean classification system, all organisms are placed in a ranked hierarchy.   His system was one of small groups building into larger ones. The current groupings of organisms from largest to smallest are kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species

In the mid-nineteenth century, people focused more on the question from the New Testament of whether all humans are from “one blood” (Fredrickson 2015: 66). Others believed that people originate from three to five different species of which were all created separately and contain different aptitudes. In England, scientific racism did not become popular until the mid-nineteenth century, due to the strong evangelical Christian beliefs that all human beings are decedents of Adam and Eve (66). The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, attempted to classify humans into categories in 1735. He believed that different types of humans could be classified as monstrous and mythical. Among these types included Africans, Europeans, Asians, and Native Americans. He described black people as “crafty, indolent, negligent… Governed by caprice” and Europeans as “acute, inventive…Governed by laws” (56). Voltaire was mainly hostile towards Christianity. Because of this, he disliked the Jewish people for being connected to the New Testament. He claimed that each human race was a separate species that developed at different rates. The Jews all contained a set of undesirable traits that were permanent (62).

Carolus Linnaeus (1707-78), a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist, is known for his taxonomic system, which laid the foundations of the modern biological categorization (Brace, 2005). His ambition was to make order the chaos of biological life based on distinctiveness and established categories of generic and specific names. It divided humans into six categories; four based on geographic location, and Homo ferus (wild man) and homo monstrosus (monster man) (Fish, 2011). He further tried to make scientific sense of life by assigning traits to each of these categories. Racial stereotyping has derived from this concept of Linnaeus’ taxonomy, with static conceptions of a particular race that does not allow for individual variation and intergradations (Fish, 2011). Australia was colonized at a time

Near the beginning of the 1900’s, Christianity was challenged by the authority of science. One of the main leaders of this movement, known as the Enlightening or Scientific revolution, was an intellectual by the name of Charles Darwin. When his book Origin of Species challenged the idea of creationism with natural order and taxonomy (Pereboom, 1997). The answers to the questions that the church had deemed

When am I going to catch a break? Vince thought about his life as he sat waiting for the bus. His grass stained pants and green hands had showed the signs of a hard day’s work. He thought about what life would be like to have parents that he could turn to, when he needed them. His dad was in prison all of his life, and his mother has been on drugs ever since he could remember. “How the hell am I going to get my car out of impound?” Vince said to himself. He had been pulled over for not paying his insurance, and now faced the dilemma of getting his car out, or paying rent. He sat there with his elbows on his knees, and stared at the cars going by.

Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish Naturalist, He set up the system of assigning animals species names in latin (pg. 2). He also assigned them genus’s, families, and kingdoms. This gave other scientist a common language to use when talking about animals and in turn helped Charles Darwin with his examples and gave a general idea that all animals are connected in a way. Carl also inspired many future scientist’s to travel the globe including Charles Darwin. But Charles didn’t just form this earth shaking theory of evolution by looking at others work he actually explored places and observed the many animals there. On December 27, 1831 Charles Darwin began his scientific voyage that would ultimately change the world upon a ship called the “beagle”, the beagle 's voyage lasted almost five years. Darwin was on land most of this journey; investigating geology, and making natural history collections, while the beagle was mapping and charting the coast. In 1835 the beagle was charting the coasts of the Galapagos islands, during that time Darwin was on the islands. While Darwin was on the islands he noticed that there was a species of birds called the finch on all the islands. The thing about these birds was that they were all the same species, but on each island they had different sizes and shapes of beaks. Charles was baffled at such a discovery. How could Finches of the same species have such vastly

Thomas Malthus, William Paley and Charles Lyell will be the main inspiration and credit behind the workings and research that was conducted by Charles Darwin and his work behind the well-known concept of the Scientific Revolution. Through the historical background of Charles Darwin’s life and understanding of these men mentioned about this essay will show how Charles Darwin made a massive contribution to how the nineteenth century had the understanding of how nature was created with adding the comparison to those who believe in the more religious understandings of how those believed nature had been created and established.

"Nothing is more remarkable than Aristotle 's efforts to exhibit the relationships of living things as a scala naturae.” Charles Singer, a modern British historian, and zoologist quotes referring to Aristotle’s “History of Animals” which classified organisms in relation to a hierarchical "ladder of life" (scala naturae).

Aristotle describes substance as being the most important when talking about Genera. These Genera include Substance, Quantity, Quality, Relative, Where, When, Being in a position, Having, Acting on, and Being Affected. Of these, he says they are all equal, but Substance connects all of them together. With out substance, we cannot know about the other things listed for Genera. When we talk about something, we can list its characteristics, which is part of Quality. We can also talk about how many of the substance there are, and that is part of Quantity. But in order for us to do that, we must know what the substance is in order to be able to describe it.

Gregor Johann Mendel was a researcher, Augustinian minister and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was naturally introduced to a German-talking family in Silesian part of the Austrian Empire and increased after death acknowledgment as the author of the cutting edge study of hereditary qualities. In spite of the fact that ranchers had known for quite a long time that the crossbreeding of creatures and plants could support certain attractive characteristics, Mendel's pea plant tests led in the vicinity of 1856 and 1863 set up a large portion of the tenets of heredity, now alluded to as the laws of Mendelian legacy. Mendel worked with seven qualities of pea plants: plant tallness, pod shape and shading, seed shape

Starting over 500 years ago with Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton paving the way for the possibility of new scientific exploration into studies such as “stratigraphy, the study of the rock and soil layers of the earth” by Robert Hooke and Carolus Linnaeus’ study of taxonomy, “the system of naming and classifying organisms” based on morphological similarities and differences, humanity would begin to uncrack the code of where life came from in a nonbiblical sense. (Fuentes, 26) Further studies by George-Louis Leclerc – Comte du Buffon, Erasmus Darwin (Charles’ grandfather), Georges Cuvier, James Hutton and Charles Lyell as well as Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet – Chevalier de Lamarck’s studies in which he “correctly identified the environment as a challenge to organisms and adaptation as the result of changing to meet environmental challenges” helped prompt the formulation of the current understanding of evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace each in their own special way.

With European expansion, the exploration of new ‘worlds’ brought to focus the distributions and varieties of new plant and animal species. These new discoveries did not fit within the constructs of the traditional biblical explanations or references towards classification of species. Many scholars including philosophers, geologists, and primarily naturalists were struggling to explain and classify their new findings. With this struggle, a new classification system was created, known as Systema Naturae. By the early 19th century, “the philosophical and biological frameworks were in place” (McGee, Warms, 2012), allowing for new evolutionary theories to emerge.