Everything about Systema Naturae totally explained
The book
Systema Naturae was one of the major works of the
Swedish doctor of medicine
Carolus Linnaeus. Its full title is
Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis or translated: "System of nature through the three kingdoms of nature, according to classes, orders, genera and species, with [generic] characters, [specific] differences, synonyms, places".
The tenth edition of this book is considered the starting point of
zoological nomenclature.
Overview
Linnaeus published the
Systema Naturae in the year 1735, during his stay in the
Netherlands. As customary for the scientific literature of its day, the book was published in
Latin. In it, he outlines his ideas for the hierarchical classification of the natural world, dividing it into the
animal kingdom (
Regnum animale), the
plant kingdom (
Regnum vegetabile) and the "
mineral kingdom" (
Regnum lapideum).
The classification of the plant kingdom in the book wasn't a natural one, but of convenience: it followed Linnaeus' new sexual system where species with the same number of
stamens were treated in the same group. Linnaeus believed that he was classifying
God's creation and wasn't trying to express
evolutionary relationships. The classification of animals was more natural. For instance,
humans were for the first time placed together with other
primates (as Anthropomorpha).
In view of the popularity of the work Linnaeus kept publishing new and ever expanding
editions, growing from eleven pages in the first edition (
1735) to three thousand pages in the final and thirteenth edition (
1770). Also, as the work progressed he made changes: In the first edition
whales were erroneously classified as
fishes; in the 10th edition, published in 1758, the
whales were moved to the
mammals. In this same edition he introduced two part names (see
binomen) for animal species, something he'd done for plant species (see
binary name) in the 1753 publication of
Species Plantarum.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Systema Naturae'.
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