Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
This fascinating tale of the battle to define our relationship with nature pits Carl Linnaeus, father of modern taxonomy and creator of concepts including mammal, primate and Homo sapiens, against Georges Buffon, who conceived of a more fluid system that predicted genetics. Linnaeus, a racist who denied evolution, won out and Roberts shines a harsh light on his mistreatment of students and mentors, his self-publicising arrogance and his brutal attempts to weld the living world to his simple definitions. The book argues convincingly for a re-evaluation of Buffon’s vision, as recent research and technology struggle to sit in Linnaeus’s ironclad nomenclature.