Linnaeus
20 Apr, 2023
590 Animals (Zoology)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and legacy of the pioneering Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707 - 1778). The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau once wrote: ‘Tell him I know no greater man on earth’. The son of a parson, Linnaeus grew up in an impoverished part of Sweden but managed to gain a place at university. He went on to transform biology by making two major innovations. He devised a simpler method of naming species and he developed a new system for classifying plants and animals, a system that became known as the Linnaean hierarchy. He was also one of the first people to grow a banana in Europe.
Guests
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Staffan Muller-Wille No other episodes
University Lecturer in History of Life, Human and Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge -
Stella Sandford No other episodes
Professor of Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London - Steve Jones
22 episodes
Senior Research Fellow in Genetics at University College, London
Reading list
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The Compleat Naturalist
Wilfrid Blunt (Frances Lincoln, 2004) Google Books → -
The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus
Gunnar Broberg (Princeton University Press, 2023) Google Books → -
In Worlds of Natural History
HA Curry, N Jardine, JA Secord, and E Spary (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2018) Google Books → -
Sex, Botany and Empire: The Story of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks
Patricia Fara (Icon, 2017) Google Books → -
In Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day
N Hopwood, R Flemming, and L Kassell (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2018) Google Books → -
Almost Like a Whale: The Origin Of Species Updated
Steve Jones (Black Swan, 2000) Google Books → -
Linnaeus: Nature and Nation
Lisbet Koerner (Harvard University Press, 1999) Google Books → -
Reason and Experience: The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl Linnaeus
James L. Larson (University of California Press, 1971) Google Books → -
Philosophia Botanica
Carl Linnaeus (trans. Stephen Freer) (Oxford University Press, 2003) Google Books → -
Natural History and Information Overload: The Case of Linnaeus
Staffan Muller-Wille and Isabelle Charmantier (Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2012) -
"A Great Complication of Circumstances" - Darwin and the Economy of Nature
Trevor Pearce (Journal of the History of Biology, 2010) -
Linnaeus as ethnographer of Sami culture
Nellejet Zorgdrager (Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek, 2008)
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Programme ID: m001l291
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001l291
Auto-category: 590 (Natural history and animals)