Post by ignorantianescia on Jul 26, 2018 18:14:50 GMT
When perusing the Wikipedia entry about Carl Linnaeus, one thing stuck out like a sore thumb.
I generally don't take much interest in the history of biology, but does anybody know any reputable sources on this subject.
Andrew Dickson White wrote in A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896):
Linnaeus ... was the most eminent naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close thinker; but the atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his being was saturated with biblical theology, and this permeated all his thinking. ... Toward the end of his life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted at the creation one species; and from the last edition of his Systema Naturæ he quietly left out the strongly orthodox statement of the fixity of each species, which he had insisted upon in his earlier works. ... warnings came speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides.
Linnaeus ... was the most eminent naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close thinker; but the atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his being was saturated with biblical theology, and this permeated all his thinking. ... Toward the end of his life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one genus constituted at the creation one species; and from the last edition of his Systema Naturæ he quietly left out the strongly orthodox statement of the fixity of each species, which he had insisted upon in his earlier works. ... warnings came speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides.
I generally don't take much interest in the history of biology, but does anybody know any reputable sources on this subject.