A gardener friend of ours used to object to calling a plant by its Latin name. She heard it as pretense and obfuscation. But after the sage incident, she conceded that there was some point to it.

God, the Bible tells us, gave Adam the job of naming the animals. But it was Carl Linnaeus who figured out a good way to do it. Linnaeus, also known as Carolus Linnaeus or Carol von Linne, was the ...

'A NEW botanist is arisen in the North," the Sheridan Professor of Botany at Oxford announced in 1736, "founder of a new method, based on stamens and pistils, whose name is Linnaeus." That method was ...

The age of Enlightenment provided the backdrop for eighteenth century European theories about human difference. Exploration of Africa, Asia and the Americas brought Europeans in contact with people ...