Linnaeus' herbarium cabinet: a piece of furniture and its function

Endeavour

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 60-64

  Müller Wille, Staffan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

WOOD PRODUCTS; WOODWORKING;

BINOMINAL NOMENCLATURE; MODERN TAXONOMY;

PLANTS (BOTANY);

BOTANY; CLASSIFICATION; FURNITURE; HISTORY; HUMAN; MEDICAL ILLUSTRATION; MEDICINAL PLANT; NOMENCLATURE; REVIEW; SWEDEN;

BOTANY; CLASSIFICATION; HISTORY, 18TH CENTURY; HUMANS; INTERIOR DESIGN AND FURNISHINGS; MEDICAL ILLUSTRATION; PLANTS, MEDICINAL; SWEDEN; TERMINOLOGY;

PLANTS; TAXONOMY; WOOD;

EID: 33744975233     PISSN: 01609327     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2006.03.001     Document Type: Review

References (22)

1. White, P. (1999) The purchase of knowledge: James Edward Smith and the Linnaean collections. Endeavour 23, pp. 126-129
2. On the history of the cabinets see Gage, A.T. and Stearn, W.T., eds (1988) A Bicentennary History of the Linnean Society of London, Academic Press of the Linnean Society (London, UK), p. 177; and Ramsbottom, J. (1938) President's address: Linnaeus and the Species Concept. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London 150, pp. 192-219 (op. cit. p. 219)
3. McOuat, G.R. (1996) Species, rules and meaning: the politics of language and the ends of definitions in 19th century natural history. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 27, pp. 473-519
4. Daston, L. (2004) Type specimens and scientific memory. Critical Inquiry 31, pp. 153-182 (op. cit. p. 158)
5. See The Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/linnaean-typification/, last accessed 20 January 2006). The Linnaeus Link Project, which aims to produce a union catalogue of Linnaean collections worldwide, must also be seen in this context (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/linnaeus-link/index.html, last access 23 January 2006)
6. Lefèvre, W. (1999) Natural or artificial systems? The 18th-century controversy on classification of animals and plants and its philosophical contexts. In Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant (Lefèvre, W., ed.), pp. 191-209, Kluwer (Dordvedct, Germany)
7. Müller-Wille, S. (2001) Gardens of paradise. Endeavour 25, pp. 49-54
8. For a recent translation of this textbook see Linnaeus, C. (Freer, S., trans) (2003) Philosophia Botanica, Oxford University Press (Oxford, UK). The instructions on how to make a herbarium are on p. 18 and pp. 329-330 of this edition
9. There is no modern history of the herbarium. Detailed descriptions of some of the oldest herbaria, including those of Ulysse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) and Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603) - both students of Ghini, can be found in Saint-Lager, J-B. (1886) Histoire des herbiers. Annales de la Société Botanique de Lyon: Notes et Mémoires 13, pp. 1-120
10. See the photograph of the cabinet reproduced in Dahlgren, K.V.O. (1951) Philosophia botanica, ett 200-årsminne. Svenska Linnesällskapets Årsskrif 33-34, p. 23. Today the cabinets lack this feature, so it must have been removed during some later restoration work, indicating that it was judged to be a post-Linnaean addition
11. Larson, J.L. (1971) Reason and Experience: The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl Linnaeus, University of California Press (Berkeley CA, USA)
12. Müller-Wille, S. (2003) Joining Lapland and the Topinambes in flourishing Holland: center and periphery in Linnaean botany. Science in Context 16, pp. 461-488
13. The fullest account of the provenance of the plant material collected in Linnaeus's herbarium is provided by Stearn, W.T. (1957) An introduction to the Species plantarum and cognate botanical works of Carl Linnaeus. In Carl Linnaeus, 'Species plantarum': A Facsimile of the First Edition 1753 (Vol. 1) (Ray Society, ed.), pp. 103-114, Ray Society (London, UK)
14. An account of Linnaeus' political skills in building up a correspondence network is given in Sörlin, S. (2000) Ordering the world for Europe: science as intelligence and information as seen from the northern periphery. In Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise (MacLeod, R., ed.), pp. 51-69, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL, USA); for an edition of letters to and from Linnaeus see The Linnaean Correspondence Project (http://www.linnaeus.c18.net/, last accessed 24 January 2006)
15. I owe this information to Charlie Jarvis who works in the Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project, Natural History Museum, London, UK
16. Sörlin, S. (1989) Scientific travel: the Linnaean tradition. In Science in Sweden. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 1739-1989 (Frängsmyr, T., ed.), pp. 96-123, Science History Publications (Canton, MA, USA)
17. Müller-Wille, S. (2005) Walnuts at Hudson Bay, coral reefs in Gotland: the colonialism of Linnaean botany. In Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World (Schiebinger, L. and Swan, C., eds), pp. 34-48. University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA, USA)
18. Freer's translation has 'includes' for 'excludit' in the Latin original, which is clearly incorrect; the original is in Linnaeus, C. (1751) Philosophia botanica, Kiesewetter (Stockholm, Sweden), p. 131
19. Müller-Wille, S. (2003) Nature as a marketplace: the political economy of Linnaean botany. In Oeconomies in the Age of Newton (De Marchi, N. and Schabas, M., eds), pp. 155-173, Duke University Press (Durham, NC, USA)
20. Foucault, M. (1966) Les mots et les choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines, Gallimard (Paris, France), p. 143; the translation is my own
21. Lesch, J.E. (1990) Systematics and the geometrical spirit. In The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (Frängsmyr, T. et al., eds), pp. 73-112, University of California Press
22. Koerner, L. (1999) Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, USA)