Natural history and information overload: The case of Linnaeus

Abstract

Natural History can be seen as a discipline paradigmatically engaged in 'data-driven research.' Historians of early modern science have begun to emphasize its crucial role in the Scientific Revolution, and some observers of present day genomics see it as engaged in a return to natural history practices. A key concept that was developed to understand the dynamics of early modern natural history is that of 'information overload.' Taxonomic systems, rules of nomenclature, and technical terminologies were developed in botany and zoology to catch up with the ever increasing amount of information on hitherto unknown plant and animal species. In our contribution, we want to expand on this concept. After all, the same people who complain about information overload are usually the ones who contribute to it most significantly. In order to understand this complex relationship, we will turn to the annotation practices of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). The very tools that Linnaeus developed to contain and reduce information overload, as we aim to demonstrate, facilitated a veritable information explosion that led to the emergence of a new research object in botany: the so-called 'natural' system.

Fig. 1

Linnaeus’s extract of the system underlying Joseph Pitton de Tournefort’s Institutiones rei herbariae (1697). Linnaeus’s representation combines a dichotomous diagram (to the left) and a tabular arrangement of genera under the respective classes of the system (to the right). Library of the Linnean Society (London), Linnaean Collections, Ms. ‘Manuscripta medica, vol. 1’, Box LMGen. Courtesy Linnean Society London.

Fig. 2

(a) Plan of Uppsala Botanical Garden, contained in the manuscript ‘Adonis Uplandicus’ that Linnaeus produced in 1731 while teaching botany there. (b) List of genera (symbolized by the numbers used in the main text of the manuscript) under the classes of the sexual system, shown to the right. The list of genera fits the flower beds in the upper middle of the garden plan. C. Linnaeus, Ms. ‘Adonis Uplandicus’ (1731), Uppsala University Library, Leufsta Mss.

Fig. 3

Two pages from the manuscript ‘Praelectiones Botanicae Publicae’, with notes on the genera Urtica, Raphanus, Leucojum and Delphinium. C. Linnaeus, Ms. ‘Praelectiones Botanicae Publicae’ (1731), Library of the Linnean Society (London), Linnaean Collections, Box LMBot. Courtesy Linnean Society.

Fig. 4

Page from the manuscript ‘Fundamenta botanica’, Vol. 8, listing species for the Genera Hippophae, Lentiscus and Urtica. C. Linnaeus, Ms. ‘Fundamenta Botanica’ (1731–1733), Vol. VIII, p. 17, Library of the Linnean Society (London), Linnaean Collections, LMBot. Courtesy Linnean Society.

Fig. 5

Two ‘index cards’ prepared by Carl Linnaeus on different species of the Genus Urtica. C. Linnaeus, ‘About 900 diagnoses of new plants, written on small slips’, Library of the Linnean Society (London), Linnaean Collections, LMBot. Courtesy Linnean Society.

Fig. 6

Two pages from Carl Linnaeus’s personal interleafed copy of his Genera plantarum (1737). On the right are the printed descriptions of the genera Urtica and Morus, on the lift Linnaeus’s handwritten annotations, listing species within each of these genera. C. Linnaeus, Genera plantarum (Leiden 1737), Library of the Linnean Society (London), Linnaean Collections, Call no. BL 49A, p. 268. Courtesy Linnean Society.

Fig. 7

Page from Carl Linnaeus’s personal interleafed copy of Materia Medica (1749), figuring the genera Urtica and Morus, both classified as Monoecia Tetrandria. C. Linnaeus, Materia Medica (Stockholm, 1749), Library of the Linnean Society (London), Linnaean Collections, Call no. BL 94, p. 149. Courtesy Linnean Society.

Fig. 8

Page from the manuscript ‘Catalogus plantarum eruciferarum’, tabulating insect species that feed, among others, on the nettle (Urtica) and the mulberry (Morus). C. Linnaeus, ‘‘Catalogus plantarum eruciferarum’, Library of the Linnean Society (London), Linnaean Collections, LMZool. Courtesy Linnean Society.