The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System

Author/Contributor(s):	Stevens, Peter
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Date:	12/01/1994
Binding:	Hardcover
Condition:	NEW

A reevaluation of the history of biological systematics that discusses the formative years of the so-called natural system of classification in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Shows how classifications came to be treated as conventions; systematic practice was not linked to clearly articulated theory; there was general confusion over the "shape" of nature; botany, elements of natural history, and systematics were conflated; and systematics took a position near the bottom of the hierarchy of sciences.