Carl Linnaeus/Bibliography

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• Quammen D. (2007) A Passion for Order. National Geographic Magazine June 2007.

• Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus was an early information architect. He believed that every kind of plant and animal on Earth should be named and classified.

• A Test Case for DNA Barcodes to Identify Species. PLoS Biology Vol. 2, No. 10, e357 2004.

• Christopher Oscarson (2007) Linnaeus 1907: Oscar Levertin and the Re-invention of Carl Linnaeus as Ecological Subject. Scandinavian Studies. Volume: 79. Issue: 4. Page Number: 405+. COPYRIGHT 2007 Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study; COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

• My subsequent focus on Levertin's reading of Linnaeus is not because Levertin's reading should be considered originary or definitive, but rather because his work on Linnaeus marks so well a particular historical moment. Through his depiction of Linnaeus as an artist and literary figure, Levertin counters the image of Linnaeus as a disembodied rationalist and presents him as an embodied and embedded subject. Different from other contemporary images of Linnaeus as blomsterkonungen [the king of flowers], Levertin presents Linnaeus as what might be termed an ecological subject, an embodied subject clearly grounded in and integrated with his immediate surroundings. The image of Linnaeus in the fragmentary chapters of Levertin's biography is contradictory at best, but these contradictions point to important currents in Swedish culture's own historical engagement and use of the natural environment to represent evolving notions of collective and individual identity. Linnaeus's subjectivity and relationship with his environment (and not his science) is the focus of the investigation. By concentrating on the subjectivity of Linnaeus as embodied observer, Levertin explores the dynamics of observation and representation by erasing boundaries between inside and outside, subject and object, the knowable and the unknowable, and self and other. His representation of Linnaeus strives for a critical thickness that is less interested in what Linnaeus saw than in how he saw and wrote about it.

• Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) Biography

• The Linné Herbarium, at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, preserves some of Linnaeus's original plant specimens. The Museum also has an excellent, detailed biography of Linnaeus. You can also view Linnaeus's botanical garden and Linnaeus's manor home and garden at Hamarby, courtesy of Uppsala University, Linnaeus's alma mater. Uppsala University also maintains Linné On Line, a rich source of information on Linnaeus and his times (for those who can read Swedish).
• Founded a few years after Linnaeus's death, the Linnaean Society of London is still going strong as an international society for the study of natural history. The Society preserves the bulk of Linnaeus's surviving collections, manuscripts, and library. The Strandell Collection of Linneana, at Carnegie-Mellon University, and the Mackenzie Linneana collection at Kansas State University, are major American collections of writings by and about Linnaeus and his associates. The Linnaeus Link at the British Natural History Museum, aims to make available electronic versions of Linnaeus's writings and documents.