Three eighteenth century images of the order of nature

What is it about?

Since Antiquity, naturalists entertained the idea that nature is an ordered, coherent whole. They had observed that all natural species belonged to an order, based on the measure of their mutual resemblances. This natural order, that is the whole of all species, became known as "systema naturae," or natural system. Aristotle, for instance suggested that organized matter should be arranged ladder-like, in a one-dimensional, graded scale, starting from stones at the bottom and ending with humans at the top. This arrangement implied that every species had a direct relation of resemblance - called "affinity" - to two others, one on the step below and one on the step above it. By the eighteenth century this concept of one-dimensionally ordering nature became obsolete, because naturalists had discovered that species had affinities on more than two sides. That is why Linnaeus, at the time the greatest naturalist, suggested that plants should be ordered two-dimensionally, "like a territory on a geographical map." This article is about three of such two-dimensional eighteenth century views of the order of nature, two maps, and one network-like image. The latter is in fact a cylinder, that is a two-dimensional surface, curved in the third dimension.

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Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The article demonstrates how the images contributed to a better understanding by eighteenth century biologists of the natural system.

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