EVERY LIVING THING

Exciting chronicle of the battle “to complete a comprehensive accounting of all life on Earth.”

Roberts, author of A Sense of the World, traces the lives and careers of two 18th-century naturalists whose opposing perspectives made them, and their followers, rivals: Carl Linnaeus, a misogynist self-promoter and holder of a “diploma-mill medical degree,” invented binary nomenclature and a classification system that assigned plants and animals into kingdoms, classes, orders, families, and species. George-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic natural historian in charge of France’s royal gardens, saw the natural world as thrillingly complex. Linnaeus believed that life on Earth was unchanged from the moment of God’s creation. “It was against faith,” Roberts writes, “to envision new species coming into existence, or existing ones fading into extinction.” De Buffon, on the other hand, believed all such systematic approaches were reductionist and flawed, and that of Linnaeus, “the least sensible and the most monstrous.” Species, he posited, changed by adapting to their environments. Both men defended their views in widely read tracts: De Buffon’s 35-volume Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particuliere reflected his own minute investigations; Linnaeus, author of continual revisions to his Systema Naturae, sent acolytes to conduct research in the field, where they sometimes perished. Because of his “easily grasped classification system,” which included racist classifications of humans, Linnaeus prevailed, while de Buffon’s reputation plummeted. Roberts examines the men’s legacies as natural philosophy became science, and science branched into biology, zoology, and genetics. Linnaeus’ systems were complicated by the discovery of microscopic life and blooming biodiversity; towering figures confronted the stark evidence of evolution. Among the scientists that feature in this well-populated narrative are George Cuvier, Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Agassiz, Mendel, and Hugo de Vries, each confronting the controversy incited by Linnaeus and de Buffon.

A lively, panoramic contribution to the history of science.