Linnaeus: What are the major achievements of great namers?

If there is such a time traveler who suddenly enters18th century from the early 6th century, he may get lost because he no longer knows the world. /kloc-the talents of great thinkers in the 0/7th century changed the face of the material universe. The earth is no longer the center of the universe, but just another planet revolving around the sun. The sun itself and the whole solar system are moving. Aristotle and Ptolemy's beautiful and perfect celestial sphere is gone. The stars are moving. Astronomers say that the sky seems to be full of other galaxies, and they are all moving. Some people speculate that among those galaxies, there are other solar systems revolving around their sun. It seems that everything is in motion and never stops, and it can be calculated mathematically.

Only in the field of natural history, which we call life science today, can lost time travelers find familiar ideas. At this time, physical scientists have taken motion, not stillness or eternity, as their guiding principle. But for those who study biology (naturalists), at the beginning of18th century, an old concept still dominated: the existence of giant chains. This is the supreme idea that ruled biology in the early18th century: life forms are created by God, fixed and eternal, and all life forms are part of a great plan, just like a rung on a ladder or a link in a chain.

The idea of giant existence chain originated in ancient Greece and was further improved by Christian philosophers. Everything that can exist already exists and has always existed. That is to say, from inanimate objects to living things, whether insects, fish or people, all take their places along a chain that is gradually arranged from low to high, and the order is stable. In this chain, plants are higher than rocks and animals are higher than plants. Some animals are taller than others, while humans are taller. In many people's minds, this huge chain extends further-beyond human beings, to the level of angels, and then extends, becoming more and more perfect, until God. Each stage on the chain is fixed, with one end of the stage low and the other end high. The position of every living thing was arranged by God at the time of creation, and it can never be changed or changed in the future. In addition, according to this concept, since the beginning of the universe, no new species have been created and no species have become extinct. Because no matter what happens, it will change the level of the chain, which is impossible, because God has arranged everything perfectly from the beginning.

Linnaeus is a devout believer in this concept. However, as often happens among scientists, his great work has advanced human knowledge, although the effect is just the opposite of his belief. Even in the18th century, the concept of existence and eternal persistence of giant chains were on the verge of collapse, and Linnaeus' main work-a huge classification system without hierarchy-contributed to its collapse to some extent.