Carl Linnaeus's Note-Taking Innovations
"I do not recommend drawings . . . in fact, I absolutely reject them"
Even if you know nothing about the Swedish doctor, professor, and naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), you probably know about his greatest innovation: binomial nomenclature. Prior to Linnaeus, naturalists had no systematic way to name a plant or animal. Linnaeus came up with the idea of naming according to genus and species; hence, humans are known as homo sapiens. Genus is the larger umbrella term of related groups (wolves and dogs are part of the same genus, Canis). Linnaeus’s system allowed naturalists to easily group and categorize the natural world, making it more legible for scientific inquiry.
Linnaeus was also the first to grow a banana in Europe. He was able to do this because he was obsessed with collecting as many samples of the natural world as possible.1 He was also one of the first people to use what we think of as note cards.
Linnaeus’s life’s work was one of organization and categorization. So, it makes sense that he was also fascinated by note-taking. In fact, he innovated quite a few systems, which we’ll cover in this post.
Linnaeus’s Herbarium
As a student at the University of Lund, Linnaeus began collecting dried plant and lichen specimens. By the time of his death, he amassed over 13,000 specimens. This collection made it possible for him to set out to give species binomial names in Species Plantarum (1753).
Linnaeus’s major innovation here was to release his specimens from the tyranny of a bound book—as most herbariums were kept (see, for example, Emily Dickinson’s herbarium). Instead, he pasted specimens on loose paper that he organized in a custom made filing cabinet. The point was to group similar specimens together (plants with two stamens vs. plants with three stamens). This made his collection flexible and infinitely expandable. As he discovered new examples of specific genuses, he could group them together without disassembling the entire collection.2
The Linnaean Society put together this wonderful video to demonstrate how Linnaeus used his herbarium cabinet:
Originally, Linnaeus collected specimens himself, but as his fame grew, acquaintances would send him specimens. He also sent his students off on expeditions to collect samples.
Linnaeus’s Sketches
From 1732-1735, Linnaeus traveled through the northern parts of Sweden. He aimed to collect information on his country’s natural resources. He had long conversations with the native people of Lapland, the Sámi. He copied the information he learned in his “Lapland Journals” along with intricate drawings.3
For Linnaeus, the actual specimen would always trump a drawing of it. So he also carried back many samples of the natural vegetation he encountered in Lapland. In Genera Plantarum, he went so far as to exclaim,
I do not recommend drawings . . . for determining genera – in fact, I absolutely reject them…4
Even so, drawing was often necessary to document his findings. In his “Botanical Notebook” he illustrates different types of leaves and flower that would help him identify plants.
Soon Linnaeus was publishing his findings and updating them every year with new editions of his books. To prepare for new editions, he usually wrote in copies of the books themselves.
Linnaeus’s Interleaved Books
In the seventeenth-century, writing in books was a common practice. So common, in fact, that books were sold “interleaved,” meaning that they had blank pages inserted. This is how Linnaeus continued to build on his botanical research. As he learned more about the flora he documented, he added notations that he could use in subsequent editions of this work.
This practice was so common that readers of Linnaeus’s work bought interleaved copies of their own so they could record their personal observations of the natural world alongside the great naturalist’s. This, for example, is how the 18th-century poet Thomas Gray read Linnaeus’s work; Gray recorded his own observations in the blank pages next to Linnaeus’s writing.5
Linnaeus’s Note Cards
Much like his herbarium, Linnaeus required a flexible, expandable way to collect information on the different genera he catalogued. Thus, he began using small slips of paper (7.5 x 13.0 cm)—much like our modern index cards. In fact, Linnaeus was one of the first to use them. Whenever he learned of a new genus, he could easily add a notecard.
Linnaeus filled these paper slips with a fairly standard set of information about each species. He began with the genus name and then progressed to describe defining characteristics including descriptions of the stamen (STA), the piston (PIS) as well as observations (OBS).
We still categorize the natural world according to Linnaeus’s hierarchy (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). And we still name species according to Linnaeus’s binomial nomenclature. But none of his innovations in the realm of natural history would have come to pass without the enormous effort he put into his note-taking practices.
Notes on Linnaeus’s Notes
Think outside the bound book: I love a notebook as much as anyone, but they don’t work particularly well for accumulating information within discrete categories. If you want to keep similar information together (examples of plants with similar structures) then an infinitely-expandable system works best. And this system has generally been deployed with note-cards.
Drawings can only do so much: Many of Linnaeus’s biographers point out that he wasn’t the best illustrator. They claim this is one of the reasons why he did not recommend illustration as a way to capture information. Whether or not this is true, the fact remains that every drawing is only an interpretation—a two-dimensional representation of something that exists in the real world. I often think of notes in this way: Our notes are not the thing we are trying to capture, but our interpretation of that thing. Even a quotation represents our particular selection taken from a larger body of work.
Add blank pages to your books: We usually don’t purchase custom-made printed books today, so we can’t ask a publisher to interleave a book for us. However, we can add blank pages to books with sticky notes or even loose-leaf. How, I wonder, would we approach books if we were expected to write in them?
Noted is fueled by you. Your ❤️’s and comments inspire me. As always, I would love to know your thoughts.
Yours in note-taking,
Beil, Karen Magnuson. What Linnaeus Saw: A Scientist’s Quest to Name Every Living Thing. Norton, 2019, especially Ch. 5.
For more on the cabinet, see Müller-Wille, Staffan. “Linnaeus’ Herbarium Cabinet: A Piece of Furniture and Its Function.” Endeavour, vol. 30, no. 2, June 2006, pp. 60–64. ScienceDirect.
For a wonderful exploration of Linnaeus’s Lapland illustrations see Charmantier, Isabelle. “Carl Linnaeus and the Visual Representation of Nature.” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, vol. 41, no. 4, 2011, pp. 365–404.
Müller-Wille, Staffan, and Karen Reeds. “A Translation of Carl Linnaeus’s Introduction to Genera Plantarum (1737).” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 38, no. 3, Sept. 2007, pp. 563–72.
Norton, Charles Eliot, et al. The Poet Gray as a Naturalist : With Selections from His Notes on the Systema Naturae of Linnaeus, and Facsimiles of Some of His Drawings. Boston : Charles E. Goodspeed, 1903. Internet Archive.
Here is an example of Gray’s notes in his interleaved copy of Systema Naturae:
The concept of interleaved nooks and “how we would approach books if we were meant to write in them” is a wonderful take away from this article. Marginalia and notation have a long history and I’m all for it! I am notorious for keeping multiple journals, sketchbooks and grimoire simultaneously and apply absolutely no system to them. Years intersect with each other and often I write in them upside down and back to front. Time folds and weaves around itself. Dates are often the only organizing feature! Being less furtive and more systemic in my obsessive note taking is my new goal!
On interleaving: I’ve started writing on the right side of my notebooks only. That leaves space on the left side for later thoughts when I revisit my notes or come up with related information/thoughts that I want to add, as well as for “tags”, which I plan to index eventually.