The Living World in Eleven Pages: Systema naturae, 1735

Systema naturae was a landmark in the history of natural history and classification, because it introduced Carl Linnaeus’ influential classifications for the three kingdoms of Minerals, Vegetables, and Animals to the world. This blog will concentrate more on Systema naturae as an object rather than its content (for more on that, have a look at the short video Carl Linnaeus’s Systema naturae). Unlike the twelve subsequent editions which were published as smaller, octavo books, the first edition of Systema naturae is a thin mammoth of a book: a large double folio that contains only eleven pages. How can the whole of the natural world fit in such a thin book?

To answer this question, we need to look at the format of the text: for each of the three kingdoms of the natural world (Mineral, Vegetable, Animal), Linnaeus produced a double-page table which encompassed at a glance the entirety of the classification of each kingdom. In each table, the columns contained classes, the rows orders, and in the resulting boxes were placed genera. These three tables were augmented by prefatory matter and, for the Vegetable kingdom, by a diagram explaining the 24 classes of Linnaeus’ new sexual system of classifying plants.

Linnaeus had experimented with these visual techniques of displaying information in several of his student manuscripts, especially in the manuscript he entitled ‘Manuscripta Medica’, which Linnaeus kept from August 1729 to 1730, and contains numerous classification systems from previous naturalists (such as Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Augustus Rivinus, John Ray, and Jan Jonston, to name a few). These notes were extracted from books read in libraries, and their classifications were mostly rendered through diagrams and tables, visual techniques that were both space-saving (when paper was expensive) and memory aids. 

Linnaeus was probably inspired by works that similarly used dichotomous keys, diagrams and tables, for instance Christoph Valentini’s Tournefortius contractus (1715), a copy of which can be found in Linnaeus’ library. Valentini reduced Tournefort’s work to tables and diagrams. Similarly, Olof Rudbeck the Elder (father of Olof Rudbeck the Younger, who taught Linnaeus), had experimented with complicated typography with his two final full-page spreads at the end of his Atlantica (1679), showing the chronology of the creation of the world. Given that Linnaeus stayed in Rudbeck the Younger’s house as a tutor to his sons, and gained access to his library, there is no doubt he would have seen this book. 

When Systema naturae was published in 1735, Linnaeus reused these paper technologies to great effect, but its printing was a complicated process, due to the layout, numerous fonts and symbols. Letters between Johan Frederick Gronovius, who paid for the printing of Systema naturae, and Linnaeus show how ‘much time and effort it took to have the Systema naturae printed.’ (1) For instance, in a letter dated 2 October 1735, Gronovius wrote that ‘the Leiden printer Johan Wilhelm de Groot was obliged to redo the second part of "Regnum vegetabile" for the third time. Consequently, proofreading has been postponed until Saturday.’ He added that ‘the layout of “Regnum animale” poses several problems’, and proposed ‘a new design which aims at creating as it were a geographical map which is to be folded up on both sides.' (2) 

Several remarks stem from these letters. The first one is the map metaphor. Linnaeus and his contemporaries repeatedly used this mapping metaphor to describe Systema Naturae. Linnaeus noted in his 'Observations on the three kingdoms of nature'  prefacing the work: 'I have shown here a general survey of the system of natural bodies so that the curious reader with the help of this as it were geographical table knows where to direct his journey in these vast kingdoms.' In a letter dated 22 July 1738 to Richard Richardson, the Dutch botanist Gronovius invoked once again the map metaphor: 'With [Linnaeus’s] Tables we can refer any fish, plant, mineral, to its genus and, subsequently, to its species, though none of us had seen it before. I think these Tables so eminently useful, that everybody ought to have them hanging in his study, like maps.' (3) 

Secondly, it is worth pausing to admire the remarkable typography. It is no wonder that the typesetting gave the printers so much work: beyond the general set up into tables, columns and rows, which already complicates the layout, the typeset uses different fonts (Roman, italics, blackletter), alchemical symbols, and superscript letters. It is a feat of typesetting using movable type.

Thirdly, the mention of folding on both sides is interesting, as one of the copies kept at the Linnean Society shows vertical creases in the middle of each page, indicating that the volume was once half the size in width than it is now, making it more portable. The pages would have been unfolded when in use. Such copies are present in other libraries. 

The number of existing copies of this impressive book is uncertain. In his letter to Linnaeus dated 3 December 1735, Gronovius mentioned that 60 copies would be reserved for Linnaeus. Gunnar Broberg wrote that 29 copies are known to exist. (4). Linnean Society Fellow Andy Shaw has been working on a census of Systema naturae first editions, and will delve further into this question at our next Linnean Lens of 26 May. Join us then to find out more!

Systema naturae 1735 takes pride of place in our current exhibition Homo sapiens. Classifying the Human Animal, so if you are in London or visiting soon, do come and see this incredible book that changed the course of natural history studies.