The History of Systematics: A Working Bibliography, 1965–1996

Version of July 1996

Note: A pdf copy of this document, suitable for printing, is available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN #2541429).

This bibliography was compiled by Robert J. O’Hara for the members of Darwin-L, an academic discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences (1993–1997). The master copy is maintained in the Files section of the Darwin-L Archives (rjohara.net/darwin). It lists works published between 1965 and 1996 that include substantial treatments of some aspect of the history of systematics, particularly systematic theory. Biographical works and general histories of natural history are usually excluded unless they contain special sections on the history of systematics. This is a working bibliography: I have not seen all of the items included, and some citations may be incomplete. This bibliography may be freely distributed in print or electronically as long as the references and this introduction remain intact. Additional bibliographies on trees of history, on narrative in the historical sciences, and on the works of Stephen Toulmin are also available in the Darwin-L Archives.

Note · July 1998: A few additions and corrections have been made to this bibliography since it was initially compiled in 1996, but no attempt has been made to comprehensively revise it since that time.

• Appel, T. 1980. Henri de Blainville and the animal series: a nineteenth century chain of being. Journal of the History of Biology, 13: 291–319.
• Atran, Scott. 1990. Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Toward an Anthropology of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Barsanti, Giulio. 1984. Linne et Buffon: deux visions differentes de l’histoire naturelle. Revue de Synthese, 113/114: 83–107.
• Barsanti, Giulio. 1988. Le immagini della natura: scale, mappe, alberi 1700–1800. Nuncius, 3: 55–125. [History of scales, maps, and trees in 18th century systematics.]
• Barsanti, Giulio. 1992. La scala, la mappa, l’albero: immagini e classificazioni della natura fra sei e ottocento. Florence: Sansoni.
• Barsanti, Giulio. 1992. Buffon et l’image de la nature: de l’echelle des etres a la carte geographique et l’arbre genealogique. Pp. 255–296 in: Buffon 88 (Jean Gayon, ed.). Paris: VRIN, Libraire Philosophique.
• Bernier, Réjane. 1975. Aux sources de la biologie. Tome premier. Les vingt premiers siecles. La classification. Montreal: Le presses de l’Universite du Quebec.
• Bernier, Réjane. 1984. Systeme et methode en taxonomie: Adanson, A.-L. de Jussieu et A.-P. de Candolle. Naturaliste Canadiene, 111: 3–12.
• Birney, E.C., & J.L. Choat, eds. 1994. Seventy-five years of mammalogy (1919–1994). American Society of Mammalogists, Special Publication, 11. [Includes a chapter on the history of mammalian systematics.]
• Burtt, B.L. 1966. Adanson and modern taxonomy. Notes from the Royal Botanical Garden, Edinburgh, 26: 427–431.
• Cain, Arthur J. 1981. The development of systematic ideas of variation illustrated by malacology. Pp. 151–156 in: History in the Service of Systematics (A. Wheeler & J. H. Price, eds.). Society for the Bibliography of Natural History, Special Publication, 1.
• Cain, Arthur J. 1990. Constantine Samuel Rafinesque Schmaltz on classification: a translation of the early works by Rafinesque with introduction and notes. Tryonia, 20. Philadelphia: Academy of Natural Sciences.
• Cain, Arthur J. 1992. Was Linnaeus a Rosicrucian? Linnean, 8(3): 23–44.
• Cain, Arthur J. 1993. Linnaeus’s Ordines naturales. Archives of Natural History, 20: 405–415.
• Cain, Arthur J. 1994. Numerus, figura, proportio, situs: Linnaeus’s definitory attributes. Archives of Natural History, 21: 17–36.
• Callot, E. 1965. Systeme et methode dans l’histoire de la botanique. Revue d’Histoire des Sciences, 18: 45–53.
• Craw, Robin. 1992. Margins of cladistics: identity, difference and place in the emergence of phylogenetic systematics, 1864–1975. Pp. 65–107 in: Trees of Life: Essays in Philosophy of Biology (Paul Griffiths, ed.). Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 11.
• Cronk, Q.C.B. 1990. The name of the pea: a quantitative history of legume classification. New Phytologist, 116: 163–175.
• Dean, John Philip. 1979. Controversy over classification: a case study from the history of botany. Pp. 211–230 in: Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture (Barry Barnes & Steven Shapin, eds.). Berkeley: Sage Publications.
• Dean, John Philip. 1980. A Naturalistic Model of Classification and its Relevance to Some Controversies in Botanical Systematics, 1900–1950. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh.
• Di Gregorio, Mario A. 1982. In search of the natural system: problems of zoological classification in Victorian Britain. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 4: 225–254.
• Donoghue, Michael J., & J.W. Kadereit. 1992. Walter Zimmerman and the growth of phylogenetic theory. Systematic Biology, 41: 74–85.
• Dupuis, C. 1979. La “Systematique phylogenetique” de W. Hennig. Cahiers de Naturalistes, 34: 1–69.
• Farber, Paul L. 1982. The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline, 1760–1850. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. [Reprinted 1997 as Discovering Birds: The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline, 1760–1850 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).]
• Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things. New York: Random House.
• Gaffney, Eugene S. 1984. Historical analysis of theories of chelonian relationship. Systematic Zoology, 33: 283–301.
• Ghiselin, Michael T. 1969. The Triumph of the Darwinian Method. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Reprinted 1984 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).]
• Ghiselin, Michael T., & L. Jaffe. 1973. Phylogenetic classification in Darwin’s Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia. Systematic Zoology, 22: 132–140.
• Gilmour, J.S.L. 1989. Two early papers on classification. Plant Systematics and Evolution, 167: 97–107.
• Gruber, Howard E. 1972. Darwin’s ‘tree of nature’ and other images of wider scope. Pp. 121–140 in: On Aesthetics in Science (Judith Wechsler, ed.). Cambridge: MIT Press.
• Guedes, M. 1967. La methode taxonomique de Adanson. Revue d’Histoire des Sciences, 20: 361–386.
• Hagen, Joel. 1982. Experimental taxonomy, 1930–1950: the impact of cytology, ecology, and genetics on ideas of biological classification. Ph.D. Dissertation, Oregon State University.
• Hershkovitz, Philip. 1987. A history of the recent mammalogy of the Neotropical region from 1492 to 1850. Pp. 11–98 in: Studies in Neotropical Mammalogy: Essays in Honor of Philip Hershkovitz (Bruce D. Patterson & Robert M. Timm, eds.). Fieldiana, Zoology, 39.
• Holman, E.W. 1985. Evolutionary and psychological effects in pre-evolutionary classifications. Journal of Classification, 2: 29–39.
• Hull, David L. 1965. The effect of essentialism on taxonomy: two thousand years of stasis. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 15: 314–366, 16: 1–18.
• Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [An analysis based on Hull’s studies of the post-1960 history of systematics. See Craw (1992) for criticism.]
• Knight, D. 1985. William Swainson: types, circles and affinities. Pp. 83–94 in: The Light of Nature: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science Presented to A.C. Crombie (J.D. North & J.J. Roche, eds.). Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff.
• Larson, James L. 1971. Reason and Experience: The Representation of Natural Order in the Work of Carl von Linne. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• La Vergata, A. 1987. Au nom de l’espece: classification et nomenclature au XIXe siecle. Pp. 193–225 in: Histoire du concept de l’espece dans les sciences de la vie (Scott Atran, ed.). Paris: Fondation Singer-Polignac.
• Lindroth, C.H. 1973. Systematics specialises between Fabricius and Darwin, 1800–1859. Pp. 119–154 in: History of Entomology (Ray F. Smith et al., eds.). Palo Alto: Annual Reviews.
• Mayr, Ernst. 1982. The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, Inheritance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Nelson, Gareth G., & Norman I. Platnick. 1981. Systematics and Biogeography: Cladistics and Vicariance. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Nelson, Gareth G. 1979. Cladistic analysis and synthesis: principles and definitions, with a historical note on Adanson’s Familles des Plantes (1763–1764). Systematic Zoology, 28: 1–21.
• O’Hara, Robert J. 1988. Diagrammatic classifications of birds, 1819–1901: views of the natural system in 19th-century British ornithology. Pp. 2746–2759 in: Acta XIX Congressus Internationalis Ornithologici (H. Ouellet, ed.). Ottawa: National Museum of Natural Sciences.
• O’Hara, Robert J. 1991. Representations of the natural system in the nineteenth century. Biology and Philosophy, 6: 255–274.
• O’Hara, Robert J. 1992. Telling the tree: narrative representation and the study of evolutionary history. Biology and Philosophy, 7: 135–160.
• O’Hara, Robert J. 1996. Trees of history in systematics and philology. Memorie della Societè Italiana di Scienze Naturali e del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Milano, 27(1): 81–88. [From “Systematic Biology as an Historical Science,” a symposium organized by M.T. Ghiselin and G. Pinna.]
• Oppenheimer, Jane M. 1987. Haeckel’s variations on Darwin. Pp. 123–135 in: Biological Metaphor and Cladistic Classification: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Henry M. Hoenigswald & Linda F. Wiener, eds.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [On the tree diagrams of the German evolutionist Ernst Haeckel.]
• de Queiroz, Kevin. 1988. Systematics and the Darwinian revolution. Philosophy of Science, 55: 238–259.
• Reif, Wolf-Ernst. 1983. Hilgendorf’s (1863) dissertation on the Steinheim planorbids (Gastropoda; Miocene): the development of a phylogenetic research program for paleontology. Palaontologische Zeitschrift, 57: 7–20.
• Rieppel, Olivier. 1987. Pattern and process: the early classification of snakes. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 31: 405–420.
• Ritvo, Harriet. 1990. New presbyter or old priest? Reconsidering zoological taxonomy in Britain, 1750–1840. History of the Human Sciences, 3: 259–276.
• Sloan, Phillip R. 1972. John Locke, John Ray, and the problem of the natural system. Journal of the History of Biology, 5: 1–53.
• Sloan, Phillip R. 1979. Buffon, German biology, and the historical interpretation of biological species. British Journal for the History of Science, 12: 109–153.
• Sloan, Phillip R. 1987. From logical universals to historical individuals: Buffon’s idea of biological species. Pp. 101–140 in: Histoire du concept de l’espece dans les sciences de la vie (Scott Atran, ed.). Paris: Fondation Singer-Polignac.
• Stafleu, F.A. 1969. A historical review of systematic botany. Pp. 16–44 in: Systematic Biology: Proceedings of an International Conference. Washington: National Academy of Sciences.
• Stemerding, Dirk. 1993. How to make oneself nature’s spokesman? A Latourian account of classification in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century natural history. Philosophy of Science, 8: 199–223.
• Stevens, Peter F. 1982. Augustin Augier’s “Arbre Botanique” (1801), a remarkable early botanical representation of the natural system. Taxon, 32: 203–211.
• Stevens, Peter F. 1983. Hauy and A.-P. de Candolle: crystallography, botanical systematics, and comparative morphology, 1780–1840. Journal of the History of Biology, 17: 49–82.
• Stevens, Peter F. 1984. Metaphors and typology in the development of botanical systematics 1690–1960, or the art of putting new wine in old bottles. Taxon, 33: 169–211.
• Stevens, Peter F. 1986. Evolutionary classification in botany, 1960–1985. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, 67: 313–339.
• Stevens, Peter F. 1992. Species: historical perspectives. Pp. 302–311 in: Keywords in Evolutionary Biology (Evelyn F. Keller & Elisabeth A. Lloyd, eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Stevens, Peter F. 1994. The Development of Biological Systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Nature, and the Natural System. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Stevens, Peter F., & S.P. Cullen. 1990. Linnaeus, the cortex-medulla theory, and the key to his understanding of plant form and natural relationships. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, 71: 179–220.
• Stresemann, Erwin. 1975. Ornithology from Aristotle to the Present. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Uschmann, G. 1967. Zur Geschichte der Stammbaum-Darstellungen. Pp. 9–30 in: Gesammelte Vortrage uber moderne Probleme der Abstammlungslehre, vol. 2 (M. Gersch, ed.). Jena: Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat.
• Vernon, Keith. 1988. The founding of numerical taxonomy. British Journal for the History of Science, 21: 143–158.
• Vernon, Keith. 1993. Desperately seeking status: evolutionary systematics and the taxonomists’ search for respectability, 1940–1960. British Journal for the History of Science, 26: 207–227.
• Wagner, Warren H., Jr. 1980. Origin and philosophy of the groundplan-divergence method of cladistics. Systematic Botany, 5: 173–193.
• Walters, S.M. 1961. The name of the rose: a review of ideas on the European bias in angiosperm classification. New Phytologist, 104: 527–546.
• Webster, G. 1987. The saga of the spurges: a review of classification and relationships in the Euphorbiales. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 94: 3–46.
• Williams, R.L. 1988. Gerard and Jaume: Two neglected figures in the history of Jussiaean classification. Taxon, 37: 2–34, 233–271.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1969. Barnacle larvae in the nineteenth century: a case study in taxonomic theory. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 24: 194–209.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1976. The development of Linnean insect classification. Taxon, 25: 57–67.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1976. Starfish, Jellyfish, and the Order of Life. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1979. Louis Agassiz and the species question. Studies in History of Biology, 3: 89–117.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1985. The impact of Darwinism on the Linnaean enterprise, with special reference to T.H. Huxley. Pp. 55–84 in: Contemporary Perspectives on Linnaeus (John M. Weinstock, ed.). Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1991. Reading the Shape of Nature: Comparative Zoology at the Agassiz Museum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1994. The lessons of history. Pp. 1–9 in: Models in Phylogeny Reconstruction (Robert W. Scotland, Darrell J. Siebert, & David M. Williams, eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Systematics Association Special Volume No. 52.
• Winsor, Mary P. 1995. The English debate on taxonomy and phylogeny, 1937–1940. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 17: 227–252.