Darwin-L Message Log 1:277 (September 1993)

Academic Discussion on the History and Theory of the Historical Sciences

This is one message from the Archives of Darwin-L (1993–1997), a professional discussion group on the history and theory of the historical sciences.

Note: Additional publications on evolution and the historical sciences by the Darwin-L list owner are available on SSRN.

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<1:277>From DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu  Thu Sep 30 19:36:22 1993

Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1993 20:43:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: DARWIN@iris.uncg.edu
Subject: Re: Linnaeus and literature
To: darwin-l@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu
Organization: University of NC at Greensboro

Eric Miller asks for appearances of Linnaeus or Linnaean ideas in eighteenth
and nineteenth-century literature.  I think this is a fascinating question and
would like to encourage Eric to post a summary of the references he receives
in a few days.  I can offer one that I came across by accident recently.  This
comes from the minor Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), his "The
Pleasures of Hope", Part I, lines 135-140 (or so I think; I have only a partial
xerox in front of me):

  The Swedish sage admires, in yonder bowers,
  His winged insects, and his rosy flowers;
  Calls from their woodland haunts the savage train
  With sounding horn, and counts them on the plain:
  So once, at Heaven's command, the wanderers came
  To Eden's shade, and heard their various name.

Linnaeus is gracefully cast here as the second Adam, naming the animals as
once they had been named in Eden.

I remember also that Ezra Pound mentions Linnaeus (and also Louis Agassiz,
father of the glacial theory and enemy of Darwin) in his _Cantos_, although
this isn't an example from the earlier periods Eric was asking about.

Bob O'Hara, Darwin-L list owner

Robert J. O'Hara (darwin@iris.uncg.edu)
Center for Critical Inquiry and Department of Biology
100 Foust Building, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Greensboro, North Carolina 27412 U.S.A.

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