Talk:Systema Naturae

1st edition
There is a 1907 reproduction of the 1st edition at Kyoto University Library. There are high res images for chunks of the page, but they also have legible medium size images which are more convenient. Sadly these images are marked as copyright, and I dont know the laws of Japan very well (yet) to know whether they are allowed to claim copyright over these scans.

The 1735 edition starts at page 11. -- John Vandenberg (chat) 09:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Ignore that; I found another copy without copyright restrictions, and have set up a transcription project at s:la:Liber:Systema naturae 1735.djvu. -- John Vandenberg (chat) 09:53, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

other editions
John Vandenberg (chat) 13:02, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
 * 1756
 * 1758 vol 1 (neither of these are very nice)
 * 1759
 * 1760 vol 1vol 2
 * 1767
 * 1770
 * 1772

Systema naturæ, not Systema naturae
The correct and complete citation for the 10th edition is

Linnæus, C. 1758. ''Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Tomus I. Editio decima, reformata.'' - pp. [1-4], 1-824. Holmiæ. (Salvius).

Digitized version in high quality here: http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?PPN362053006 This is a digitized version of an original copy held in the University Library of Göttingen, Germany, which I have checked personally. The digitized version and the original copy are identical.

The correct title was Systema naturæ, and not Systema naturae, spelling ae is an orthographic error for æ. This should be corrected in the article (Wikipedia allows to spell æ so there is no need to cite a source incorrectly - especially not if this is such an important source). The figured title page is not the original of the 1758 edition, but a 1760 repint from Halle (Germany) with a different title page that was probably not authorized by the author and that was not identical with the original title. In all Swedish original prints of all his works, the titles were consistently spelled with æ and not with ae. Figuring this title page bears the misunderstanding that Carl's name was spelled Linnaei (and not Linnæi) in any of his works authorized by hinself. This is probably not true. His name was spelled with æ and not with ae in all his zoological works between 1735 and 1761 (I have controlled all of them, however not the botanical works but I assume they did not deviate in this respect).

So the orthography in the text should be corrected, and the figure of the title page should be replaced by an original copy of the Stockholm edition of 1758. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 21:14, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I think naturae may be US spelling. I quite agree, the article should be moved to Systema naturæ.--Petter Bøckman (talk) 07:05, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The ae spelling appears to be correct Wikipedia style under Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English), which states---


 * One recurrent issue has been the treatment of ae and oe and their variants. ... For Latin or Greek-derived words, use e or ae/oe, depending on modern usage and the national variety of English used in the article. ...


 * I note that the current edition of the ICZN uses "Systema Naturae" rather than the ligature.

Ecphora (talk) 12:09, 10 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I have created an image of the original print of the 1758 edition and inserted it.
 * Systema naturæ did not only treat animals (it contained also volumes on plants and minerals). The current (4th) edition of the ICZN Code is not authorative, the title was not cited for the purpose of providing a correct citation of a title of a book. It is possible that the printer simply did not have the ligature at their disposal, so ae was used. Ignorance is also possible. Clerck's book is cited as "Aranei Svecici", although the leading language of that book was Swedish (Latin was only a translation) and the correct citation of Clerck's title would be "Svenska spindlar".
 * I think the naming convention does neither cover nor address this case, because we are dealing with a directly cited Latin title here, with a Latin word and not with a "Latin-derived" word for which the naming convention has provisions. Imagine the famous Encyclopédie by Diderot would be cited without French accents. This would only be accepted if it is obvious that the characters were not available.
 * Since it is possible to spell æ in Wikipedia, the work should be cited in the form it was spelled in the original prints, which are the only reliable and authorative sources that can be consulted for this purpose. In the second line of the article's text the Latin title of the book is cited almost completely, but with incorrect orthography. Why? The Encyclopédie is also cited in its full title, but with correct French orthography. I see no convention by which a French title should be cited correctly, and a Latin title incorrectly. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 20:38, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
 * ae and æ are not different letters; they’re forms of the same letters, or just different typesetting formats. It is not a spelling difference.  In any event, Wikipedia manual of style provides:
 * Wikipedia does not decide what characters are to be used in the name of an article's subject; English usage does. Wikipedia has no rule that titles must be written in certain characters, or that certain characters may not be used. Versions of a name which differ only in the use or non-use of modified letters should be treated like any other versions: Follow the general usage in English reliable sources in each case, whatever characters may or may not be used in them.


 * Current scientific works that cite Linnaeus’ (so spelled in Wikipedia, by the way, without a ligature) work (say post 1995) appear to standardly cite it without the ligature. See, e.g., Andrew Polaszek,  Systema Naturae 250 - The Linnaean Ark (2009), or John N. A. Hooper, R. W. M. van Soest, Philippe Willenz,  Systema Porifera: a guide to the classification of sponges, Volume 2, p. 36 or Richard Schodde, I. J. Mason,  Zoological Catalogue of Autstralia: Aves Columbidae to Coraciidae, p. 135 In this regard, I cited the ICZN as a highly significant and relevant example of current scientific usage.  The ICZN is a minutely edited document.  Not only is its citing of Systema Naturae without a ligature intentional, but it has an article (Art 27) specifically addressing ligatures and using ligatures in examples. So, it wasn’t a mistake or because the printer couldn’t find a ligature. In contrast, the Encyclopédie may standardly be spelled with the accent and, if so, should appear in Wikipedia as such. Ecphora (talk) 01:41, 11 August 2010 (UTC)


 * This is a bad misunderstanding of Art. 27, and of the ICZN Code. The Code is not an English document, it is an international document that is to be followed by all scientists independent from their language. It also applies to you if you speak Maori.
 * This Article 27 does of course not talk about any words to be used in the English language, it talks about (1) the international rules (regardless of the language used) to be applied for (2) the scientific names in zoology. "Scientific names" in this sense refers exclusively to the taxonomic names of the animals (family-group names, genus-group names and species-group names, nothing else), and of course never to the names of the authors and much less to titles of books or other things that may be used in the zoological science. The Code does not even say that the name of the author in a taxonomic name must be spelled in Latin script. In Homo sapiens Linnæus, 1758 you can also spell Linnæus' name in Russian or in Chinese script, if you like. Or, if you like, without ligature as "Linnaeus", like most English people do. There are no restrictions.
 * I would assume that if you investigate English usage you will quickly find that most English sources would not cite a Latin word with a ligature simply because the printer did not have the character available and was forced to spell ae instead of æ.
 * You can regard the expression "Systema Naturae" as a standard expression that has entered English language usage (and is not meant as a citation of a book title) and justify by this way a spelling with ae. I would not do this, but if you like you can do this and decide that you are right, this would be your way to escape the discussion.
 * But this does not work for the complete citation of a book title. For citing a book correctly (and in the first paragraph you intend to cite the whole complete title of the work) you must cite it in the orthography as it was originally spelled. It is correct that ae and æ have the same value, but they are still different characters and if it was originally written with æ then you must cite with æ, otherwise it is orthographically incorrect.
 * This is the same with French titles or German titles. You must cite them in the way they were originally spelled. If a German word was spelled with ä you must cite it so, if with ae, then so. You are not allowed to replace one by the other. English people who do not know foreign languages often misunderstand this and think that such letters which have the same value can arbitrarily be replaced one by another. This is not so. Not in German, and not in Latin. You must always cite the original (also if the rules of that language have changed since then). Only if you don't have the character available, you can replace it. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 21:29, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So, what you are saying is that the proper name for this article should be Systema Naturæ, or at least that all references to the original work should be written on that form, right? I come from one of those nations with funny letters that often get mangled in English. The last few decades have seen naturae used almost exclusively though, so in my view we are in a grey area. Would it be correct to assume that current use is naturae, while all references to the original work should be with naturæ? Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:57, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
 * FranciscoWelterSchultes's belief that Wikipedia requires the use of the original orthographic characters, such as ligatures or umlauts, of proper nouns is simply mistaken. Naming conventions (use English) provides that ligatures and umlauts are not used in article titles, including proper nouns, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:


 * One recurrent issue has been the treatment of ae and oe and their variants. By and large, Wikipedia uses œ and æ to represent the Anglo-Saxon ligature. For Latin or Greek-derived words, use e or ae/oe, depending on modern usage and the national variety of English used in the article. German proper names should be treated with care, and attention to English practice. Not all German proper names use umlauts (for example, Emmy Noether is correct in both languages); English resolves umlauts where German need not: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is standard English usage, although both forms have been found in German.
 * I cited the ICZN (along with other recent scientific works) not to show that the ICZN controls spelling on Wikipedia, but simply to show that current English usage is Systema Naturae Ecphora (talk) 22:37, 11 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I do not understand the Goethe example. The correct name of this person is Goethe, also in German, Göthe was not his name and spelling it in this way would be incorrect. Of course, you can find every word and name spelled incorrectly somewhere.
 * For Latin or Greek-derived words does not apply here: naturæ is not a Latin-derived word, it is a Latin word, a word of a different language. This passage as I understand it refers to terms like archaeology which should not be spelled archæology, as has been common in the early 1900s.
 * Petter's solution is okay for me. I would answer "yes" to your question above. This is a good solution. It explains the ae (with the reference to common usage in English) (Ecphora I will not doubt this) and leaves the rest spelled correctly. I guess it has commonly been spelled Systema naturae because nobody had ever consulted the original source. Today when we have the digitized original source available and can see how it was originally spelled, it looks uncomfortable to cite that title incorrectly.
 * By the way: is "through the three kingdoms of nature" correct? does it not have to be "for the three kingdoms of nature"? Instead of "places" I would translate "localities".
 * Another point in the second line of the text: "Carolus Linnaeus": this looks odd. Either change to Carolus Linnæus (to cite the original name as published in the book), or to Carl Linnaeus, as is commonly written in English (or to Carl Linnæus, as he spelled his own name himself). --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 23:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Table: digitized versions
Copied from a previous version of the German discussion page, I think it would be useful to have a complete list of all editions of Systema Naturae in the article. The table still needs some revision, contents and language, and could then be copied into the main article. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 11:00, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Dates of publication for Gmelin's edition:
 * Part 1: pp. [1-12], 1-500 (25 Jul 1788)
 * Part 2: pp. 501-1032 (20 Apr 1789)
 * Part 3: pp. 1033-1516 (20 Nov 1789)
 * Part 4: pp. 1517-2224 (21 May 1790)
 * Part 5: pp. 2225-3020 (06 Dec 1790)
 * Part 6: pp. 3021-3910 (14 May 1791)
 * Part 7: pp. 3911-4120 (02 Jul 1792)

Gmelin's edition was officially regarded in Opinion 296 (26 Oct 1954) by the ICZN Commission as the 13th edition of Systema Naturae. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 23:33, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

I finished and pasted this table to the main page, so this table here can be deleted. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Improving the table

 * This looks good, but I'm not sure quite what form the table should have to be bout appealing and informative (for the moment it is more of the latter). I think perhaps the URLs could be edited to simple links, without showing the full address. The bibliographical citations contain a bit of (to me) unfamiliar annotation that is confusing (use of square brackets is one). Petter Bøckman (talk) 22:59, 19 August 2010 (UTC)


 * square brackets have special meanings (year in a square bracket means that it was not printed in the original source and is only known from secondary sources, pages in square brackets mean that page numbers are auxiliary by the author of the citation and were not printed in this form in the original). in simple links you cannot see which source has digitized, I am still not sure how to solve this better. still working on it, the design must definitely be improved. the 3rd column is becoming redundant. the content is done, more or less. I did not find editions 4, 8, 11 and 12 (2) digitized. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 23:33, 19 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the finer points of the brackets are lost on the general reader, besides it is not Wikipedia standard. What about splitting the last column could be split, one for citation and one for links.--Petter Bøckman (talk) 06:56, 20 August 2010 (UTC)


 * good idea. maybe we can arrange it in 3 columns. 1 - general information: ed. number, author, year, volume and part number. 2 - complate citation. 3 - links in a shortened version that perserves a little information about who digitized the source.
 * the complete page numbers are useful because if you find another digitized version and want to know what it is, it is necessary to know exactly the page numbers (paginated and unpaginated) to see quickly which edition you have (most providers have page-level metadata). maybe we could give the page numbers in a different style, but the information as such should be conserved and not lost, people might need them. --FranciscoWelterSchultes (talk) 11:33, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Overview Section
The second paragraph of the overview section seems low quality. The first sentence ("At the time of Linnaeus only about 10,000 species of organisms were recognised by science, about 6,000 species of plants and 4,236 species of animals") is confused – the numbers given there are often seen in the literature as the numbers of species in Systema Naturae, while the sentence (uncited) makes it sound as if it was the general state of knowledge before Linnaeus. The second sentence ("Even in 1753 he believed that the number of species of plants in the whole world would hardly reach 10,000; in his whole career he named about 7,700 species of flowering plants.") is lifted directly from page 8 of the cited source (Stearn 1956, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2411603?seq=5), without quotation marks or anything else to indicate it's a direct quote. 02:35, 10 January 2014‎ 24.207.204.226


 * Thank you. I've changed the paragraph to indicate the quote is from Stearn with the page explicitly recorded. The use of the sentence without such attribution was of course completely wrong, whoever put it there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:52, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

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trichotomy
didn't the animal/vegetable/mineral division predate Linne`? I vaguely recall reading about a Greek hypothesis that matter starts out inert (mineral), a subset gains the ability to grow (vegetable), and a further subset gains the ability to sense (animal). Arlo James Barnes 21:02, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Human Taxonomy ("Four Varieties")
I originally planned to include a table with the human varieties and their associated physical, behavioral, and cultural traits to match the other subsections’ organizational style but didn’t want to violate Wikipedia’s plagiarism policies. I recognize that race in this context can be contentious and so did my best to use a neutral voice to present relevant information by, for example, explicitly referencing reputable authors for claims with contemporary implications. I believe this content is crucial for understanding the book as it was written and is received today, so I hope we can collaborate to resolve any concerns you might have. Thanks! OwlzOfMinerva (talk) 07:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)