Dear G. Tom;-
        What a wonderful answer.
        "Linne", Darwin, Newton, a few others have told us how to describe our
world. They have done it for us. How lucky we are to have come after them.
        Art

G Thomas Watters wrote:

> At 09:41 PM 3/9/2002 -0500, you wrote:
> >Q'man asks;-
> >         How did Linne come up with his binomial system? Were there any
> >less well known precursers? Who did "L." consult with? Surely someone
> >had to say: that's a helova good idea.
> >     Your beloved Question Man
>
> As I understand it, the binominal system was more or less accidental. Carl
> had used Latin phrases for the first 9 editions (like everybody else), but
> in the 10th abbreviated them to two words, which became our genus and
> species. And contrary to popular opinion, binominal nomenclature did not
> originate with Carl. Clerk's 1757 Aranei suecici (on Swedish spiders)
> predates Linnaeus. Other, earlier writers sometimes used two words,
> sometimes whole paragraphs in the same work, to describe organisms. But
> Clerk and Linnaeus were the first to use two words consistently. Accidental
> or not, this was a major change in concepts. We went from short passages
> that tried to describe a species to a two-word label that simply stood for
> something without necessarily telling us anything about it in a descriptive
> way.
>
> G. Thomas Watters, PhD
> Curator of Molluscs
> Museum of Biological Diversity
> Department of Evolution, Ecology & Organismal Biology
> The Ohio State University
> 1315 Kinnear Road
> Columbus, OH 43212
> v: 614-292-6170
> f: 614-292-7774
>
> Visit the Molluscs Division at:
> http://www.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~molluscs/OSUM2