The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [118]
In his view the universe was static and atemporal, unchanged since it had first been created by God. He was interested only in the number, figure, proportion and situation of the organisms he classified, because these data were essential if the full complexity of God’s design were to be revealed. Linnaeus conceived of a perfectly balanced nature, advocating zoos with cages each containing one pair of each type of animal, separated from other types, without interaction between them. According to him such a zoo would reproduce conditions as they had been on earth immediately after Creation.
Linnaeus spent his life naming the parts of God’s design. As far as he was concerned the observation and listing of characteristics was all that was necessary. There would be no mechanism of change to investigate because God must have designed all necessary organisms perfectly and without error the first time. Each species was, therefore, fixed and unchangeable.
From his observation of the slow fall in the level of the Baltic, Linnaeus believed that Eden had originally been an island populated by the archetypal pairs. Adam had given them their original names. Linnaeus, who saw himself as a second Adam, would now do so again.
Linnaeus noted the evident differences between wild and domesticated animals and explained them as temporary phenomena. Domesticated animals quickly reverted to nature after they were freed. He also noted that the harmony inherent in nature was expressed by the number and types of organism created. There were neither too many nor too few. This was self-evident since God was incapable of error. The Grand Design was perfect.
A page from Philosophia Botanica showing Linnaeus’use of the binomial system. The plants here are named according to the number of leaves.
An early butterfly hunter, seen wih his catch and (background) carrying his net. The chief interest of the eighteenth-century nature-lover was to collect, number and classify specimens.
Linnaeus’giant work had the most profound effect on the study of natural history throughout Europe. It brought into existence the first international botanical collections. Linnaeus himself received hundreds of specimens from collectors of all nations. The study of nature became a cult almost overnight.
By the early nineteenth century Linnaeus’lead was being followed by the cleric William Paley, whose Natural Theology also became a bestseller. His views on order in nature and society were the linchpin of the social system. ‘All things that show design must have designers,’he said. The universe was so cleverly constructed that the designer’s hand was evident in every organism. Paley noted, for example, how fortunate it was that light particles had been given no weight, or sunshine would have had catastrophic effect. This simple fact was evidence of God’s care and purpose.
Order was a manifestation of God’s will, too. Disruption of that order was evil. Everything had been designed in terms of hierarchy of rank and degree, just like the society in which Paley’s readers lived. In such a society, Paley argued, the poor should be as content with their lot as the rich, since both, by their very difference, were fulfilling the divine plan.
Towards the end of the eighteenth century interest in nature touched off a reaction against this neat and orderly view of life. Nature was evidently wild and untamed, and man now seemed cut off from it. The regimentation of the newly industrialised world stimulated strong urges to return to the simplicity of pre-urban life, to noble savagery. The Romantics sought ‘oneness’with the universe, which seemed dynamic rather than static, chaotic rather than ordered.
A careful modification of the established, orderly view was put forward in the publication of no fewer than forty-four volumes of a work called Natural History, written by the keeper of the Jardin du Roi in Paris. He was George Louis, Comte de Buffon, originally trained in mathematics and physics. Buffon saw the