Date of Completion

Spring 4-19-2019

Campus Location


Document Type


Faculty Advisor

Dr. Tamara Livingston


The history of taxonomy is not usually taught in modern biology classes, but it is necessary to understand the history of classification and science as a whole in order to better understand the processes of classification and thinking that are commonly taught at the college level. Through the exploration of the difficulties of publishing, Linnaeus' Species Plantarum, and three pre-Linnaean works from Pliny the Elder, Nehemiah Grew, and Rembert Dodoens, I have found that the history of the sciences has been largely distorted. The distortion appears to be of many factors, including the replacement of ideas, censorship from scholarly societies, and rejection from others in the scientific community.