This document discusses Linnaeus and his contributions to biology and information processing. It covers three main topics: 1) Linnaeus popularized science through his work classifying and naming plants and animals; 2) As a pioneer of information processing, he developed systems for organizing vast amounts of data using numbers, names and paper records; 3) Some of the key systems he developed, such as binomial nomenclature, are still used in biology today.

1. Linnaeus and Big Data
Staffan Mueller-Wille
University of Exeter
S.E.W.Mueller-Wille@exeter.ac.uk

2. 2010
2007
2008

4. Linnaeus and Big Data
I. Linnaeus as a science popularizer
– Those who complain of information overload are
usually the ones that create it.
I. Linnaeus as a pioneer of information
processing
– Numbers, Names, and Paper Space.
I. What remains of Linnaeus‘ system?

5. I. LINNAEUS AS A SCIENCE POPULARIZER

6. Linnaeus in Sami clothes Martin Hoffmann

16. C. >linnaeus, Musa cliffortiana (1736)

17. Hortus Cliffortianus Oil-painting 1737

18. (A) Travelroutes of Linnaeus’s students; (B) Distribution of Linnaeus’s

20. II. LINNAEUS AS A PIONEER OF
INFORMATION PROCESSING

22. Fundamenta Botanica 1731-1733

23. Fundamenta Botanica 1731-1733

24. Fundamenta Botanica 1731-1733

25. Species Plantarum
manuscript 1746

26. Species Plantarum
manuscript 1746

27. Linnaeus’s
herbarium cabinet

28. Linnaeus’s personal copy of
Genera Plantarum (1737)

29. Linnaeus, Genera Plantarum 1737 and 1742: Platanus

30. Linnaeus, Species Plantarum, 1797 – copy of Robert Brown

31. Index cards used by Linnaeus
in the mid-1760s

32. Linnaeus pat., Linnaeus fil., et al., Supplementum
Plantarum, 1776-1781

33. Carolus Linnaeus, Fragments of a natural method
Philosophia botanica, Stockholm: Salvius, 1751, Linnean Society London

34. Tabula genealogico-geographica, 1792

35. III. WHAT REMAINS OF LINNAEUS

36. 1837
2008

37. Microbial diversity and lateral gene transfer (2005)