Illiger’s Prodromus 13 Nov 2009 Does anyone have a scan of Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger’s Prodromus systematis et mammalium avium (1811), or at least the introductory section? It appears that Illiger is the one who introduced the rank of family to the Linnean system, and I’d like to find out more. Late note: Thanks to reader Veronica Abbass, I have the link. It wasn’t visible from Australia for some strange reason. And as far as I can make out the Latin in the Lectori, he introduces family on page x as necessary because there are too many genera to group into orders. Biology History Natural Classification Systematics
Biology On borders and boundaries 30 Jun 2010 Thos who focus on differences often tend to look more closely at boundaries than at the core of the phenomenon, whether it is social, biological or conceptual. So I was pleased to read this comment by Will Thomas regarding boundaries in social and historical contexts: However, I want to finish… Read More
History The Oxford conference 11 Jun 2010 … audio podcasts are here. This is the Religion, tolerance and intolerance conference I recently attended. I particularly was wowed and provoked into thinking – a rare occurrence these days – by Ben Kaplan’s talk ‘A tale of two churches’, in which he noted that religions in Europe tolerated each… Read More
History The doctrine of double truth 8 Jun 2009 Somewhere on the internecks, I engaged in a discussion of the origins of the “double truth” theory. I wish I could find it again (let me know if you know), but I was asked where the doctrine arose. I have done a little digging, and this is a report on… Read More
Thanks Veronica, but I have to pay for that version. And Gallica lacks a copy. It’s a dual German/Latin edition, by the way.
It doesn’t help in this case, but if you’re not already aware of http://www.biolib.de it’s worth you taking a note. Internet Archive has a 1800 book by Illiger. Apparently so does Google Books, but it’s one of those ones that don’t come up on searches. (I don’t know why – are some books restricted to US readers?)