title: Linnaeus: Nature and Nation
author:  Lisbet Koerner 
description: Carl Linnaeus was one of Sweden's greatest scientists and the man who, almost 250 years ago, created the binomial scientific nomenclature still in use today. Harvard historian of science Koerner takes her place alongside several other Linnaeus biographers with her scholarly look at his life and times, including some of the scientist's more foolish projects. Koerner's work is "both a biography and a case study of the relation between natural knowledge and political economy in the early Enlightenment." Thus, she focuses on Linnaeus's attempts to use science to enrich the failing Swedish economy. Linnaeus came of age in the 18th century after Sweden had suffered a series of serious military defeats and famines and at a time when the country's trade deficit threatened to destabilize its political environment. Believing that it was possible to make Sweden economically independent through effective cultivation of the world's natural resources, Linnaeus worked diligently to import a wide array of plants and animalsAsuch as saffron and teaAhoping to acclimate them to the harsh Scandinavian climate. Unfortunately, none of his experiments were successful, and Linnaeus's utilitarian approach to science had to be discarded. While Koerner's perspective is interesting and yields some new insights, her reliance on academic jargon makes for very difficult reading. (Dec.) <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: © 2008 The Author
  Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
  Philosophy Compass 3/4 (2008): 789–802, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2008.00157.x
  Natural Kinds and Natural Kind Terms
  Kathrin Koslicki*
  University of Colorado at Boulder
  Abstract
  The aim of this article is to illustrate how a belief in the existence of kinds may
  be justified for the particular case of natural kinds: particularly noteworthy in this
  respect is the weight borne by scientific natural kinds (e.g., physical, chemical,
  and biological kinds) in (i) inductive arguments; (ii) the laws of nature; and (iii)
  causal explanations. It is argued that biological taxa are properly viewed as kinds
  as well, despite the fact that they have been by some alleged to be individuals.
  Since it turns out that the arguments associated with the standard Kripke/Putnam
  semantics for natural kind terms only establish the non-descriptiveness of natural
  kind terms and not their rigidity, the door is open to analyze these terms as
  denoting trad