Download or read book The Development of Biological Systematics written by Peter F. Stevens and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1994-12-01 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reevaluation of the history of biological systematics that discusses the formative years of the so-called natural system of classification in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Shows how classifications came to be treated as conventions; systematic practice was not linked to clearly articulated theory; there was general confusion over the "shape" of nature; botany, elements of natural history, and systematics were conflated; and systematics took a position near the bottom of the hierarchy of sciences.