Monday, August 8, 2022

A short sentence from Linnaeus

 Linnaeus said: “There is no such thing as a new species.” 

Our conception of biology is barely imaginable without Linnaeus. Nevertheless that sentence is in my notebook. I turn to it as a reminder that even a genius can be confident about beliefs that are simply wrong. Or confident about concepts that turn out to be muddles.

No comments:

Post a Comment

A picture of regret

 I admire Carson McCullers’s story “The Sojourner.” I think it paints a convincing picture of what regret is like. I also think that’s not e...