In article , P van Rijckevorsel
writes
I am quite dubious if the large majority of people believe that Linnaeus is
the beginning of modern taxonomy. You are the first one I meet ;-) Botany
uses 1753 as the starting point of binary nomenclature, another matter
entirely.

No doubt one could accuse the Linnaean Society of bias, but,

http://www.linnean.org/html/history/..._biography.htm

and, they're not the only ones,

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=Li...xonomy&num=100

and some of those links are university sites

All accounts of botanical taxonomy start off with Theophrastus, and modern
taxonomy is assumed to start with Caesalpinus (1519-1603) or John Ray
(1628-1705). Binary combinations on a largish scale were first used by de
Tournefort (1656-1708).

I was looking at one of Tournefort's books today, and in this he was
using binomials, but not necessarily as specific names. (For example, he
has 14 "species" of Malva rosea, most, if not all, would now be ranked
as cultivars of forms. And 8 of Ketmia indica.)

BTW, who introduced the systematic use of ranks above genus?

I doubt that you could easily find anybody who knows what the system of
Linnaeus is, it has fallen in disuse so long ago that only students of
history are even vaguely familiar with it. Even when published it was
worthless, from a scientific perspective.

Which system? the Artificial aka Sexual System, based on counting
stamens and styles, or the Natural System, composed of sixty odd
"fragments", some of which correspond to modern groups of rank between
section (Crowfoots) and subdivision (Coniferae). [ Data taken from
Lindley's "Vegetable Kingdom" (1846). ]
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley