Linnaeus: How Modern Taxonomy Was Born — and Its Racial Hierarchy Problem

In 1735, a Swedish botanist named Carl Linnaeus published a twelve-page pamphlet proposing a system to name every living thing on Earth with just two Latin words: genus and species. By the time he died in 1778, that pamphlet had grown to 3,000 pages and covered every plant, animal, and mineral he could get descriptions of from a global network he called his apostles. Five of them died on the expeditions he sent them on. He also built a racial hierarchy into the classification of Homo sapiens that shaped scientific racism for the next two centuries. This is Episode 9 of The Great Discoveries: How Science Built the Modern World. ▶ Watch next: Lavoisier: The Father of Modern Chemistry Who Lost His Head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TodnUtL_TU 📺 Full playlist: The Great Discoveries: How Science Built the Modern World https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlIAFxS2964-3v5fFwk4loCBPCYUW-8kY Chapters: 0:00 The Problem with Naming 5:32 Carl Linnaeus: The Man 10:22 The Binomial System 15:13 Systema Naturae: The Classification Machine 20:12 The Apostles: Science as Empire 24:58 The Racial Hierarchy 29:59 Buffon's Counter-Proposal 34:36 The Legacy: Everything We Keep and Everything We Discard 39:30 Quiz Time 42:38 Key Takeaways #explained #learn #2026 --- Disclosure The avatars and voices in this video are AI-generated. All content -- research, scripts, lesson design, and the custom video engine -- is created by a CISSP, CISM, and PMP certified professional with a Master's in Project Management, a B.S. in Information Technology, and a Doctorate in Business Administration in progress. This channel exists to make learning accessible and straightforward. Educational history-of-science series. This channel does not represent any university, research institution, or scientific body. The series presents the historical record of how scientific ideas were discovered, contested, and refined — including the mistakes, the politics, and the people who paid for being right too early. Where science and other domains intersect (religion, ethics, public policy), the series presents the arguments without endorsing a position.