Might be interesting... bit of an inconvenient time of day for me personally 
If anyone remembers the Encyclopaedia of Life (EOL) thread he's the guy who's
behind it - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/83
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This meeting is free and open to all, registration is not necessary but seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
The Great Linnean Enterprise: Then and Now
Edward O. Wilson FMLS
At the Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BF
On Wednesday 12th December 2007 at 2.30pm
It can be reasonably assumed that the first words to emerge during the origin of human speech included the names of plants and animals. That advance, which probably occurred during the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens a half million years ago, can be regarded as the earliest forerunner of science. Accuracy and repeatability in communication about the environment were then as now necessary for survival. Getting things by their right names, as the Chinese put it, is the first step to wisdom.
Carl Linnaeus, the great Swedish biologist, whose name is virtually synonymous with the modern era of systematics, made three decisively influential contributions. The first, presented in the Leiden Systema Naturae of 1735, formalized the hierarchical system of classification used today. A direct philosophical descendant of Aristotles first scheme, it grouped all known organisms into three kingdoms, which were then divided successively downward into classes, orders, genera, and species. The basic unit Linnaeus recognized is the species, and he aggregated the higher taxonomic categories into successively larger clusters of species according to their anatomical similarity. Although Linnaeus believed in special creation, he nevertheless spent his entire career striving to define the diversity of life as a natural, comprehensible system as opposed to an arbitrary, chaotic system.
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher, theorist, and naturalist. Wilson is known for his career as a scientist, his advocacy for environmentalism, and his scientific humanist ideas concerned with religious, moral, and ethical matters. He is the Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism.
If anyone remembers the Encyclopaedia of Life (EOL) thread he's the guy who's
behind it - http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/83
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This meeting is free and open to all, registration is not necessary but seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
The Great Linnean Enterprise: Then and Now
Edward O. Wilson FMLS
At the Linnean Society of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BF
On Wednesday 12th December 2007 at 2.30pm
It can be reasonably assumed that the first words to emerge during the origin of human speech included the names of plants and animals. That advance, which probably occurred during the transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens a half million years ago, can be regarded as the earliest forerunner of science. Accuracy and repeatability in communication about the environment were then as now necessary for survival. Getting things by their right names, as the Chinese put it, is the first step to wisdom.
Carl Linnaeus, the great Swedish biologist, whose name is virtually synonymous with the modern era of systematics, made three decisively influential contributions. The first, presented in the Leiden Systema Naturae of 1735, formalized the hierarchical system of classification used today. A direct philosophical descendant of Aristotles first scheme, it grouped all known organisms into three kingdoms, which were then divided successively downward into classes, orders, genera, and species. The basic unit Linnaeus recognized is the species, and he aggregated the higher taxonomic categories into successively larger clusters of species according to their anatomical similarity. Although Linnaeus believed in special creation, he nevertheless spent his entire career striving to define the diversity of life as a natural, comprehensible system as opposed to an arbitrary, chaotic system.
Edward Osborne Wilson is an American biologist, researcher, theorist, and naturalist. Wilson is known for his career as a scientist, his advocacy for environmentalism, and his scientific humanist ideas concerned with religious, moral, and ethical matters. He is the Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism.
