When Carl Linnaeus was born in 1707, plants and animals were not given 'scientific' Latin names. Instead they were referred to by 'phrase names' consisting of complete descriptions in Latin, sometimes running into several paragraphs. By the time Linnaeus died in 1778, taxonomy was an established discipline and people communicated information about organisms using his simplified binomial system. These two-word 'trivial names' are what we now call the genus and species. Twenty years after Linnaeus's death, rumblings about the lack of stability in the system of plant and animal naming led to the Codes of Nomenclature that today govern the naming of all living things. Biology owes a great deal to the willingness of the taxonomic community to adhere voluntarily to these codes: names, and their consistent application, make biology a repeatable science.
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