The library of nature: reality and metaphor in the botanical classification

Abstract

The metaphorical network that permeates the scientific knowledge and discourse currently attracts the interest of many researchers. In the light of the growing body of references which reveal that the use of metaphor is both beneficial and detrimental to science, the aim of the present paper is to explore the relevance of some metaphors generated by writing and boosted by the prestige of this communicative technology. The close reading of the foundational texts in science would undoubtedly reveal their metaphorical architecture. If one considers them as nodes in a network, the major works of science act as inflection points that drive changes in the trajectory of scientific inquiry and (re)shape the way we understand reality. It clearly falls beyond the scope of this paper to chart the metaphorical map of the reference works in science. Instead, I choose to focus on the writings of Carolus Linnæus, the founder of modern classification in botany, in order to highlight his use of metaphors rooted in the tradition of writing. More precisely, I approach the library metaphor in order to show that the Linnæan conceptualization of nature as a library acted as the testing ground for his theories, accelerated the internationalization of many scientific plant names and consolidated the stability of the vernacular botanical terminologies.

Keywords

• library
• metaphor
• botanical taxonomy
• binomial nomenclature
• text linguistics