science nerd-ery
Jun. 16th, 2009 07:08 pmNext time you have a research paper to write, you'll know who to blame:
Carl Linnaeus Invented The Index Card
As a consequence of overseas discoveries, early modern scientists faced serious information overload. The sheer amount of exotic, hitherto unknown species reaching the shores of Europe forced naturalists to reconsider the ways in which information about the natural world was processed and organized.
The Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) – the father of modern taxonomy - has been described as a “pioneer of information retrieval”. But exactly how he was able to master such vast amounts of data has remained something of a mystery.
Staffan Mueller-Wille from the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter in the UK recently received a major grant from the Wellcome Trust to get to the bottom of Linnaeus’ method of data processing.... “His solution to this dilemma was to keep information on particular subjects on separate sheets, which could be complemented and reshuffled,” he says.
Towards the end of his career, in the mid-1760s, Linnaeus took this further, inventing a paper tool that has since become very common: index cards.
Carl Linnaeus Invented The Index Card
As a consequence of overseas discoveries, early modern scientists faced serious information overload. The sheer amount of exotic, hitherto unknown species reaching the shores of Europe forced naturalists to reconsider the ways in which information about the natural world was processed and organized.
The Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) – the father of modern taxonomy - has been described as a “pioneer of information retrieval”. But exactly how he was able to master such vast amounts of data has remained something of a mystery.
Staffan Mueller-Wille from the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter in the UK recently received a major grant from the Wellcome Trust to get to the bottom of Linnaeus’ method of data processing.... “His solution to this dilemma was to keep information on particular subjects on separate sheets, which could be complemented and reshuffled,” he says.
Towards the end of his career, in the mid-1760s, Linnaeus took this further, inventing a paper tool that has since become very common: index cards.
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