ABSTRACT
The all-seeing lens was commonly invoked by 19th-century savants as an antidote to the narrowing effects of specialization. The demands of modern progress elevated “dissectors” over “dreamers,” “splitters” who took things apart to study their components over “lumpers” entranced by their wholeness. The demands of modern progress elevated “dissectors” over “dreamers,” “splitters” who took things apart to study their components over “lumpers” entranced by their wholeness. Today’s earth scientists are by no means the first to charge humanity with mistreating and despoiling nature. That humans were to blame for general decay was a widely held biblically derived view. To restore nature to its paradisal state, Carl Linnaeus’s binomial taxonomy aimed as far as possible to recover Adam’s perfect knowledge of the names and nature of all created things. The layout of Linnaeus’s Uppsala botanic gardens exemplified the order of God’s own Creation.
