[The revival of Linnean ideas in nineteenth-century France]

During the first half of the 19th century, and notably during the Restoration, many French naturalists gathered into some new natural history Societies, called Linnean Societies. They tried to remove the chaos of the zoological and botanical nomenclature, and decided to fight against the generalization of the natural method. They worshipped Linnaeus' memory, his artificial system of classification of plants and animals, and his binomial nomenclature. This worshipping, ignored by the official scientific institution, opened up the way to an international critical approach aiming at the stabilization and universalization of zoological, botanical and geological nomenclatures. At the end of the century this approach caused the writing of the International codes of nomenclature currently in use today. The starting points of these codes were Linnaeus' 10th edition of Systema naturae (1758), 1st edition of Species plantarum (1753) and 5th edition of Genera plantarum (1754).