1. The work that has made the argument for the essentially taxonomic nature of eighteenth-century natural history common currency is M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973). See in particular Chapter 5, ‘Classifying’.
2. For more on Linnaeus, see L. Koerner, Linneaus: Nature and Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
3. G. V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).
4. For more on this subject, see T. Broman, ‘The Habermasian Public Sphere and Science in the Enlightenment’, History of Science, 36 (1998), pp. 123–49.
5. D. Diderot and J. D’Alembert (eds) Encyclopédie (Paris: Panckoucke, 1751–65), Vol. II, p. 488. ‘Pour former un cabinet d’Histoire naturelle, il ne suffit pas de rassembler sans choix, & d’entasser sans ordre & sans goût, tous les objets d’Histoire naturelle que l’on rencontre; il faut savoir distinguer ce qui mérite d’être gardé de ce qu’il faut rejetter, & donner à chaque chose un arrangement convenable. L’ordre d’un cabinet ne peut être celui de la nature; la nature affecte par-tout un desordre sublime.’