"Whenever one reads of the determination of the species, or opens a book on natural science and history, in whatever language, one inevitably comes across the name of Linne"
About this Quote
The specific intent is canon-building. Jensen, writing from a small Scandinavian nation with an outsized scientific legacy, elevates Linnaeus into a transnational figure whose authority crosses "whatever language". That line is doing quiet political work. Science, in Jensen's telling, is a cosmopolitan republic where Swedish Latinized names travel farther than empires. At the same time, the sentence flatters the reader's modern habits: if you read "natural science and history" at all, you're already inside the Linnaean worldview, treating nature as something that can be sorted, named, stabilized.
The subtext is more ambivalent than the reverence suggests. "Determination of the species" points to the era's obsession with fixing boundaries: what counts as a species, what counts as difference, what counts as order. Linnaeus delivered a tool kit that enabled discovery, but also a taxonomy mindset that can feel coercive, even ideological. Jensen's admiration recognizes the power of a naming system to remake reality: once you have the categories, you start seeing the world in them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Jensen, Johannes Vilhelm. (2026, January 17). Whenever one reads of the determination of the species, or opens a book on natural science and history, in whatever language, one inevitably comes across the name of Linne. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/whenever-one-reads-of-the-determination-of-the-53895/
Chicago Style
Jensen, Johannes Vilhelm. "Whenever one reads of the determination of the species, or opens a book on natural science and history, in whatever language, one inevitably comes across the name of Linne." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/whenever-one-reads-of-the-determination-of-the-53895/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Whenever one reads of the determination of the species, or opens a book on natural science and history, in whatever language, one inevitably comes across the name of Linne." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/whenever-one-reads-of-the-determination-of-the-53895/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.
