Species

Species and the Birth of Modern Science 79

of any Organical Part or Parts thereof; ‘tis true, that the real and genuine Causes

may be rendred, of divers and other dependent Properties, as spoken generally of

the whole Root. But it will be asked again, What may be the Causes of those first

and Independent ones? Which, if we will seek, we must do by inquiring also, What

are the Principles of those Organical Parts? For it is necessary, that the Principles

whereof a Body doth consist, should be, if not all of them the active, yet the capaci-

tating Causes, or such as are called Causae sine quibus non, of its becoming and

being, in all respects, both as to Substance and Accidents, what it is: otherwise,

their Existence, in that Body, were altogether superuous; since it might have been

without them: which if so, it might then have been made of any other; there being no

necessity of putting any difference, if neither those, whereof it is made, are thought

necessary to its Being.^133

Pretty clearly, Grew thinks of these causes as developmental, and hence gen-

erational. The outer, or morphological as we would now say, appearances may

lead us to uncover those developmental properties. Grew thought these were to

be found in the microscopic anatomy and physiology of the organisms, and his

illustrations of the microstructures of the leaves, stalk, and so on remain excep-

tionally accurate.

Tournefort: Names for Sensible Differences

In his Botanical institutions (Institutiones rei herbariae, 1700, earlier published in
1694 as Elemens botanique) Joseph Pitton, de Tournefort (1628–1708) held that it did
not really matter whether one diagnosed a species or a variety:

I not only enumerate the several Species of Plants, but often mention what the Botanists

call Varieties; not at all solicitous whether they be really the same Species only varied

and somewhat diversied, for as they differ in some sensible Qualities, they ought to

be distinguished by peculiar Titles.^134

He used both owers and fruits to dene species, in contrast to the Linnaean

articial account based on just the sexual apparatus of the plant. So far as I can nd,

Tournefort did not dene species, but he did use many different characters—the

root, leaves, stalk, branch—to identify the differentia between species of a genus.

However, he also used, but did not rely upon, accidents such as color, taste, scent,

size, site, and similarity to popularly known objects.^135 Tournefort clearly thought

only of species as denitional and nomenclatural items. However, it has been said

that he treated species, genera, and classes as objectively real objects.^136

(^133) Grew 1682, 20.
(^134) Tournefort 1716–30, 2.
(^135) Tournefort 1700, 63.
(^136) Leroy 1956, 327:
(^) Pour T
il y a une réalité objective des espèces, des genres, des classes, et d’autre
part la possibilité d’échafauder une classification naturelle vraiment scientique puisque
indépendante de l’observateur.