Reading up on Carl Linnaeus Life is mere taxonomy, I’m half-inclined to think, reading up on Carl Linnaeus, master of the plants. We need to know where things belong; a book mis-filed is lost forever. By twenty-five our frames are set, those matrices of time and space. First-night loves are in there somewhere; first-time trains from first-time airports; the dawn when your first child was born … and deaths as well, of course. It’s true steel drawers will bend a little; Linnaeus got a few things wrong. And, plainly, our additions still outnumber our deletes—or will until an age of…
Subscribe to get access to all online articles
Already a member?
Sign in to read this article
Digital Subscription
$88/ YR
Get the latest ideas from Australia’s most insightful writers.
- Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
Printed & Digital Subscription
$108/ YR
For avid readers of leading ideas
from Australia’s brightest.
- Printed & Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- Quadrant Patron includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- All new editions of Quadrant Books
- Exclusive invitations to Quadrant Dinners, book launches and events.