Lineaus Was Persecuted for Lumping Humans with Apes Taxonomically

We’ve always perceived ourselves as somehow standing apart from the rest of nature. Encouraged by the religious belief that humans were the special object of creation, as well as by a natural solipsism that accompanies a self-conscious brain, we resist the evolutionary lesson that, like other animals, we are contingent products of the blind and mindless process of natural selection.

[...]

The idea that humans are part of nature has been anathema over most of the history of biology. In 1735, the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who established biological classification, lumped humans, whom he named Homo sapiens (“man the wise”), with monkeys and apes based on anatomical similarity. Linnaeus didn’t suggest an evolutionary relationship between these species—his intention was explicitly to reveal the order behind God’s creation—but his decision was still controversial, and he incurred the wrath of his archbishop.

Notes:

Although he thought he was merely seeing God's plan.

Folksonomies: evolution science religion

Taxonomies:
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/religion and spirituality/christianity/catholicism (0.454841)
/science/medicine/genetics (0.401791)

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Concepts:
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Biology (0.944597): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Human (0.897053): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Species (0.782223): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Charles Darwin (0.776004): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Religion (0.765896): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Ecology (0.625265): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Thought (0.608436): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc

 Why Evolution Is True
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Coyne , Jerry A. (January 22, 2009), Why Evolution Is True, Penguin (Non-Classics), Retrieved on 2011-09-15
Folksonomies: evolution evidence creationism