One of the great intellectual endeavors of the Enlightenment period was the study of life. Before the term biology was coined, the observational-centric study of living things was called Natural History and was based largely on Aristotelian reasoning. Thinkers of the day, such as Joannes Baptista Van Helmont and Maria Sibylla Merian, believed the universe operated according to rational laws, and so cataloguing life was seen as a way of discovering intelligent design. It was the hope that if all organisms could be classified in a uniform way, humanity might gain a more complete understanding of nature. On this front, the most famous contribution was by Carl Linnaeus and his two-part Latin nomenclature system, which is still in use to this day. Yet while some would focus on the classification of living things, it was the Transformists who would ask questions about how species might change across time.
The delineation of living things was extrapolated to hierarchical views of mankind. And so relatedly, this initiative saw strong support by the empires of Europe for reasons of expansionism and other economic interests. One notable Naturalist who took advantage of these military assets was Joseph Banks, who collected specimens from across much of the southern hemisphere to fill museums and botanical gardens and boost national prestige. Part of the legacy born out of the Enlightenment was the basis through which modern day Biology was established, and naturally, Darwin’s evolutionary theories continue to influence how scientists across many fields think about our world. Unfortunately, society today still grapples with some of these racial delimitations of other cultures.