本書講述18世紀兩位自然科學家──林奈與布豐──之間的對比與競爭。他們都嘗試完成一個艱鉅任務：為地球上的所有生物進行分類與描述。林奈相信生命可以被整齊地歸類，而布豐則認為自然是多變而複雜的。他們的觀點分歧，影響了後世對自然、演化與人類角色的理解。作者經過多年研究，以清晰的筆法呈現這段真實歷史，讓讀者了解兩人如何推動生物學的發展，也反思科學與文化如何交織影響至今。Pulitzer Prize for BiographyFinalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing AwardA Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the YearThe dramatic, globe-spanning and meticulously-researched story of two scientific rivals and their race to survey all life.In the 18th century, two men dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Their approaches could not have been more different. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic, ever-changing swirl of complexities. Both began believing their work to be difficult, but not impossible–how could the planet possibly hold more than a few th
