What, I hear you ask, is the Linnaen Society? You may, like me, have passed Burlington House on Piccadilly and seen that aside from being the residence of the Royal Academy of Arts, the Geological Society, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society of Chemistry, it is also home to the aforementioned. Who are they, and what do they do? Thanks to the use of wikipedia, I will now pretend to be informed and tell you. They are a society for the study and dissemination of taxonomy (not to be confused with taxidermy). And what is taxonomy? Why, it's the practice and science of classification. Initially, its limits were quite narrow, restricted mainly to science, specifically Zoological, Biological, and Botanical (as was the emphasis of Carolus Linnaeus who created taxonomy), but it can now be applied to the classification of anything, and how and why we classify (called 'folk taxonomy') - which I think is fairly interesting. Anyway, that's that. I'm not sure how one becomes a member.
Incidentally, I heard on Radio 4 last night a suggested definition for the word 'dorking': when you hold open the door for one person and end up stuck holding it for several more.
