The systematist of the 17th and 18th centuries was the Swedish naturalist and explorer Carolus Linnaeus. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy".

Prior to Linnaeus, most taxonomists started their classification systems by dividing all the known organisms into large groups and then subdividing them into progressively smaller groups. Unlike his predecessors, Linnaeus began with the species, organizing them into larger groups or genera, and then arranging analogous genera to form families and related families to form orders and classes. Probably utilizing the earlier work of Grew and others, Linnaeus chose the structure of the reproductive organs of the flower as a basis for grouping the higher plants. Thus, he distinguished between plants with real flowers and seeds (phanerogams) and those lacking real flowers and seeds (cryptogams), subdividing the former into hermaphroditic (bisexual) and unisexual forms. For animals, following Ray’s work, Linnaeus relied upon teeth and toes as the basic characteristics of mammals; he used the shape of the beak as the basis for bird classification. Having demonstrated that a binomial classification system based on concise and accurate descriptions could be used for the grouping of organisms, Linnaeus established taxonomic biology as a discipline.