BioConcepts

natural systemsystema naturale (lat.); natürliches System (ger.)

• A biological classification based upon morphological and anatomical relationships and affinities considered in the light of phylogeny and embryology; specif.: a system in botany other than the artificial or sexual system established by Linnaeus. (Merriam Webster 2011)
  category systematics

  1735

  systema naturale

  Linnaeus, C. (1735). Systema naturae sive regna tria naturae systematice proposita per classes, ordines, genera, & species: Aph. 12; cf. Müller-Wille, S. (1999). Botanik und weltweiter Handel. Zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707-78): Chap. 2.3.

  1800

  Natürliches System, Systema naturale[: eine] Abtheilung der Naturkörper [die] auf alle wesentliche Merkmale, also auf den ganzen Habitus […] in so fern er wesentlich ist, Rücksicht nimmt

  Illiger, J.K.W. (1800). Versuch einer systematischen vollständigen Terminologie für das Thierreich und Pflanzenreich: 107.

  1859

  All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification are explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that the natural system is founded on descent with modification; that the characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent, and, in so far, all true classification is genealogical; that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, and not some unknown plan of creation, or the enunciation of general propositions, and the mere putting together and separating objects more or less alike.

  Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species: 420.
  

  1872

  The real affinities of all organic beings, in contradistinction to their adaptive resemblances, are due to inheritance or community of descent. The Natural System is a genealogical arrangement

  Darwin, C. (1859/72). On the Origin of Species: 366.