In 1758 Carl Linnaeus published the 10th edition of his Sistema Naturae, a monumental work in which he classified most of living organisms known at the time, by the introduction of various hierarchical categories (basically kingdom, class, order, family, genus and species) and the Latin binomial nomenclature. Based on anatomical similarities Linnaeus had the brilliant idea of include our own species in the same category as monkeys, a category that called primates, and named us with the known Homo sapiens, the wise man. With this work he let the ground prepared for Charles Darwin who some decades later develop the transcendental theory of the origin of species.

Homo sapiens is since then our scientific name, if we analyze it scientifically we will discover some very interesting details. Homo is the term used by the Romans to designated the humans and shares the root with the word humus, the most superficial and fertile soil. The origin of this association of words goes back to the Indo-European peoples and their religious distinction between the immortal gods of celestial origin, and mortal humans, of earthly origin. On the other hand, sapiens derives from scire, i.e.  knowledge, from which also derives scientia, science.

Somehow Homo sapiens is an earthly animal, fallible and endowed with science, which is an appropriate name to our true nature. Therefore, we should not lose the innate desire to learn and discover, through observation and trial and error in order to become wise. We should keep all life long our scientific essence, in a broad sense, also humanistic, like in the Renaissance was done by Leonardo da Vinci, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola or Galileo.