John Hogg (biologist)
Encyclopedia
John Hogg was a British naturalist who wrote about amphibians, birds, plants, and protist
Protist
Protists are a diverse group of eukaryotic microorganisms. Historically, protists were treated as the kingdom Protista, which includes mostly unicellular organisms that do not fit into the other kingdoms, but this group is contested in modern taxonomy...

. In 1839 he became a member of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

.

John Hogg is credited with the creation of a fourth kingdom, accompanying Lapides, Plantae and Animalia, to classify Life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...

. In 1860 he named the kingdom Regnum Primigenum or Protoctista.
His rationale was simply that a kingdom of 'first beings' was necessary as these entities were believed to have existed prior to plants and animals.

In 1735, two living supergroups were formalized by Carl von Linné in his monumental Systema Naturae. All organisms were placed into the Kingdoms Plantae and Animalia. Linné added a third kingdom of the natural world in 1766; Lapides or ‘rocks’. These were deemed to be similar to plants in that they were, neither living nor ‘sentient’, i.e. not having ‘senses’. They were further characterised as solid bodied.

Hogg attempted to justify his arguments for a fourth kingdom with Spongilla
Spongilla
Spongilla is a genus of freshwater sponge in the family Spongillidae. They are found in lakes and slow streams. Sponges of the genus Spongilla attach themselves to rocks and logs and filter the water for various small aquatic organisms such as protozoa, bacteria, and other free-floating pond life...

, a freshwater green sponge, that was an animal known to exude oxygen in the light. However, the photosynthesis
Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis is a chemical process that converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight. Photosynthesis occurs in plants, algae, and many species of bacteria, but not in archaea. Photosynthetic organisms are called photoautotrophs, since they can...

 was later shown to be a result of symbiotic 'algae
Algae
Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

'.

Such an attempt to apply non-reductionist thought to classification systems during a period of biological debate made Hogg a protagonist within the field of nineteenth century biology along with Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel
The "European War" became known as "The Great War", and it was not until 1920, in the book "The First World War 1914-1918" by Charles à Court Repington, that the term "First World War" was used as the official name for the conflict.-Research:...

 and Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

.
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