The mechanical life of plants: Descartes on botany

British Journal for the History of Science 52 (1):41-63 (2019)
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Abstract

In this article, I argue that the French philosopher René Descartes was far more involved in the study of plants than has been generally recognized. We know that he did not include a botanical section in his natural philosophy, and sometimes he differentiated between plants and living bodies. His position was, moreover, characterized by a methodological rejection of the catalogues of plants. However, this paper reveals a significant trend in Descartes's naturalistic pursuits, starting from the end of 1637, whereby he became increasingly interested in plants. I explore this shift by examining both Descartes's correspondence and several notes contained in theExcerpta anatomica. Grounded in direct observations, Descartes's work on vegetation provides a modest, though not unimportant, contribution to a natural-philosophical approach to the vegetal realm. This had a direct bearing on his lifelong ambition to explain the nature of living bodies and also fuelled the emergence of botany as a modern science.

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Fabrizio Baldassarri
University of Bucharest

References found in this work

Descartes the doctor: rationalism and its therapies.Steven Shapin - 2000 - British Journal for the History of Science 33 (2):131-154.
Life’s Form: Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul.Dennis des Chene - 2002 - Philosophical Quarterly 52 (208):390-392.
Locke and botany.Peter R. Anstey & Stephen A. Harris - 2006 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (2):151-171.

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