The reception of the translations of Aristotelian and pseudo-Aristotelian works at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century promoted a new understanding of the sciences as specialized fields of knowledge. The huge amount of translations required a new organization of knowledge, which included novel subjects and categories. Among these there is a very special case, namely the pseudo-Aristotelian De plantis, translated from Arabic into Latin and then back into Greek to be re-translated into Latin again. De plantis was included (...) in the new curriculum in Ripoll 109, and constituted the main source for botanical studies until the sixteenth century. Throughout this paper we will explore the reception and impact of De plantis in both the Arabic and the Latin traditions. We aim to show its foundational role in the development of botany as a theoretical discipline within the natural sciences. (shrink)

In the 13th century, the availability of Aristotle’s treatises of natural philosophy encouraged forms of integration between libri naturales and sapientia biblica. Instead of diving into allegory and symbolism, several Dominican exegetes began to explore more realistic approaches. The foremost figure is Albert the Great. In his biblical commentaries, philosophy of nature and theology join forces as complementary forms of knowledge. By focusing on Albert’s De vegetabilibus, this paper is aimed at analyzing in which ways the Dominican master reuses his (...) naturalistic and, especially, botanical knowledge as an exegetical tool to deepen both the historical and the allegorical sense, realism and spiritual interpretation. (shrink)

This paper argues that the English philosopher John Locke, who has normally been thought to have had only an amateurish interest in botany, was far more involved in the botanical science of his day than has previously been known. Through the presentation of new evidence deriving from Locke’s own herbarium, his manuscript notes, journal and correspondence, it is established that Locke made a modest contribution to early modern botany. It is shown that Locke had close and ongoing relations (...) with the Bobarts, keepers of the Oxford Botanic Garden, and that Locke distributed seeds and plant parts to other botanists, seeds of which the progeny almost certainly ended up in the most important herbaria of the period. Furthermore, it is claimed that the depth of Locke’s interest in and practice of botany has a direct bearing on our understanding of his views on the correct method of natural philosophy and on the interpretation of his well known discussion of the nature of species in Book III of his Essay concerning human understanding. (shrink)

Since the eighteenth century, the study of plants has reflected an increasingly mechanized and technological view of the natural world that divides the humanities and the natual sciences. In broad terms, this article proposes a context for research into flora through an interrogation of existing literature addressing a rapprochement between ways to knowledge. The natureculture dichotomy, and more specifically the plant-to-human sensory disjunction, follows a parallel course of resolution to the schism between objective and subjective forms of knowledge. The foundations (...) of taxonomic botany, as well as the allied fields of environmental studies, ethnobotany and economic botany, are undergirded by universalizing, sensorylimited visual structuring of the natural world. As the study of everyday embodied interactions of humans with flora, expanding upon the lens of cultural ecology, "cultural botany" provides a transdisciplinary research approach. Alternate embodied cultural engagements with flora emerge through a syncretic fusion of diverse methodologies. (shrink)

Spanish naturalists established the Viceregal Botanical Garden of New Spain in Mexico City in 1788 to advance agriculture, manufacturing, and medicine. This colonial institution also served the ideological role of cultivating agents of empire. Rather than establish the garden in the already robust tradition of American botany, the Spanish appropriated this space, employing Creole students and servant workers to Europeanize local botanical knowledge through taxonomic colonialism. The different agendas at work in the botanical garden, which straddled the colonial and (...) revolutionary periods in Mexico, destabilized not only this institution, but also the empire itself from the ground up. That the contributions of the agents of the garden have been forgotten is evidence of the fragility and failure of a European institution in the American colonial state. (shrink)

There are three principal philosophical-scientific encyclopaedias written in Hebrew during the Middle Ages: Yehudah ha-Cohen's Midrash ha-okmah, rather than such texts as pseudo-Aristotle 's De lapidibus and Nicolaus Damascenus' De plantis. In particular, Falaquera's encyclopaedia represents the most convincing effort to provide a truly scientific discussion of mineralogy and botany, comparable to that of his contemporary Albert the Great, and based upon the Brethren, Avicenna and, maybe, some lost works by Averroes.

The Botany of Desire:. Plant's‐Eye View of the World. By Michael Pollan. 2001. New York: Random House. 271 pages. $24.95 (hardback). ISBN 0‐375‐50129‐0.

Decolonization created new opportunities for international scientific research collaboration. In Indonesia this began in the late 1940s, as Indonesian scientists and officials sought to remake the formerly colonial botanical gardens in the city of Bogor into an international research center. Indonesia sponsored the Flora Malesiana project, a flora of all of island Southeast Asia. This project was formally centered in Bogor, Indonesia, with participation from tropical botanists from around the world. The international orientation of Indonesian science led to the establishment (...) of one of UNESCO’s Field Science Co-operation Offices in Jakarta, and to a period of close collaboration between Indonesian botanists and UNESCO. This paper examines the importance of UNESCO’s Humid Tropics research program, which initially provided further opportunities for Indonesian botanists to participate in international scientific networks. The paper concludes by showing that the Humid Tropics program led to the slow erosion of Indonesian agency and authority over tropical botany, and the assertion of Western control and management over tropical botany research. (shrink)

German Romanticism is a thinking of life as exposed. Philosophical conceptions of botanical life are paradigmatic of this. Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel each address the plant in their respective philosophies of nature. This article traces the connections and divergences in their thinking of plants, focusing on the role of love, lack, and exposure in order to present the plant as a peculiarly apt figure for considerations of life as exposed.

Argument When Japan faced the world after the collapse of its feudal system, it had to invent its own modern identity in which the Tokyo Cherry became the National Flower. Despite being a garden plant, it received a Latin scientific species name as if it was an endemic species. After Japan’s colonial conquest of Korea, exploring the flora of the peninsula became part of imperial knowledge practices of Japan. In the wild, a different cherry was discovered in Korea that was (...) proposed as the endemic parent of the Tokyo Cherry, supporting imperialist policies. Following Japan’s defeat after the Pacific War, South Korea in turn entered its search for cultural identity. The supposed parent of the Tokyo Cherry was now successfully acclaimed as the parent species of the colonial oppressor’s Tokyo Cherry and named the King Cherry. Such scientific practice into cherries smoothly intertwined with nationalism and its legacy continues to interfere with research today. (shrink)

This essay examines the aims, labor regime, and workers of the St. Vincent botanic garden to highlight differences in the infrastructure of government‐funded botany across the British empire. It argues that slavery was a foundational element of society and natural history in the Anglo‐Caribbean, and the St. Vincent botanic garden was both put into the service of slavery and transformed by it. When viewed from the Caribbean context and the perspective of enslaved workers, the St. Vincent garden's affiliation with (...) imperial improvement becomes less salient than its support of the status quo of slavery as a system and labor regime. The garden was dependent on enslaved laborers, yet the conditions of work and contemporary prejudices led superintendents to see them as undifferentiated labor. The politics of the archive make it impossible for historians to reconstruct the experiences of the garden's enslaved workers as individuals, including the specific labor that they performed or skills that they possessed. Plantation slavery's appropriation of and influence on the infrastructure of colonial botany through the St. Vincent botanic garden suggests that historians should center the local logics of the societies where scientific knowledge making took place to reveal the many meanings of science. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Research has shown that there has often been overlap between the humanities and the sciences. This essay brings to the fore a prominent borderline case in cultural history, where the mix of disciplines that could contribute to its study became an issue of debate. It examines the attempts made by botanists throughout the nineteenth century, culminating around 1900, to call into question the monopoly of the humanities on cultural history. Botanists argued that botanical objects, such as the original forms of (...) ancient grains, were important historical sources, and the renowned Georg Schweinfurth even advocated a new concept of “culture” that prioritized the sciences. The essay argues that this development is part of the period’s discourse on the origins of human civilization, which included more and less productive encounters between the botanical study of the migration and development of plants over time and the study of human history. (shrink)

At the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the 19th, Spain and the Italian States contributed to the development of European agricultural science and the improvement of manufacturing. They collaborated with each other and reworked the most advanced models of France, Central Europe and Great Britain. Despite their somewhat less prosperous economic status, they demonstrated great originality in research and experimentation. In this process, botanical knowledge served as a starting point for a new epistemological path. Through three case (...) studies – the botanists Antonio José Cavanilles and Domenico Nocca, and the agriculturist Filippo Re – my article analyses how Spanish and Italian naturalists and learned individuals contributed to forming the concept of ‘economic botany’ through the exchange of seeds, plant specimens, books, journals, and – more in general – opinions, becoming germinal forces in a large transnational network. (shrink)

This article describes the slight impact of Lysenkoism upon Polish botany. I begin with an account of the development of plant genetics in Poland, as well as the attitude of scientists and the Polish intelligentsia toward Marxist philosophy prior to the World War II. Next I provide a short history of the introduction and demise of Lysenkoism in Polish science, with a focus on events in botany, in context with key events in Polish science from 1939 to 1958. (...) The article outlines the little effects of Lysenkoism upon botanists and their research, as well as how botanists for the most part rejected what was often termed the "new biology." My paper shows that though Lysenko's theories received political support, and were actively promoted by a small circle of scientists and Communist party activists, they were never accepted by most botanists. Once the political climate in Poland altered after the events of 1956, Lysenko's theories were immediately abandoned. (shrink)

Summary The enthusiasm of Renaissance humanists for classical learning greatly influenced the development of botany in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Humanist scholars restored the treatises of Theophrastus, Pliny, Galen and Dioscorides on botany and materia medica to general circulation and argued for their use as textbooks in Renaissance universities. Renaissance botanists' respect for classical precepts and models of the proper methods for studying plants temporarily discouraged the use of naturalistic botanical illustration, but encouraged other techniques for (...) collecting and communicating new observations: herbaria, botanical gardens and field trips. (shrink)

This essay offers numerous ideas on how to integrate science and history into classroom pedagogy in a way that acknowledges the contributions of women and other groups underrepresented in science by highlighting the cultural and political contexts in which science developed rather than by adding token individuals to a history of science still largely defined by the achievements of a few great men. It details how students in a General Education class co-taught by a botanist and a historian of science (...) at the Evergreen State College not only gained skills in field botany and vegetation analysis but also became more informed about how modern scientific disciplines took shape. Recognizing that race, class, and gender have played a role in how science developed, the students’ understanding of the complicated legacy of scientific inquiry gave them tools to be more rigorous in their thinking about scientific practice. This interdisciplinary approach, so crucial in fostering inclusivity in scientific disciplines, also promoted a deeper engagement with historical inquiry. (shrink)

Coming from a prosperous London Quaker family, the author Priscilla Wakefield wrote educational books for children, and one work for adults, Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex, also reissued in this series. This 1796 book on botany, a science which 'contributes to health of body and cheerfulness of disposition' but is difficult to study because of its Latin nomenclature and the cost of textbooks, offers a simple introduction for children through the medium of letters between sisters, (...) as 'Felicia' shares with 'Constance' her growing understanding of plant science. Felicia's governess is a follower of Linnaeus, whose classificatory system is described as 'the one universally adopted', and by the twenty-eighth and final letter, Felicia is describing the class Cryptogamia. This illustrated account in simple language gives an insight into the level of education thought appropriate for young girls at the end of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Appliquée à la lecture des ouvrages de Théophraste sur les plantes, la notion de genre facilite l’analyse d’un de ses deux critères classificatoires : la distinction entre « mâles » et « femelles ». Le maitre de la botanique grecque projette sur le monde végétal les représentations culturelles du masculin et du féminin en pays grec. Les plantes étant chargées de sens différents selon les cultures, cette constatation invite à tenir compte du genre des plantes dans l’étude de leur symbolique, (...) notamment dans la sphère du religieux. Les agronomes romains n’emploient pas eux les qualificatifs « mâles » et « femelles » pour décrire deux plantes s’unissant en vue de leur reproduction. Plusieurs critères entrent en jeu dans le choix de ces dénominations : la ressemblance entre un aspect de la plante et une partie de l’anatomie féminine ou masculine ; l’analogie entre une caractéristique de la plante et une attitude culturellement considérée comme féminine ou masculine. En somme, ce sont majoritairement des critères relevant du genrequi déterminent la catégorisation des végétaux en « mâles » et « femelles ». Mais ces catégories sont rarement essentialisées. Elles fonctionnent comme un couple polarisé, permettant de distinguer deux espèces similaires en leur reconnaissant des qualités relatives et non absolues. (shrink)

This essay aims to reappraise Agnes Arber's contribution to the history of science with reference to her work in the history of botany and biology. Both her first and her last books are classics: the former in the history of botany, the latter in that of biology. As such, they are still cited today, albeit with increasing criticism. Her very last book was rejected by Cambridge University Press because it did not meet the publisher's academic standards – we (...) shall return to it in due course. Despite Kathryn Packer's two essays about Arber's life in context, much remains to be done toward a just appreciation of her research. We need such a reappraisal in order to avoid anachronistic criticisms of her contributions to the historiography of botany, or, on the other hand, uncritical applause for her studies in plant morphology. (shrink)

Central in the analyses of women’s and gender studies within the history of education has been Rousseau’s (Emil oder Über die Erziehung, 12th edn. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1762) educational novel Emile, especially Book 5, which deals with the education of Sophie, Emilie’s future spouse. Given the lasting interest in the person of Rousseau and his work, it is astonishing that there is a work by him, that has not been a focus of analysis in studies on the history of education, (...) namely, Rousseau’s Lettres élementaires sur la botanique. Linnaeus had early on espoused a classification bases on the sexuality of the plants. Their sexualizing plants was in keeping with the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment, which had also put the new order of human sexual relations on the agenda. The following article focusses on the question what importance Rousseau’s letters on botany can be accorded in this controversy over the sexuality of the plants and the relations between the sexes. (shrink)

The growth of botany following European expansion and the consequent increase of plants necessitated significant development in classification methodology, during the key decades spanning the late 17th to the mid-18th century, leading to the emergence of a “natural method.” Much of this development was driven by the need to accurately identify medicinal plants, and was founded on the principle of analogy, used particularly in relation to properties. Analogical reasoning established correlations (affinities) between plants, moreover between their external and internal (...) characteristics (here, medicinal properties). The diversity of plants, names, and botanical information gathered worldwide amplified confusion. This triggered the systematisation of the collection and referencing of data, prioritizing the meticulous observation of plant characteristics and the recording of medicinal properties as established by tradition: it resulted in principled methods of natural classification and nomenclature, represented by the _genus_, to enhance reliability of plant knowledge, which was crucial in medical contexts. The scope of botany increased dramatically, with new methods broadening studies beyond traditional medicinal plants. The failure of chemical methods to predict properties, particularly of unknown flora, amplified the reliance on analogy and on natural affinities. (shrink)

By all accounts, James Cook’s HMS Endeavour sojourn in Tahiti was a pivotal moment in Enlightenment engagements between Indigenous and European cultures. Among the voyage records that survive, the Endeavour draftsman Sydney Parkinson’s Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas is widely viewed as anomalous for the depth and breadth of its interests in Indigenous Tahitian culture and plant knowledge. This essay complicates that view, with emphasis on the contingencies peculiar to the Journal’s publication and to Parkinson’s own authorial (...) biography. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, I analyze Parkinson’s account alongside the botanist Daniel Solander’s historiographically underutilized “Plantae Otaheitenses” manuscript. In so doing, I offer an alternative reading of the Journal as archetypal rather than exceptional in its attention to Indigenous cultures and knowledges. At stake, I suggest, is an enhanced appreciation for Indigenous–European botanical engagements and for Enlightenment print culture more broadly, as well as for the nebulously adisciplinary and collaborative nature of Enlightenment natural history field practices. (shrink)

Heidegger argues that for being x to count as ‘alive’ it must satisfy three metaphysical conditions. It must be capable of engaging in active behaviour with a form of intentional directedness that offers to us a “sphere of transposition” into which we can intelligibly “transpose ourselves.” Heidegger’s discussion of these conditions, as they apply to the being of animals, is well-known. But, if his argument is sound, they ought also to apply to the being of plants. Heidegger, unfortunately, does not (...) supply this part of his ontology of life in any systematic detail. However, my thesis is that it is possible to interpret the nature and activities of plants, along the lines of –, and thus to make good on Heidegger’s omission. The key to this reconstruction is a reconceptualization of plant movements as constituted by a form of representationally blind, motor-intentionality. (shrink)