DOCSLIB.ORG

Downloaded from Brill.Com10/02/2021 12:40:43AM Via Free Access 206 René Sigrist Plants

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Downloaded from Brill.Com10/02/2021 12:40:43AM Via Free Access 206 René Sigrist Plants ON SOME SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BOTANISTS René Sigrist* In the eighteenth century, the systematic study of plants was already an old story that could be traced back to the Renaissance and even to clas- sical antiquity. Yet the existence of botany as a science independent of medicine was not as old. It would be difficult to ascertain to what extent it was already a discipline practised by specialized scholars—not to men- tion professionals.1 In 1751 Linné, in his Philosophia botanica, had tried to define the aims and the ideal organisation of such a discipline. Yet, despite the many students who came to hear him in Uppsala, and his eminent position within the Republic of Letters, it was not in his power to impose professional standards on other botanists. Diverging concep- tions of the science of plants persisted at least until the final triumph of Jussieu’s natural method of classification, in the early nineteenth century. The emergence of the professional botanist would be a still longer pro- cess, with important differences from one country to another. The pres- ent article aims to analyse the social status of botanists in the eighteenth century and in the early nineteenth century, a period which can be char- acterised as the golden age of scientific academies.2 Starting with Linné’s conception of the division of tasks within the community of phytologues, it focuses on the social perception of botanists, on the structure of episto- lary links within the Republic of Botanists, and finally on the professional activities and social origins of the major contributors to the science of * Invited scholar (FWO Fellow) at Gent University, Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences. A preliminary version of this article was drafted with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (subsidy no. 100 011–107 723 /1). I thank Natalia Tik- honov for her comments and proof reading. 1 In the opinion of Roger L. Williams, Botanophilia in Eighteenth-Century France. The Spirit of Enlightenment (Dordrecht 2001), 4, botany did not become an independent sci- ence before the eighteenth century. He considers (9) that an important quantum jump occurred in 1717 when Sébastien Vaillant positively asserted the sexual character of plants, which had already been foreseen by Camerarius in 1694, but denied by Tournefort the very same year. Another step was the eager adoption by the young Linné of Vaillant’s position as the founding principle of his own system of classification. 2 For the sake of brevity of the term “eighteenth century” will be used in this article, although its empirical basis is extended to the period from 1700 to 1830. © RENÉ SIGRIST, 2013 | doi:10.1163/9789004243910_010 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.René Sigrist - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 12:40:43AM via free access 206 rené sigrist plants. The dynamic evolution of the community of botanists will also be analysed as a result of growing social demands, and as a condition for a slow process of professionalisation. Linné and the Organization of a Discipline Thanks to the support of Queen Louisa Ulrika and the cooperation of the Swedish East India Company, Linné was in a position to finance travel- lers who allowed him to extend his investigations to the world’s flora and fauna, so as to gather an unprecedented number of specimens and proxy pictures in the gardens and the library of Uppsala. He was thus in a posi- tion to set up an ambitious program of study which served as a model for at least one generation of botanists and marked a kind of turning point in the emergence of botany as a discipline.3 From the sixteenth century onwards, botany had been taught and practised as an auxiliary science of medicine, so that botanical gardens were mainly concerned with the growing of “simples”, that is of medicinal plants or herbs. In 1694, Tourne- fort still defined botany as knowledge of plants and their (medicinal) virtues.4 Boerhaave, whose influence on the teaching and practice of botany was without equivalent in the early eighteenth century, still con- ceived of botany as first dedicated to the study of the curative and nutri- tive properties of simples. His disciples took up his ideas and spread them to Germany (Haller, Trew, Heister), Britain (Sherard), Switzerland (Haller again, Gessner), Austria (de Haen) and of course the Netherlands (Bur- man, Gronovius). Linné himself, although not one of his direct students, came under his influence. In the development of botany as an autonomous discipline, Linné’s role was probably without equivalent, except for the French school of natural classification, centred around the Jussieus, and the institutional settings offered by the Jardin du Roi, the Paris Académie des Sciences, and the Medical Faculty of Montpellier.5 The inventor of the sexual 3 See Gunnar Eriksson, ‘The Botanical Success of Linnaeus. The Aspect of Organiza- tion and Publicity’, in Gunnar Broberg (ed.), Linnaeus: Progress and Prospects in Linnaean Research (Stockholm 1980), 57–66; Tore Frängsmyr (ed.), Linnaeus. The Man and His Work (Canton 1993). 4 “La botanique . a deux parties . .: la connaissance des plantes et celles de leurs ver- tus”. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Eléments de botanique ou méthode pour connaître les plantes (1694), reissued by Nicolas Jolyclerc (Paris 1797), 45–46. 5 See Alan G. Morton, History of Botanical Science. An Account of the Development of Botany from Ancient Times to the Present Day (London 1981). René Sigrist - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 12:40:43AM via free access social characteristics of the eighteenth-century botanists 207 system of classification outlined his concept of botany in his Philosophia botanica. His science of “growing and living beings” was part of a natu- ral science which considered natural beings, whether mineral, vegetal or animal, as composed entities assembled by God’s will. Its object was to name plants according to their genres and species, with the further aim of characterizing their relations to other types of beings, in order to study the influence of climate and culture and to discover the general laws of their generation.6 Its discoveries, revolutions, progress and methods were established in a series of books published for the most part since 1530: the Bibliotheca botanica. Among the 159 main contributors to the Bibliotheca, only three (Theophrastus, Pliny and Dioscorides) lived in antiquity and two others in the fifteenth century.7 They were therefore excluded from the list of the “founding fathers” of botany, as they belonged to Greek and Roman antiquity or to the Western and Arabic Middle Ages, along with a plethora of their mediaeval and renascent commentators. In the eyes of the “prince of botanists”, members of these groups were ignorant of the two basic principles of modern botany, i.e. the art of general description and the canons and laws which rule the science of the plant kingdom. Linné gave further precision to his concept of the botanist in the form of a taxonomy of phytologues, whose first division opposed real botanists and mere botanophiles. Linné then split the real botanists into two kinds: 1) the collectors, whose duty is to produce and formalize empirical data, and 2) the method- ists, who classify and denominate plants on the basis of the data prepared by the collectors. 1. Among the collectors, Linné first mentions the group of iconographs, who produce figures of plants. This art, ignored by the ancients, is a fun- damental tool for the elaboration of empirical knowledge, which requires the circulation of proxy pictures.8 Yet, since figures only give indications about plant morphology, the iconographs’ work has to be completed by the general descriptions provided by descriptors, whose crucial role, also ignored by the ancients, is to characterize the plants’ features (shape, 6 On Linné’s concept of botany, see Staffan Müller-Wille, Botanik und weltweiter Han- del. Zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707–1778) (Berlin 1999), 105–132. Before the Philosophia botanica (1751), the basic principles of the Linnean method had been published in the Fundamenta botanica (1735) and in the Genera Plantarum (first edition 1737). 7 Caroli Linnaei, Philosophia botanica (Stockholmiae 1751), 3–5 (§ 6). 8 Among the most famous iconographs are Anders Hesselius, Johannes Hieronymus Kniphof and Georg Dionysius Ehret, who worked on Linné’s Hortius Cliffortianus (1737). René Sigrist - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 12:40:43AM via free access 208 rené sigrist texture, smell, taste, colour) in a standardized language. Linné consid- ers as descriptors such early botanists as Johannes and Caspar Bauhin, but also Dillenius for the mosses, Sloane and Plumier for the American species, and Georg Eberhard Rumpf for the Indian plants. Some of them, the monographs, specialized in a single genre of vegetable (such as the Ginseng for Jacob Breynius). Others, called the inquisitives, focused their attention on rare plants.9 Among the collectors, Linné also ranks the adonides, who teach bot- any on the basis of the specimens gathered in a garden. Among the most famous of these were Pierre Magnol in Montpellier, Hermann Boerhaave and Adrianus van Royen in Leyden, Albrecht von Haller in Göttingen, Linné in Uppsala, and Michelangelo Tilli in Pisa. Then there are the flo- rists, who make a methodical inventory of plants growing ex tempore in a place, usually a province, sometimes a botanical garden. Their aim is to complete the pharmacological teaching of medical students by the adonides.10 Finally, the travellers observe and collect the vegetable prod- ucts of foreign countries.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • An Antillean Plant of Beauty, a French Botanist, and a German Name: Naming Plants in the Early Modern Atlantic World
    Estonian Journal of Ecology, 2012, 61, 1, 37–50 doi: 10.3176/eco.2012.1.05 An Antillean plant of beauty, a French botanist, and a German name: naming plants in the Early Modern Atlantic world Laura Hollsten Faculty of Arts, Åbo Akademi University, 20500 Åbo, Finland; [email protected] Received 10 December 2010, revised 7 March 2011, accepted 27 June 2011 Abstract. This paper investigates the naming of plants in the work of the French botanist Charles Plumier (1646–1704). Plumier made three trips to the French Antilles between 1690 and 1697, was appointed royal botanist in 1693, and published his first work, Description des Plantes de l’Amérique, in the same year. Plumier was the first ‘modern’ botanist to describe the flora of the Caribbean in a time when natural history underwent significant qualitative changes as a result of the European expansion and transatlantic contacts. Plumier’s ambition was to replace the confusing multitude of names given to New World plants with a universal taxonomically based nomenclature. His modernity and scientific ethos manifest themselves in his neutral way of organizing the plants according to a taxonomic system and his use of a Latin nomenclature, often naming plants after well-known botanists. Through Plumier’s naming process, I argue, it is possible to highlight the colonial and Atlantic context of his work, his network as part of the scientific elite of his country, and his professionalism resulting from years of botanical studies. Key words: history of botany, early modern natural history, plant nomenclature. INTRODUCTION According to a story entitled ‘The Tree of Riches’, the French botanist Charles Plumier decided that he would like to travel the world and get rich (Pellowski, 1990).
    [Show full text]
  • Today, My Favorite Azalea Companion Plant of an Herbaceous Perennial Type Is
    Today, My Favorite Azalea Companion Plant of an Herbaceous Perennial Type Is.... By William C. Miller III—Bethesda, Maryland This is the third in a series of “favorite” articles. The natural distribution, however, extends into The azaleas ‘Ambrosia’ and ‘Opal’ were previ- Canada and Mexico and private gardens across the ously identified as my favorite Glenn Dale and US where it is a very popular element in water and Linwood Hardy Hybrids respectively.1 It occurred rain gardens and might not be represented on the to me that it would be useful to expand my focus government map. It was introduced into Europe in to the rest of the plant kingdom, since very few the mid-1620s and has become naturalized. Since people have gardens that are limited to azaleas. it isn’t overly competitive, it is technically consid- Companion plants, often overlooked in the ered non-native rather than “invasive.” homeowner garden planning process, comprise a surprisingly significant feature in every garden. Lobelia, the Genus There is the canopy and the understory trees, above the azaleas, represented by the taller trees The genus was named after Matthias de l’Obel, (e.g., oak, beech, pine, maple) and the smaller a Flemish physician and botanist (1538-1616) by Charles Plumier, a French priest, botanist, and trees (e.g., dogwood, maple, redbud, and stewar- 2,3 tia). There are plants that share the profile level New World plant explorer (1646-1704). They with the azaleas (e.g., holly, viburnum, hydrangea, both were significant influences on Linnaeus who and other rhododendrons). Finally, there are the is often called the father of taxonomy.
    [Show full text]
  • Admirable Trees of Through Two World Wars and Witnessed the Nation’S Greatest Dramas Versailles
    Admirable trees estate of versailles estate With Patronage of maison rémy martin The history of France from tree to tree Established in 1724 and granted Royal Approval in 1738 by Louis XV, Trees have so many stories to tell, hidden away in their shadows. At Maison Rémy Martin shares with the Palace of Versailles an absolute Versailles, these stories combine into a veritable epic, considering respect of time, a spirit of openness and innovation, a willingness to that some of its trees have, from the tips of their leafy crowns, seen pass on its exceptional knowledge and respect for the environment the kings of France come and go, observed the Revolution, lived – all of which are values that connect it to the Admirable Trees of through two World Wars and witnessed the nation’s greatest dramas Versailles. and most joyous celebrations. Strolling from tree to tree is like walking through part of the history of France, encompassing the influence of Louis XIV, the experi- ments of Louis XV, the passion for hunting of Louis XVI, as well as the great maritime expeditions and the antics of Marie-Antoinette. It also calls to mind the unending renewal of these fragile giants, which can be toppled by a strong gust and need many years to grow back again. Pedunculate oak, Trianon forecourts; planted during the reign of Louis XIV, in 1668, this oak is the doyen of the trees on the Estate of Versailles 1 2 From the French-style gardens in front of the Palace to the English garden at Trianon, the Estate of Versailles is dotted with extraordi- nary trees.
    [Show full text]
  • Gardenias, Magnolias and Oleanders
    Gardenias, Magnolias and Oleanders Gardenia jasminoides is cultivated throughout the gardens of New Orleans as a sweet-scented flowering shrub. The Gardenia is a genus of 142 species of flowering plants in the coffee family, Rubiaceae, native to the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, southern Asia, Australasia and Oceania. Several species occur on the island of Hawaii, and is known in to many people in New Orleans as the Cape jasmine. The fragrant and beautiful gardenia Since this species originated in warm humid tropical areas, it demands high humidity to thrive and bright (not direct) light. It flourishes in acidic soils with good drainage and thrives in Crescent City temperatures. Flowering is from about mid-spring to mid-summer, with May the predominant month. The stunningly beautiful shrub with the fragrant white flowers did not derive its name from “the garden”, however. It all began in Charleston, South Carolina, where there lived a Scottish-born botanist named Dr. Alexander Garden (1730 -1791). He was a member of several learned societies and was a fellow of the Royal Society in London. He collected all manner of flora and fauna, which he packed up and sent to London zoologist John Ellis and famous Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. He bundled up and sent them various magnolias and some Gordonia specimens, but the plant that bears his name had nothing to do with his particular efforts. It wasn’t even American. Linnaeus was strongly persuaded by Ellis to name something after Garden, so the Gardenia became the name for the Cape jasmine, also known as Cape jessamine.
    [Show full text]
  • Miss EA Willmott
    726 NATURE NovEMBER 10, 1934 Obituary PROF. 0. V. DARBISHIRE Bristol Naturalists' Society and in that of the South ORN at Conway in 1870, Otto Vernon Darbishire Western Naturalists' Union, of which he was the B had the advantage of a varied education, president. passing his school years in Dresden and Florence and A few years ago, Darbishire met with a serious pursuing his university studies at Bangor, Oxford cycling accident, which incapacitated him almost and Kiel. Thus he gained not only a wide outlook on completely for some considerable time. Happily his life, but became also a good linguist-an inestimable recovery, though slow, was sure, and he completely advantage for a scientific worker. After graduating regained his powers, so that he could again undertake with honours in botany at Oxford, where he studied both his teaching and his research work. He was no under Prof. Vines, he went to Kiel, and there took up doubt looking forward to the opportunity after his first the study of Algre, obtaining the Ph.D. degree. retirement, which was due next year, to devote more He then became assistant to Prof. Reinke and com­ time to the investigation of lichens, and we might menced his investigations into the structure and have expected further important contributions to development of lichens, a study which he pursued botanical science. But alas, it was not to be. Taken throughout his life. He also turned his attention to ill very suddenly, he died after an operation on the taxonomy of this group of plants, publishing an October 11 at the age of sixty-four years, leaving a important monograph of the genus Roccella in the widow and two young sons.
    [Show full text]
  • Plant Life Magill’S Encyclopedia of Science
    MAGILLS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE PLANT LIFE MAGILLS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SCIENCE PLANT LIFE Volume 4 Sustainable Forestry–Zygomycetes Indexes Editor Bryan D. Ness, Ph.D. Pacific Union College, Department of Biology Project Editor Christina J. Moose Salem Press, Inc. Pasadena, California Hackensack, New Jersey Editor in Chief: Dawn P. Dawson Managing Editor: Christina J. Moose Photograph Editor: Philip Bader Manuscript Editor: Elizabeth Ferry Slocum Production Editor: Joyce I. Buchea Assistant Editor: Andrea E. Miller Page Design and Graphics: James Hutson Research Supervisor: Jeffry Jensen Layout: William Zimmerman Acquisitions Editor: Mark Rehn Illustrator: Kimberly L. Dawson Kurnizki Copyright © 2003, by Salem Press, Inc. All rights in this book are reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner what- soever or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address the publisher, Salem Press, Inc., P.O. Box 50062, Pasadena, California 91115. Some of the updated and revised essays in this work originally appeared in Magill’s Survey of Science: Life Science (1991), Magill’s Survey of Science: Life Science, Supplement (1998), Natural Resources (1998), Encyclopedia of Genetics (1999), Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues (2000), World Geography (2001), and Earth Science (2001). ∞ The paper used in these volumes conforms to the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48-1992 (R1997). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Magill’s encyclopedia of science : plant life / edited by Bryan D.
    [Show full text]
  • Bernard De JUSSIEU
    ROYALE (~ HtSTOIRE DE L'ACADÉMIE 6~ DE M D E 7 7 E BERNARD DE JussiEU Doreur en Médecine des Facultés de Paris & de MontpeUier, Profencur & Démonf- de la Société trateur de Botanique au Jardin royal royale de Londres, des Académies de Berlin Péterfbourg, Upfa!, ie de i'tnftitut de Bologne, &c. naquit à Lyon, t;7 Août Docteur en Médecine, to9p, de Laurent de Junieu, puis Maître en Pharmacie de la même ville, & de Lucie Couun. fous les Ii vint à Paris en t~ t4-, achever (ès études yeux d'Antoine de Juu~eu fon frère Membre de ~'Académieroyale des Sciences, Profeneur de Botanique au Jardin du Roi, & foit comme Botaniste, qui )ouiubit d'une grande réputation, toit comme Médecin. JuiHeu furent-eHes .finies, A peine tes études de M. de un examiner que fon fcèœ entreprit en 710, voyage pour du M. de les Plantes des Pyrénées, de l'Espagne & Portugal il n'avoit Juffieu l'accompagna .dans ce voyage jufqu'alors c'étoit.ia. montré pour la Botanique aucune préférence marquée; des Plantes hors d'un de première fois qui! obfervoit jardin ni aucune de celles Botanique, & jamais il n'a oubtié qu'il il les avoit vit alors ni le nom 6e la pof'tion des iienx où tronv~s. On a vu fbuvent des!hémmes indinérens à tous les à leur. attention, & mon- objets qu'on orri-oitfucceujvement une indolence trant pour toute efpèce d'exercice de,l'efprit, fe que i'on prenoit pour de la cupidité, porter tout-à-coup exclufivement deninés. vers un objet pour lequel ils fembioient dès leurs ie fuivre avec une véritable pan~on & déployer n'eût premiers pas une ardeur & une fagacité qu'on pas la Nature tbupçonnées mais rarement ces hommes que <t D E S S C 1 E N C E s.
    [Show full text]
  • Vernon H. Heywood the Cultural Heritage Of
    Bocconea 28: 161-172 https://doi.org/10.7320/Bocc28.161 Version of Record published online on 22 November 2019 Vernon H. Heywood The cultural heritage of Mediterranean botanic gardens* Abstract Heywood, V. H.: The cultural heritage of Mediterranean botanic gardens. — Bocconea 28: 161- 172. 2019. — ISSN: 1120-4060 printed, 2280-3882 online. Mediterranean botanic gardens represent a rich and diverse cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. They include spectacular landscapes and the plantings include many important intro- ductions of both ornamental and economically important species. The gardens also contain many buildings of great architectural merit, some historic, some modern. Also important are the historic glasshouses and shade houses. Many of these gardens contain important herbarium collections that have served a key role in the preparation of Floras and major botanical libraries containing historical works of great value as well as works of art, sculptures paintings, drawings, and other illustrations and invaluable historic archives. The intangible cultural heritage of these gardens is represented by the impact that they have had the inhabitants of the cities and towns in which they are located and on generations of visitors – students, professionals and the public. With the decline of teaching and research in botany as a university discipline, some of these collections are at risk of dispersal or an even worse fate. In the face of these uncertainties a series of proposals to help safeguard this invaluable heritage is given, including the compilation of an inventory of these his- torically important buildings, libraries, works of art and archives and the use of the latest scanning and imaging techniques so that a visual record is prepared.
    [Show full text]
  • A Translation of the Linnaean Dissertation the Invisible World
    BJHS 49(3): 353–382, September 2016. © British Society for the History of Science 2016 doi:10.1017/S0007087416000637 A translation of the Linnaean dissertation The Invisible World JANIS ANTONOVICS* AND JACOBUS KRITZINGER** Abstract. This study presents the first translation from Latin to English of the Linnaean disser- tation Mundus invisibilis or The Invisible World, submitted by Johannes Roos in 1769. The dissertation highlights Linnaeus’s conviction that infectious diseases could be transmitted by living organisms, too small to be seen. Biographies of Linnaeus often fail to mention that Linnaeus was correct in ascribing the cause of diseases such as measles, smallpox and syphilis to living organisms. The dissertation itself reviews the work of many microscopists, especially on zoophytes and insects, marvelling at the many unexpected discoveries. It then discusses and quotes at length the observations of Münchhausen suggesting that spores from fungi causing plant diseases germinate to produce animalcules, an observation that Linnaeus claimed to have confirmed. The dissertation then draws parallels between these findings and the conta- giousness of many human diseases, and urges further studies of this ‘invisible world’ since, as Roos avers, microscopic organisms may cause more destruction than occurs in all wars. Introduction Here we present the first translation from Latin to English of the Linnaean dissertation published in 1767 by Johannes Roos (1745–1828) entitled Dissertatio academica mundum invisibilem, breviter delineatura and republished by Carl Linnaeus (1707– 1778) several years later in the Amoenitates academicae under the title Mundus invisibi- lis or The Invisible World.1 Roos was a student of Linnaeus, and the dissertation is important in highlighting Linnaeus’s conviction that infectious diseases could be trans- mitted by living organisms.
    [Show full text]
  • Nomenclatural Studies Toward a World List of Diptera Genus-Group Names
    Nomenclatural studies toward a world list of Diptera genus-group names. Part V Pierre-Justin-Marie Macquart Evenhuis, Neal L.; Pape, Thomas; Pont, Adrian C. DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4172.1.1 Publication date: 2016 Document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Document license: CC BY Citation for published version (APA): Evenhuis, N. L., Pape, T., & Pont, A. C. (2016). Nomenclatural studies toward a world list of Diptera genus- group names. Part V: Pierre-Justin-Marie Macquart. Magnolia Press. Zootaxa Vol. 4172 No. 1 https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4172.1.1 Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Zootaxa 4172 (1): 001–211 ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) http://www.mapress.com/j/zt/ Monograph ZOOTAXA Copyright © 2016 Magnolia Press ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) http://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4172.1.1 http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:22128906-32FA-4A80-85D6-10F114E81A7B ZOOTAXA 4172 Nomenclatural Studies Toward a World List of Diptera Genus-Group Names. Part V: Pierre-Justin-Marie Macquart NEAL L. EVENHUIS1, THOMAS PAPE2 & ADRIAN C. PONT3 1 J. Linsley Gressitt Center for Entomological Research, Bishop Museum, 1525 Bernice Street, Honolulu, Hawaii 96817-2704, USA. E-mail: [email protected] 2 Natural History Museum of Denmark, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected] 3Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PW, UK. E-mail: [email protected] Magnolia Press Auckland, New Zealand Accepted by D. Whitmore: 15 Aug. 2016; published: 30 Sept. 2016 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 NEAL L.
    [Show full text]
  • La Botanique Dans Un Contexte Local: Les Jardins De Florence À L’Époque Des Grands-Ducs (1569–1859)
    Gesnerus 74/1 (2017) 5–52 La botanique dans un contexte local: les jardins de Florence à l’époque des grands-ducs (1569–1859) René Sigrist et Sonia Zanier* Summary This article describes the social and institutional conditions of the practice of botany in early modern Florence. This practice started with the study of medical plants in hospital and university contexts, with the passion of the Medicis for gardens, and the interest of the Vallombrosian monks for cryp- togams. During the XVIIIth century, science of plants focused on classifi­ cation (morphology), pharmacology (materia medica) and vegetable phy­ siology, but included also the inventory of Tuscan flora and agronomy. These diverging aims created tensions within the nascent community of botanists, crystal­lizing around the management of gardens and the choice of classifi­ cation ­systems. After 1770, a more scientific approach of botany was made possible by the rise of experimental practices and the development of chem- istry. Yet, a true professionalization of research did not occur before the ­political ­unification of Italy, when the management of institutions and the ­recruitment of botanists were assumed by a central Ministry of education, ­instead of ­being dependent on princely favors and patrician connections. Keywords: botany, Florence, 18th century, gardens, agronomy * Cette recherche, menée pour l’essentiel à l’Institut des Sciences Sociales de l’Université de Lausanne, a été financée par le Fonds National Suisse de la recherche scientifique, subsides no 100.011_137.579 et 100.011_166.345. Les auteurs tiennent à témoigner leur gratitude envers Emma Spary pour ses suggestions bibliographiques et interprétatives, ainsi que pour ses nombreuses remarques.
    [Show full text]
  • The Synoptic Scientific Image in Early Modern Europe*
    | The Synoptic Scientific Image in Early Modern Europe | 159 | The Synoptic Scientific Image in Early Modern Europe * Lorraine DASTON ** T I. Seeing the Impossible the centaur (Fig. 1) or monstrous hybrids like this man-pig (Fig. 2). Rather, I have in mind more subtle Historians of Renaissance and early modern impossibilities, in which the cunning of the artist pan - European art have long remarked on the many ways ders to a certain yearning to see more broadly, in which drawings and paintings gave viewers a deeply, or sharply than located human vision ever glimpse of the impossible. By this I mean not only the could. obvious examples : images of fabulous creatures like This kind of illusion goes well beyond the trompe l’oeil mimesis of the still life, which after all only tricks the eye into thinking that the two-dimensional painting is a three-dimensional arrangement of per - fectly possible flowers, fruits, and other objects. Instead, the illusion stretches human vision to super - human feats of panoramic sweep (Fig. 3) 1, integra - tion of multiple viewpoints (Fig. 4) 2, or simultaneous focusing of foreground and background (Fig. 5) 3. These are not images of impossible objects but rather of impossible seeing. In this article, I would like to explore a kind of impos - sible seeing attempted time and time again in six - teenth- and seventeenth-century natural history, nat - ural philosophy, and even mathematics : synoptic see - ing, or seeing everything all at once, in one glance. The “ everything ” in question could be the patterns of Fig. 1. Centaur, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Monstrorum historia the prevailing winds across the globe or the type of a (Bologna, 1642) : 31.
    [Show full text]