Epistemic practices and plant classification in premodern European botanical knowledge: an interdisciplinary treatment

Abstract

"This volume aims to uncover the diverse approach to plants in the Renaissance and seventeenth century that paved the way for a definition of botany as a fully-fledged discipline. Its scope expands beyond the natural historical interest in collections and the fabrication of materia medica: moving from Varchi, Matthioli and Bauhin to Locke, Pinelli, and Linnaeus, among others, the contributions collected here connect practical and theoretical features, dealing with the challenges that characterized any involvement with plants. The authors focus on the linguistic shortcomings, problems in authenticating specimens, and efforts to establish new botanical geographies to favour trades, as well as the pursuits of new methodologies, artisanal technologies, and chymical experiments with plants. Botany thus emerges as a suitable discipline to disclose the complexities and challenges of early modern science in general."-- Publisher's website.

Contents

The Epistemic Lightness of Botany: An Introduction / Fabrizio Baldassarri -- Plant Naming and Classification: Translation, Trade Networks and Geographies of Knowledge. Naming Trees in 15th-Century Herbals: Translations and Bilingualism in Botanical Vocabulary / Alice Laforet ; The Reception of Dioscoride's De materia medica in a Sixteenth-Century Latin-Italian Glossary: Benedetto Varchi's Inventario d'herbe (ca. 1540) : Text and Translation / Dario Brancato and Iolanda Ventura ; Botany and Diplomacy: Pietro Andrea Mattioli and his Flemish Correspondents in Constantinople (1557-1568) / Luca Ciancio ; Peregrine Empires: The 'Fruitful Neighbourhood and Great Trade' of Leonhart Rauwolf's Plant Collecting / María M. Carrión and Violeta Ruiz Espigares ; Biblio-Botany in pre-Linnaean Sweden: user Traces in Arvid Månsson's Örta-book / Anna Svensson -- Classification and Method: Epistemic Practices, Material, Visual and Technological Knowledge. Shapes of Knowledge: Images and the Identification of Exotic Plants by European Naturalists in the Sixteenth Century / Florike Egmond ; Patterns of Growth: Hieronymus Bock's Treatment of Plants and his Theophrastian Classification / Brenton Wells ; On the Path to Classification: The "Method" for Grouping Plants in the Late Renaissance (1570-1600) / Philippe Selosse ; Experiments with Resurrections: The Palingenesis of Plants in Early Modern England / Antonio Clericuzio ; Between Aristotelianism and Artisanal Technology: Pinelli's Botanical Studies / Stefano Gulizia.