Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
The mechanical life of plants: Descartes on botany
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Baldassarri, Fabrizio |
| Copyright Year | 2019 |
| Description | 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. |
| Related Links | http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a64e/dafb079652993433951ad63277de3b5da835.pdf https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/44FD912FBCA79F91176BD509E07496D7/S000708741800095Xa.pdf/div-class-title-the-mechanical-life-of-plants-descartes-on-botany-div.pdf |
| Ending Page | 63 |
| Page Count | 23 |
| Starting Page | 41 |
| ISSN | 00070874 |
| e-ISSN | 1474001X |
| DOI | 10.1017/s000708741800095x |
| Journal | The British Journal for the History of Science |
| Issue Number | 1 |
| Volume Number | 52 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) |
| Publisher Date | 2019-01-30 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | The British Journal for the History of Science Natural Philosophy |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
| Subject | History History and Philosophy of Science |
