This panel aims at shedding light on a relevant field of the history of science: botany. The study of plants remained generally immersed in collections of items or in the work of apothecaries, or displayed a secondary role in scientific knowledge. Although this picture has never been properly engaged, recent studies have shown the vitality of botanical interest in the history of sciences. This panel spans from the Middle Age to the Nineteenth century botany.
In this panel, we would like to present a few overlooked aspects of the study of plants in their own respect, as we deal with the work with vegetation in different disciplines of knowledge. In the first talk, Marilena Panarelli discusses the case of Albert the Great’s study of plants. In the second talk, Maria Carrion analyses the interconnection between dried gardens and natural philosophy in the Renaissance period. In the third talk, Fabrizio Baldassarri presents a few cases of Seventeenth-century physicians who dealt with plants in order to explain several organs and living activities. In the fourth talk, Norbert Peeters studies Charles Darwin’s shrub-like diagram, which serves him to supplant the ladder-thinking and propose an alternative living model. In the fifth talk, Gabriel Finkelstein presents the decline of Alexander von Humboldt’s method in the study of Nineteenth-century botany as it emerges in the work of Joseph Dalton Hooker.
