Abstract
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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Today, the Royal Garden of Paris is the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle including the Jardin des Plantes.
In 1738, Linnaeus praised the preeminence of the Jussieu brothers making his travel to Paris “inevitable.” Carl Linnaeus to Bernard de Jussieu, Amsterdam, 28 March 1738, Linnaean Society of London, digital publication of Linnaeus’ correspondence, L0244 Alvin digital archive portal, Uppsala University Library (Alvin - Search: Include: [Free text:letter linnaeus Jussieu L0244] [alvin-portal.org]) (accessed 1 October 2023).
Scholars have revised the Eurocentric and diffusionist model of science advocated by Basalla (1967).
In the French version: Foucault 1966, pp. 65, 67–72.
Some studies have asserted the replacement of analogy by analysis in Foucault’s account (Cranston 1994, pp. 82–83).
The flexible subordination of characters in Jussieu’s system replaced their combination, thereby overcoming the impasses experienced in other natural methods.
The Academy’s project triggered comparative methodologies made in connection to other sciences including zoology, chemistry, and mechanics, such as research on the reproduction and generation of plants, and also on the circulation of the sap. The complexity of the enterprise led later to abandonment of the project (Stroup 1990, pp. 71, 90, 124, 145).
Dodart described two complementary ways to study virtues by (analogical) reasoning, coupled with chemical analyses: to know the nature of plants by itself, or the causes (active components that give an effect), and conversely, by the effect observed (implying certain components). The second option, more complex as related to the human body, was less certain (Dodart 1676, pp. 13, 47).
The quick success of Tournefort with the 1694 publication of his Elémens de botanique and, added to it, Histoire des plantes des environs de Paris in 1698 in which he included all properties recorded by diverse authors (including Dioscorides), superseded the Academy’s project of a general history of plants for a while (Stroup 1990, p. 113).
As Stroup stated, in this comparative methodology across two disciplines, namely chemistry and medicine, scientists used analogy as a heuristic tool which opened up a new research path.
The authors commonly cited were Nicolás Monardes (1493–1588), José de Acosta (1540–1600) about the West Indies, Garcia de Orta (c.1500–1568) and Cristobal Acosta (c.1525-c.1594) about the East Indies, and their Latin versions that had been updated and popularized by Carolus Clusius (1526–1609). The books were compilation works that drew upon ancient and European authors, as well as on non-European knowledge such as Indian and Arabic medicine and local traditions of America and Asia.
Guy-Crescent Fagon (1638–1718) was the king’s physician and the Superintendent of the Royal Garden of Paris from 1693 to 1718.
According to Pomet, Caribbean canelle blanche (white cinnamon) was called “white costus,” “corticosus,” and “Winterus bark” in English, as well as costus indicus by some apothecaries who wrongly used it in place of Arabian costus; canelle giroflée (meaning clove-flavored cinnamon) was also called bois de canelle (cinnamon wood) when brought from Madagascar, and cravo de marenhan when brought from Brazil.
Chilli pepper (or pimiento): Capsicum annuum L. Solanaceae; Jamaica pepper (or pimenta, allspice): Pimenta dioica (L.) Mer., Myrtaceae; black pepper: Piper nigrum L., Piperaceae. See Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. https://powo.science.kew.org; (accessed 6 October 2023)
Boerhaave wrote the preface of Botanicon parisiense, which is a catalog of the Parisian flora by the French botanist Sébastien Vaillant (1669–1722), the sous-démonstrateur de l’extérieur des plantes in charge of tutorials at the Royal Garden of Paris at that time. Boerhaave praised the current advancement of botany and classification, but he warned of the risk of mistakes in identifications undertaken in different environmental conditions.
Hortus Cliffortianus was the catalog of the garden, rich in exotic plants, of George Clifford, a wealthy financier and a Director of the Dutch East India Company in Holland.
Antoine de Jussieu: “Mémoire pour la recherche de l’origine de plusieurs drogues tirées des plantes qui nous sont inconnues.” Bibliothèque Centrale du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (hereafter BCMNHN) ms 1140.
Probably writing to the Royal Academy of Sciences, Jussieu emphasized the advantage for France’s colonial trade of the identification of foreign valued drugs, to find the species or substitutes in other countries and colonies.
The essay also provided descriptions of cultivation, diverse foreign traditions, names and preparations, and a botanical drawing.
Coffee plants had first been introduced in Holland. Jussieu could observe the single coffee plant given as a curiosity to the king Louis XIV by the burgomaster of Amsterdam, and sheltered in a hothouse which was a Dutch invention (as he noted). He also consulted travel accounts by French sailors who visited coffee plantations near the port of Mocha, after France had entered the coffee market in Arabia in 1708. In modern botany, the genus of coffee is Coffea (Rubiaceae).
Linnaeus applied the rule in aphorism 284. He illustrated the less practical method of Ray, who also used the genus but grouped species with different names, six in the genus Stoechas (Linnaeus 2003, p.243).
Several naturalists examined the structure of flowers and still speculated on plants having sexual parts like animals; the most remembered works are one by the German botanist Rudolf Cameriarus (1765 − 1721) in 1694, and a discourse on pollination by Sebastien Vaillant in 1717 at the Royal Garden of Paris and published in 1718 which Linnaeus consulted. See Schiebinger (2004, p. 19), Vaillant and Bertrand (2018).
This statement was made at the very early stage of the project of the Royal Academy of Sciences when optimism was abundant. The position was to evolve into a more sober appraisal of the possibilities of chemistry at that point.
Also see Foucault 1966, p. 81.
Foucault 1966, pp. 36, 82.
In comparison, the definition of analogie is “the relation, link [rapport] or proportion between things … [bearing] some relations of resemblance…” (Diderot and d’Alembert 2021, pp. 1, 399).
Foucault 1966, pp. 74–75, 83, 243.
Foucault 1966, pp. 173, 175.
Foucault explained his work as an “archaeology,” a history of the conditions and structure of knowledge in a period of time, and not including the progress of knowledge (1994, p. xxii) and (1966, p. 13). His approach did not examine the “genealogy,” the causes of disruptive changes. See Gutting and Oksala (2022), Sect. 3.2 and Sect. 3.3.
Foucault 1966, pp. 142–143.
Foucault highlighted the function of visible “signatures” in the Renaissance, external signs of internal properties (for example, the walnut’s special relationship to the brain as signified by its similar convolutions), stating that in that period “there is no resemblance without signature” (1966, p. 41). Actually, the doctrine of the signatures was diversely maintained by naturalists; Cesalpino disregarded it already in the 16th century (Atran 1993, p. 224); and for some medical practitioners it was still a part of natural history in the late 17th century, as attested in the correspondence of John Ray (Ray 1848, p. 188).
In Elémens de botanique Tournefort referred to Caspar Bauhin (1560–1624) and Johann Bauhin (1541–1613),who had named the most plants in botany, and he gave the example of a few species of buttercup named in a simple and distinctive way, with the common name Ranunculus equivalent to the genus and the other terms expressing the difference (these authors might have inspired him): Ranunculus nemorosus vel sylvaticus folio rotondo; Ranunculus pratensis erectus acris; Ranunculus phragmites luteus nemorosus (Tournefort 1694, p. 37). When describing his own genera, Tournefort listed most species with the name given by Caspar Bauhin, added new ones, or rejected some as not having the character of the genus as defined by him.
The reviewer added that Tournefort’s travel to the Levant was sponsored by the king Louis XIV “to study Theophrastus and Dioscorides,” identifying the plants discussed by these ancients along with the remedies known to them (Anonymous 1700, p. 76). Thus the wisdom of the ancients was hardly dismissed in 1700.
As an example, Linnaeus supposed the Cornus or dogwood family (including different species) to be divided in three genera. He thought the genus associated with a tree with flowers forming an umbel and having involucres should be the one called Cornus, meaning the one including the useful species with the most known name.
From its origin in 1635, the Royal Garden of Paris was dedicated to medicine, and to practical teaching of pharmacopeia and the cultivation of medicinal plants, for the formation of doctors and apothecaries (the Faculty of Medicine of Paris followed Galenic medicine). The disciplines taught by physicians were botany, chemistry and anatomy, all emerging sciences. In both the royal Garden and royal College, courses were free, open to the public and taught in French (Jaussaud 1998, pp. 2–3). Tournefort’s courses at the two institutions together with his demonstrations of medicinal plants have been posthumously published in Traité de la matière médicale, ou l’Histoire et l’Usage des médicamens [sic] et leur analyse chimique (Tournefort 1717).
Teaching at the Royal garden gradually broadened to natural history and physico-chemical studies. Between 1712 and 1718, while Jussieu’s title changed to include botany, the titles in chemistry and anatomy (Démonstrateurs et Opérateurs pharmaceutiques) similarly evolved: démonstrateur de l’intérieur des plantes et professeur en chimie et pharmacie, démonstrateur-opérateur de l’intérieur des plantes et professeur en anatomie et chirurgie (Laissus et al., 1986, pp. 308, 321–329).
Antoine de Jussieu, “Discours sur le progrès de la Botanique au Jardin Royal de Paris, suivi d’une introduction à la connaissance des plantes, prononcés à l’ouverture des démonstrations publiques, le 31 May 1718,” 1718, BCMNHN, cote 103 980.
Antoine de Jussieu, “Discours sur le progrès de la Botanique…,” 1718, BCMNHN cote 103 980, pp. 14–15.
Antoine de Jussieu, “Discours sur le progrès de la Botanique…,” 1718, BCMNHN cote 103 980, p. 15.
Antoine de Jussieu, “De l’idée que l’on doit avoir de la Botanique et des auteurs qui en ont écrit,” n.d. [1720], BCMNHN ms 1117. According to Laissus (1969), the project of a general history of plants was studied anew at the Royal Academy of Sciences between 1719 and 1738.
Antoine de Jussieu, “De l’idée que l’on doit avoir de la Botanique…,” [1720], BCMNHN ms 1117, fol 20.
Foucault 1966, p.149.
Examples of medical virtues are as follows: emollient, tonic, venomous, diuretic, and demulcent. Qualities are, for example: flavorsome, stinking, aromatic, acidic, mucilaginous, viscous, red, dark (Linnaeus 2003, pp. 300–306).
Linnaeus intended to understand the natural laws that existed in a self-regulated nature for a balanced use of natural resources respectful of God’s design; the “Economy of Nature [was] the very wise distribution of natural beings, founded by the Suzerain creator, [sharing] common ends and… reciprocal functions…” It was published in the dissertation Oeconomia naturae by his disciple Biberg (1749).
Antoine de Jussieu, “Avantages que nous pouvons tirer d’un commerce littéraire avec les botanistes étrangers,” n.d. [ca 1730], BCMNHN ms 3502. In this manuscript, Jussieu detailed accounts received from French physicians in India and in French colonies who corresponded with him.
Antoine de Jussieu, “Avantages que nous pouvons tirer d’un commerce littéraire avec les botanistes étrangers,“ n.d. [ca 1730], BCMNHN ms 3502, fol 96.
For instance, a species of ipecacuanha in Cayenne (French Guiana) had been identified as close to violet by Pierre Barrère (1690–1755), a royal botanist physician in the French colony and correspondent of the Royal Garden of Paris (1741, p. 113).
Jussieu’s course, dictated to students, was edited and published in 1772 under the title Traité des Vertus des Plantes by a former student, Pierre-Louis Gandoger de Foigny (1732–1770), based on three copies dated in 1745, 1749, and 1752 (his own copy) (Jussieu 1772, p. xiv).
In this article Jussieu described an aquatic plant, about which he established the genus Lemma, in the class of Ferns. He presumed that the plant had the same properties as other ferns used in medicine.
See Analogie in Diderot and d’Alembert 2021, pp. 1, 399.
Latin quotation: “Plantae, quae Genere conveniunt, etiam virtute conveniunt; quae Ordine Naturali continentur, etiam virtute propius accedunt…” (Linnaeus 1751, p. 278). The version published in 1775 by Hugh Rose (c1717-1792) is not a word for word translation, also referenced as Rose (1775). Another 18th century version closer to the text by the French botanist François-Alexandre Quesné (1742–1820) gives the meaning of etiam propius accedunt as follows: “Les plantes qui ont du rapport par le Genre, en ont aussi par les vertus; celles qui sont réunies dans le même Ordre naturel, s’approchent encore plus par les vertus…” (Linnaeus 1788, p. 330). Although the Latin may allow ambiguity in translations, the modern translation by Freer fails to convey the full meaning of what Linnaeus referred to as a natural order, in my view more accurately regarding virtues: “Plants that agree in genus also agree in effective properties; those that are included in one natural order also approximate to each other in effective properties;…” (Linnaeus 2003, p. 299).
For example: Bernard de Jussieu to Carl Linnaeus, Paris, 9 October 1737, Linnaean Society of London, Digital publication of Linnaeus’ correspondence, L0203. Alvin digital archive portal, Uppsala University Library. (Alvin - Search: Include: [Free text:Bernard de Jussieu Linnaeus] [alvin-portal.org]. Accessed 1 October 2023). Here Jussieu thanked Linnaeus for his publications sent to him, and requested works by other authors. Also see Carl Linnaeus to Bernard de Jussieu, Stockholm, 10 May 1740, Linnaean Society of London, Digital publication of Linnaeus’ correspondence, L0379. (Alvin digital archive portal, Uppsala University Library. (Alvin - Search: Include: [Free text:Bernard de Jussieu Linnaeus] [alvin-portal.org]. Accessed 1 October 2023). Here Linnaeus acknowledged Bernard de Jussieu as his mentor to whom he owed “more than anybody else.”
Bernard de Jussieu to Artur, Paris, 8 December 1738, Archives Départementales de Charente Maritime A. D. 17 2MI 817–4 J 2180: correspondance Artur. The letter is quoted in Flourens (1857, pp. 86–87).
Jean Prat to Bernard de Jussieu, 4 October 1741, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle – Bibliothèque de Phanérogamie – Correspondance de Bernard de Jussieu – Prat, fol 48. Jussieu recommended Linnaeus’ artificial method from 1740 to his scholars working overseas.
Criticism made of Linnaeus’s work pointed to the limitation of the sexual system in medicine, due to the lack of correspondence with therapeutic properties of plants. In France in 1779, the physician Félix Vicq d’Azyr (1748–1794), who read Linnaeus’s eulogy at the Société Royale de Médecine, noted some flaws of his reputed and clever classification, albeit more distant from nature than that of Tournefort. Furthermore, his 1749 Materia medica, “despite commendable efforts to substitute Indigenous plants in the place of foreign ones, […was] barely worthy of his author” (Anonymous 1780, p. 35). In the same way, in Great Britain, the physician William Cullen (1710–1790) stressed the limitation of Linnaeus’s system when applied in medicine, in particular the use of “sensible qualities” (taste, scent, color) for the determination of plant virtues by analogy, given their great diversities, which were difficult to categorize, and the many exceptions observed in the materia medica (1789, pp. 141–142).
The example of the genus Urtica (nettle) described by Müller-Wille and Charmantier could illustrate this point (2012, p. 8). Linnaeus started the study of this genus complex to establish, without noting any botanical character, simply mentioning Acmella, an American plant attributed with the same medicinal properties. I suggest that Linnaeus waited for more information about Acmella and other plants with the same properties to define the generic characters of Urtica, which he had left blank on his paper.
Foucault seemingly omitted other facts in natural history in the 18th century to reinforce the analytic ideology happening first in botany and to emphasize changes, while in other periods resemblance and affinities were established by analogy to order things (without abstractive analysis of resemblance). I suggest, analogy was also directly used in systematics in zoology, where Linnaeus categorized animals based on the internal structure and the function of organs. This is comparable to the use of internal criteria and of “Analogy” constituting a new episteme from the late 18th century to Foucault (1994, pp. 218, 237, 252) (1966, pp. 230, 250, 264). As an illustration, the Cetacea (Cete) were grouped with the Mammals, not the Fish, firstly from the function of suckling their young as a “characteristic mark” (Linnaeus 1792, p. 355).
In Philosophia botanica and Vires plantarum, Linnaeus provided examples of genera that agree in a natural order and in virtues. For instance, Malva, Althaea, Alcea and Gossypium (all in the Monadelphia class in the sexual system,along with Hibiscus and Geranium), are also gathered in the Columniferae (natural order 34), and all four are mucilaginous, lubricating, against acrimony. And he listed a dozen natural orders with their general virtues, as well as a few classes of the sexual system that were accurate in virtues: for instance, the Polyandria class (poppy, aconite or wolfsbane, waterlily, hellebore, ranunculus…) is mainly poisonous (Linnaeus 1751, pp 278, 281; Linnaeus 1775, pp. 416, 418; Linnaeus 2003, pp. 299, 303).
In addition to the English version by Hugh Rose (Linnaeus 1775), a word for word and more complete French translation was made in 1793 by the physician Jean-Marie Caillau (1765–1820): “Propriétés des plantes, traduction des aménités académiques de C. Linnéus, par J.M. Caillau, médecin à Bordeaux, an 2” (1793–1794), BCMNHN ms 661. Caillau was a member of the Société de médecine de Bordeaux.
Among others, the Gramina (Graminae) in the natural Orders 13 and 14, which are under Triandria, Digynia in the sexual system, and a few other genera (Anthoxanthon, Juncus, Zizania…), produce floury seeds which are edible; the Umbellatae (Umbelliferae) under the natural Order 22, are aromatic, carminative in dry soils, poisonous in humid places; the natural Order 57, under Tetradynamia, is watery and acrid, and antiscorbutic (Hasselquist 1749, pp. 404, 407, 410); (Linnaeus 1775, pp 411, 413, 418); (J. M Caillau: Propriétés des plantes, BCMNHN ms 661, part X, XIV, XX).
Caillau’s translation is: “Toutes les plantes qui conviennent par le Genre, possèdent les mêmes vertus; celles qui sont dans le même ordre naturel se rapprochent par leurs vertus; celles enfin qui ont une affinité botanique dans une classe naturelle jouissent aussi en quelque façon des mêmes vertus” (J. M Caillau: “Propriétés des plantes ...”, BCMNHN ms 661, part V).
Linnaeus 1775, p. 410; J. M Caillau: “Propriétés des plantes…,” BCMNHN ms 661, part VI.
Linnaeus 1775, p. 411; J. M Caillau: “Propriétés des plantes…,” BCMNHN ms 661, part VIII.
This example comes from an essay published ten years earlier by the Royal Academy of Sciences on Polygala vulgaris written by Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1739, pp. 135–139).
J. M Caillau: “Propriétés des plantes…,” BCMNHN ms 661, parts VIII, IX.
Rouelle, Guillaume-François (n.d), Traité de pharmacie (Bibliothèque de pharmacie ms 21 - Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire-Santé, Paris, http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/medica/cote?pharma_ms000021). Rouelle was appointed professor at the Royal Garden of Paris in 1742 and a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1744.
Marshmallow is Althaea officinalis L. in pharmaceutical botany (Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, https://powo.science.kew.org, accessed 5 October 2023).
For example, Theophrastus had recognised different kinds of “all-heal,” having different forms with same virtues (against snake bites, epilepsy, sores), and the opposite for black and white hellebore said to have ressemblant forms and different virtues, mainly purgative or poisonous (Theophrastus 1916, pp. 265, 269); Tournefort identified different species of all-heal (the most common one used against throat diseases) in a single genus Brunella – named Prunella by Linnaeus; and he separated the many species of hellebore in two genera, black hellebore Helleborus, and white hellebore Veratrum (Tournefort 1694, pp. 151, 235–237). In his natural method, Linnaeus separated Veratrum, listed in the Vagae (indeterminate), while hellebore (purgative) was in the Polyandria, mainly poisonous (Linnaeus 2003, pp. 49, 301).
I use the French expression la petite histoire to describe details of the conditions of research practice in the history of science, comparable to the “materials and methods” in science, but going beyond. In that sense, it differs from Foucault’s archaeology, and from microhistory implying more cultural and social aspects (not a primary focus in this study). Together with evidence of practical and environmental constraints, the prevailing sense of confusion and of a joint struggle fostering global cooperation transcending competition emerged from primary sources (resonating with my personal experience, as a researcher in botany, of the complexity of plant names and classification in archival documents). As part of the history of science, “la petite histoire” deserves attention.
References
Allen, Garland E. 1975. Life science in the twentieth century. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Anon. 1700. Diverses observations botaniques. Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences… avec les mémoires… tirés des registres de cette Académie. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3502d/f76.item.
Anon. 1718. Sur les sistemes de botanique. Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences… avec les mémoires… tirés des registres de cette Académie. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3519v/f55.item.r=sistemes.
Anon. 1780. Eloge de M. Linnaeus. Histoire de la Société Royale de Médecine… avec les mémoires… tirés des registres de cette Société. http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/medica/cote?05749x1780.
Atran, Scott. 1987. Origin of the species and genus concepts: An anthropological perspective. Journal of the History of Biology 20(2): 195–279. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138437.
Atran, Scott. 1993. Cognitive foundations of natural knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barrère, Pierre. 1741. Essai sur l’histoire naturelle de la France equinoxiale. Paris: Piget. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96165538.
Bartha, Paul. 2022. Analogy and analogical reasoning. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, (Summer 2022 edition), ed. E. N. Zalta. Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy.
Basalla, George. 1967. The spread of western science. Science 156: 611–622.
Biberg, Isaac. 1749. Oeconomia naturae. Doctoral dissertation with Carl Linnaeus, supervisor, Uppsala University. The Linnean Society of London. https://linnean-online.org/120097/#?s=0&cv=0
Bleichmar, Daniela. 2005. Books, bodies, and fields. In Colonial botany: Science, commerce & politics in the early modern world, ed. L. Schiebinger, and C. Swan. 83–99. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Brockway, Lucille. 1979. Science and colonial expansion: The role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens. New York: Academic Press.
Cambiaire, Elisabeth (de). 2016. Enlightened alliance. Nature, botany and France’s expansion to the East Indies: The colonization of the Mascarenes (1665–1775). PhD thesis, Humanities, UNSW, Sydney, https://doi.org/10.26190/0678-yp06.
Cassirer, Ernst. 1979. The philosophy of the enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cook, Harold J. 2007. Matters of exchange: Commerce, medicine, and science in the Dutch golden age. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Cook, Alexandra. 2010. Linnaeus and Chinese plants: A test of the linguistic imperialism thesis. Notes and Records of the Royal Society 64: 121–138. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2009.0051.
Cranston, Maurice. 1994. Michel Foucault. In Michel Foucault, ed. B. Smart. 76–89. London & New York: Routledge.
Cullen, William. 1789. A treatise of the materia medica. Edinburgh: Elliot. https://archive.org/details/treatiseofmateri01cull.
Curry, Helen Anne, Nicholas Jardine, James Andrew Secord, and Emma C. Spary. 2018. Worlds of natural history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daston, Lorraine. 2013. Observation and enlightenment. In Scholars in action (2 vols), ed. A. Holenstein, H. Steinke, and M. Stuber. 657–677. Leiden: Brill.
Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. 2001. Wonders and the order of nature: 1150–1750. New York: Zone Books.
Diderot, Denis, and Jean le Rond d’Alembert. 2021. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, etc. 1751–1772. Chicago: University of Chicago ARTFL Encyclopédie Project. http://encyclopedie.uchicago.edu/.
Dietz, Bettina. 2013. Natural history as compilation. Travel accounts in the epistemic process of an empirical discipline. In Scholars in action (2 vols) ed, ed. A. Holenstein, H. Steinke, and M. Stuber. 703–719. Leiden: Brill.
Dodart, Denis. 1676. Mémoires pour servir à l’ histoire des plantes. Paris: Académie Royale des Sciences. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5773311c.texteImage.
Drayton, Richard. 2000. Nature’s government. Science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement’ of the world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Duhamel du Monceau, Henri-Louis. 1739. Sur l’usage de la plante, nommée par C. Bauhin Polygala vulgaris… Histoire de l’Académie des sciences… avec les mémoires… tirés des registres de cette Académie. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3536g/f235.image.
Duhamel du Monceau, Henri-Louis. 1758. Dissertation sur les méthodes de botanique. In La physique des arbres. Paris: H.L. Guerin & L.F Delatour. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.106081.
Findlen, Paula. 2003. Natural history. In The Cambridge history of science, ed. K. Park, and L. Daston. vol. 3. 435–468. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fisher, Amy A. 2018. Inductive reasoning in the context of discovery: Analogy as an experimental stratagem in the history and philosophy of science. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 69: 23–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2018.01.008.
Flourens, Pierre. 1857. Recueil des éloges historiques lus dans les séances publiques de l’Académie des Sciences. Paris: Garnier.
Foucault, Michel. 1966. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard.
Foucault, Michel. 1994. The order of things. New York: Vintage Books Editions (Random House, Inc.)
Gascoigne, John. 2009. The Royal Society, natural history and the peoples of the ‘new world(s),’ 1660–1800. British Journal for the History of Science 42: 539–562. http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0007087409002210.
Gillipsie, Charles C. 1980. Science and polity in France at the end of the old regime. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gingras, Yves, and Alexandre Guay. 2011. The uses of analogies in sevententh and eighteenth century science. Perspectives on Science 19: 154–191. https://doi.org/10.1162/POSC_a_00035.
Guédès, Michel. 1973. Duchesne, Buisson, Durande, early followers of the natural method of de Jussieus. Taxon 22(2/3): 211–219. https://doi.org/10.2307/1218125.
Gutting, Garry, and Johanna Oksala. 2022. Michel Foucault. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2022 edition), ed. E. N. Zalta. Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/foucault.
Hasselquist, Frederic. 1749. “Vires plantarum”, Doctoral dissertation with Carl Linnaeus, supervisor, Uppsala: [s.n.]. Uppsala University. Open access in DiVA, id: diva2:1378484.
Holmes, Frederic Lawrence. 2003. Chemistry in the Académie royale des sciences. Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 34: 41–68. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsps.2003.34.1.41.
Jaussaud, Philippe. 1998. Pharmaciens au muséum: Chimistes et naturalistes. Paris: Publications scientifiques du Muséum. http://books.openedition.org/mnhn/1828.
Jussieu, Antoine (de). 1713. Histoire du café. Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences… avec les mémoires… tirés des registres de cette Académie. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3516x/f391.image.
Jussieu, Antoine (de). 1718. Discours sur le progrès de la botanique au Jardin Royal de Paris, suivi d’une introduction à la connaissance des plantes. Paris: Etienne Ganeau. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1422215f
Jussieu, Antoine (de). 1729. Recherches d’un spécifique contre la dysenterie. Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences…avec les mémoires... tirés des registres de cette Académie. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3527h/f162
Jussieu, Antoine (de). Undated [1772]. Traité des vertus des plantes, ouvrage posthume, ed. Pierre-Louis Gandoger de Foigny. Paris: Merlin. https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/medica/cote?pharma_018095.
Jussieu, Antoine-Laurent (de). 1790. Mémoire sur les rapports existans entre les caractères des plantes, et leurs vertus. Histoire de la Société royale de médecine… avec les mémoires de médecine et de physique médicale… Année 1786. https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/medica/resultats/index.php?do=feuilletage-resultats&cote=05749&dico=perio&chapitre=Jussieu&numero-resultat=86.
Jussieu, Bernard (de). 1740. Histoire du Lemma. Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences… avec les mémoires… tirés des registres de cette Académie https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5510983v/f405.
Kochhar, Rajesh. 2012. Early modern natural history: Contributions from the Americas and India. Journal of Biosciences 37: 937–947. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-012-9272-9.
Koerner, Lisbet. 1999. Linnaeus: Nature and nation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Laissus, Yves. 1969. Les plantes du Roi. Note sur un ouvrage de botanique préparé au XVIIIe siècle par l’Académie Royale des Sciences. Revue d’Histoire des Sciences et de Leurs Applications 22: 193–236. https://doi.org/10.3406/rhs.1969.2592.
Laissus, Yves, and Jean Torlais. 1986. Le jardin du roi et le collège royal dans l’enseignement des sciences au XVIIIè siècle. Paris: Hermann éditeurs des sciences et des arts.
Larson, James L. 1967. Linnæus and the natural method. Isis 58: 304–320. https://doi.org/10.1086/350265.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. La science en action. Introduction à la sociologie des sciences. Paris: La Découverte/Poche - Sciences humaines et sociales.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1737a. Critica botanica. Leiden: Conrad Wishoff. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/72891.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1737b. John L. Heller trans., Linnaeus’s Hortus Cliffortianus. Taxon 17 (6):663–719. https://doi.org/10.2307/1218012.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1749. Materia medica. Vol. 1. Stockholm: Laurent Salvius. https://linnean-online.org/106354.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1751. Philosophia botanica. Stockholm: Godofr. Kiesewetter. https://bibdigital.rjb.csic.es/en/records/item/11591-philosophia-botanica.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1766. Systema naturae. vol. 1 Stockholm: Laurent Salvius. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.68927.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1775. The elements of botany… a translation of the philosophia botanica and other treatises… Hugh Rose, trans. London: T. Cadell. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.16542.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1788. Philosophie botanique de Charles Linné, François-Alexandre Quesné, trans. Paris: Cailleau. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.7071.
Linnaeus, Carl. 1792. The animal kingdom, or zoological system, of the celebrated Sir Charles Linnaeus… Johann Gmelin and Robert Kerr, trans. Edinburgh: A. Strahan et al. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.57940.
Linnaeus, Carl. 2003. Linnaeus’ philosophia botanica. Stephen Freer, trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacLeod, Roy. 2000. Introduction. Nature and empire: Science and the colonial enterprise. Osiris 15: 1–13.
McCabe, Ina Baghdiantz. 2008. Orientalism in early modern France: Eurasian trade, exoticism and the ancien regime. Oxford & London: Berg Publishers.
McClellan, III, James E., and François Regourd. 2011. The colonial machine. French science and overseas expansion in the old regime. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.
Monardes, Nicolas. 1574. De simplicibus medicamentis ex occidentali India delatis quorum in medicina usus est, Carolus Clusius trans. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.8756.
Morton, Alan G. 1981. History of botanical science. An account of the development of botany from ancient times to the present day. London: Academic Press.
Müller-Wille, Staffan. 2003a. Nature as a marketplace: The political economy of Linnaean botany. History of Political Economy 35: 154–172.
Müller-Wille, Staffan. 2003b. Joining Lapland and the Topinambes in florishing Holland: Center and periphery in Linnean botany. Science in Context 16(4): 461–488. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889703000929.
Müller-Wille, Staffan. 2007. Collection and collation: Theory and practice of Linnaean botany. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38(3): 541–562. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2007.06.010.
Müller-Wille, Staffan, and Isabelle Charmantier. 2012. Natural history and information overload: The case of Linnaeus. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43(1): 4–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.10.021.
Müller-Wille, Staffan. 2013. Systems and how Linnaeus looked at them in retrospect. Annals of Science 70(3): 305–317. https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2013.783109.
Pluchon, Pierre. 1991. Histoire de la colonisation française. Paris: Fayard
Plumier, Charles. 1693. Description des plantes de l’Amérique, avec leurs figures. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb31124663m.
Pomet, Pierre. 1694. Histoire générale des drogues. Paris: J.B. Loyson, A. Pillon and E. Ducastin. https://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histmed/medica/cote?pharma_000056.
Ratcliff, Marc. 2018. Fictitious empiricism, material experiments. Conditions for thinking the enlightenment “Issue of Empiricism.” In What does it mean to be an Empiricist?, ed. S. Bodenmann and A.L. Rey. Vol. 331: Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69860-1_3
Ray, John. 1695. Account of a book. Philosophical Transactions (1683–1775), http://www.jstor.org/stable/102311.
Ray, John. 1848. The correspondence of John Ray. ed. Edwin Lankester. London: The Ray Society. https://archive.org/details/correspondenceof00rayjiala
Scharf, Sara. 2009. Identification keys, the natural method, and the development of plant identification manuals. Journal of the History of Biology 42: 73–117. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-008-9161-0.
Schiebinger, Londa L. 2004. Nature’s body. Gender in the making of modern science. New Brunswick - New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Skott, Christina. 2013. ‘Ask about everything!’ Clas Fredrik Hornstedt in Java, 1783-4. In Intercultural exchange in Southeast Asia - History and society in the early modern world, ed. T. Alberts and D.R.M. Irving, 161–202. London. New York: I.B. Tauris.
Sloane, Hans. 1686. A description of the pimienta or Jamaica pepper-tree, and of the tree that bears the Cortex winteranus. Philosophical Transactions (1683–1775). http://www.jstor.org/stable/101914.
Sloane, Hans. 1696. Catalogus plantarum quae in insula Jamaica Sponte proveniunt (etc.) adjectis aliis quae in insulis Maderae, Barbados, Nieves et sancti christophori nascuntur. London: Brown. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.694.
Sörlin, Sverker. 2000. Ordering the world for Europe: Science as intelligence and information as seen from the northern periphery. Osiris 15: 51–69.
Spary, Emma C. 2000. Utopia’s garden. French natural history from old regime to revolution. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Spary, Emma C. 2003. ‘Peaches which the patriarchs lacked:’ Natural history, natural resources, and the natural economy in France. History of Political Economy 35: 14–41. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-35-Suppl_1-14.
Spary, Emma C. 2005. Pierre Pomet’s parisian cabinet: Revisiting the invisible and the visible in early modern collections. In From private to public: Natural collections and museums, ed. M. Beretta. 59–80. Sagamore Beach: Watson Publishing.
Stearns, Raymond P. 1970. Science in the British colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Stevens, Peter F. 1994. The development of biological systematics: Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, nature, and the natural system. New York: Columbia University Press.
Strasser, Bruno J. 2012. Collecting nature: Practices, styles, and narratives. Osiris 27: 303–340. https://doi.org/10.1086/667832.
Stroup, Alice. 1990. A company of scientists: Botany, patronage, and community at the 17th century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences. Berkeley: University California Press.
Theophrastus. 1916. Enquiry into plants and minor works on odours and weather signs. Sir Arthur Hort trans. Vol. 2. London: W. Heinemann. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.24769.
Tournefort, Joseph Pitton (de). 1694. Elémens de botanique ou méthode pour connoitre les plantes. Paris: Imprimerie Royale. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8454361d/f31.item
Tournefort, Joseph Pitton (de). ed. 1717. Traité de la matière médicale. Paris: L. d’Houry. https://archive.org/details/b33025435_0001/page.
Vaillant, Sébastien. 1727. Botanicon parisiense. Leiden & Amsterdam: J. & H. Verbeek & B. Lakeman. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.738.
Vaillant, Sebastien, and Aliénor Bertrand. Discours sur la structure des fleurs, leurs différences et l’usage de leurs parties. Cahiers Philosophiques 153 (2): 79–81. https://doi.org/10.3917/caph1.153.0079.
Winterbottom, Anna. 2009. Producing and using the historical relation of Ceylon: Robert Knox, the East India Company and the Royal Society. British Journal for the History of Science 42: 515–538. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087409002209.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
The author has no interests to declare.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
de Cambiaire, E. “From the Known to the Unknown:” Nature’s Diversity, Materia Medica, and Analogy in 18th Century Botany, Through the Work of Tournefort, the Jussieu Brothers, and Linnaeus. J Hist Biol 56, 635–672 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09741-9
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-023-09741-9