VegSciLif · The Emergence of a Science of Vegetation in Early Modern Natural Philosophy and the Sciences of Life: From Cesalpino to Malpighi
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-01-15 → 2024-01-14
- EU contribution
- €269,003
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
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Results in brief
The Emergence of a Science of Vegetation in Early Modern Natural Philosophy and the Sciences of Life: From Cesalpino to Malpighi
In the 3 years of this Marie Sklodovska Curie project, the researcher has explored several aspects of the life of plants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He has worked on the changes from the Aristotelian framework in botanical studies to the mechanistic-chymical-nominalist framework, that is, to the early modern philosophical approach to nature. Accordingly, plants are a meaningful part of early modern science. The research has focused on the Aristotelian study of plants (especially in Cesalpino), on the medical analogy between plants and animals, as a way to understand plant anatomy, on the study of plants within a mechanical or chymical framework, and on the focus on monstrous plants and on the development of a philosophy of plants. During this project, the researcher has spent 2 years at Indiana University, Bloomington, with a secondment at Leiden University (where an early modern botanical garden was established) and one year at Ca' Foscari (with 2 secondments at Paris and Cambridge). The researcher has been working on plants in the medical and botanical contexts (Paris, Leiden, UK, and Italy - especially Padua, Bologna and Pisa), but he has especially focused on the natural philosophical framework scholars developed to encompass botanical studies and achieve a modern science of plants. The overall objectives of my project are: showing the complexities of studying plants in pre-modern medicine (the issue of the animal-plant analogies), in pre-modern philosophy (the development of a philosophy of plants), and in pre-modern science (the development of a modern botany). The results of this research have been a number of articles published in journals and in volumes, and 2 monographs. In conclusion, the project has been fully achieved, especially by demonstrating the importance of plant studies in early modern natural philosophy, and of plant humanities in general.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This three-year research project aims to explore the emergence of a philosophy and science of plants in the century that goes from Cesalpino’s De plantis (1583) to Malpighi’s Anatome plantarum (1679), which influenced the development of a new science of life. Although understudied, a new approach to the study of plants and vegetation surfaces in this period, bridging the gulf between natural historical efforts to classify plants and natural philosophical investigations of vegetal bodies. By means of overlooked sources, the main objective of this project is to reconstruct these philosophical examinations through 4 sub-objectives: (1) the appropriation and reinterpretation of Aristotelian biology in botany; (2) the development of alchemical and mechanical frameworks to understand vegetal life; (3) the definition of plants as a crucial subject to reinterpret the physiology of living bodies; (4) the collecting attraction to plants diversity, and monstrosity, which preludes to the philosophical perception of interconnected systems of life, forestalling biodiversity. While new scholarly attention has been recently devoted to the philosophical study of plants in the early modern period, the result of this research project will be a broad investigation into the concept of vegetation and vegetal life that paved the way to eighteenth century morphologies and systems of nature. This project will result into several articles and a scholarly book for historians of knowledge.Dr Baldassarri has international experience in Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Israel, and has focused on the Cartesian understanding of plants and the mechanization of the vegetative soul. The development of this project will profoundly impact his career: training provided by Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and Bloomington Indiana University will help Baldassarri acquire new academic skills and boost his knowledge in connecting early modern science to contemporary biology and vegetal philosophy.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA · VeneziaCoordinatorItaly
- THE TRUSTEES OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY · BloomingtonUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union