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Observing
Nature: studying the 16th-century botanist Carolus
Clusius and his European circle of correspondents
Abstract
Carolus Clusius (1525-1609),
was one of the most important European botanists in the
centuries before Linnaeus, and perhaps the most
famous botanist of the 16th century – an age
which has become known among historians of the natural
sciences as the Botanical Renaissance. Knowledge
of nature changed dramatically during Clusius’ lifetime.
The voyages of discovery led to the introduction of many
exotic plants in Europe, which would have enormous
effects on food, medicine, and Europe’s physical
appearance. Their very existence demonstrated the
incompleteness of the knowledge of natural historians
from Antiquity, triggering new investigations both in
and outside Europe. From the 1530s the fashion of nature
swept through Europe. Gardening and the growing of rare
plants became a passion as well as a prestigious
pursuit. The first botanical gardens were created in
Europe (Pisa, Padua, Bologna, Leipzig, Leiden) and the
first illustrated botanical surveys (Fuchs, Brunfels,
Dodonaeus, Lobel, Clusius) were published, presenting
new ways of describing and ordering nature.
Clusius played an important role in
all of these developments. His European stature rested
on three pillars: his travel and investigations in
several European countries; his publications and
innovative approach to botany; and his wide-flung
network of correspondents. Clusius has left one of the
most fascinating, massive and wide-ranging
correspondences of all sixteenth-century naturalists.
This correspondence – which has been digitized and is
freely available (since 2005) to everyone via internet
on the site mentioned above – is held at Leiden
University Library and forms one of the main sources of
the Clusius Project (2005-2009).
In the first part of my presentation
I will explain the background, aims and plans of the
Clusius Project, which in terms of approach belongs to
the ‘cultural history of science’. Our central thesis is
that exchanges in the network of which Clusius
was the central figure contributed in a major way to the
creation of a European community of expert naturalists
in the course of sixteenth century, and that this
community played a crucial part in the development of a
new discipline or field of expertise. The second part of
my presentation will address the issues of observation
and experiment in Clusius’ circle, and the possible
implications for the history of science and the
scientific revolution.
En
col·laboració amb la Residčncia d'Investigadors (CSIC).
Lloc:
IEC |
