Baldassarri Fabrizio
*Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Bucharest,1 Dimitrie Brandza Str. 060102,Bucharest,Romania. Email:
Br J Hist Sci. 2019 Mar;52(1):41-63. doi: 10.1017/S000708741800095X. Epub 2019 Jan 30.
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 the Excerpta 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.
在本文中，我认为法国哲学家勒内·笛卡尔对植物研究的参与程度远比人们普遍认为的要高。我们知道，他在其自然哲学中并未纳入植物学部分，而且有时他会区分植物与生命体。此外，他的立场还表现为在方法上对植物名录的摒弃。然而，本文揭示了笛卡尔自1637年末开始的自然主义探索中的一个显著趋势，即他对植物的兴趣日益浓厚。我通过研究笛卡尔的书信以及《解剖学摘录》中的若干笔记来探究这一转变。基于直接观察，笛卡尔关于植物生长的研究为自然哲学对植物领域的研究方法做出了虽不重大但也不可忽视的贡献。这直接关系到他解释生命体本质的毕生抱负，也推动了植物学作为一门现代科学的兴起。
