This article examines how the apologetics of the abbé Noël-Antoine Pluche (1688–1761) impacted his presentation of botanical knowledge in the ten dialogues published in the first and second volumes ...of his natural history book
Le Spectacle de la nature
(1732–1750). Pluche popularized a conception of the physical world where plants are reducible to inert mechanisms, devoid of life and agency. First, I examine the various intertwinements of science and theology in his depiction of plant anatomy, by investigating his use of mechanical analogies, his adoption of the sap circulation hypothesis, and his application of the pre-existence theory to account for both generation and vegetative multiplication. I then compare Pluche's understanding of plant growth with those offered by contemporaneous gardening treatises, demonstrating that part of Pluche's project included opposing the materialist and animist undertones found in these gardening treatises that emphasized vegetal life, self-organization, and sap agency.
This article explores how empirical observations of trees' asexual reproduction challenged conceptions of plant individuality in eighteenth-century naturalist texts. The plant's ability to grow a ...whole individual from a cutting is the starting point of a dialogue between a Traveler and a Lady in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's earliest publication. Rejecting the mechanistic model of the plant as a machine, the Traveler presents a fictional narrative echoing his vitalist and providential understanding of nature. After contextualizing the debate on vegetal uniqueness via analyses of Vallemont, Pluche, and Fontenelle, this study shows that Saint-Pierre temporarily reinvests the libertine imaginary of animate plants as a means of revivifying the vegetable kingdom.
Benharrech reviews Colonialism and Slavery in Performance: Theatre and the Eighteenth-Century French Caribbean edited by Jeffrey M. Leichman and Karine Bénac-Giroux.
While 18th-century French scientific institutions such as the Parisian academies and the Jardin du Roi did not accept women among their ranks, the few contributions that women made to Old Regime ...science have been either forgotten, erased, or attributed to their male counterparts. Mme Dugage de Pommereul's life and work (1733–1782) are a prime example. Although she gained some recognition from 1778–1780, she sank into oblivion in the 19th century when all mentions of her were gradually obliterated. She worked under the supervision of A. Thouin in 1778 and assisted her former professor A.-L. de Jussieu (1748–1836) who entrusted her with the preparation of a study of grasses and a contribution to the Encyclopédie méthodique. Joseph Dombey (1742–1794) dedicated the short-lived Dugagesia margaritifera to her. Ortega Gomez (1741–1818) awarded her a degree from the Royal Academy of Medicine in Madrid, and Linnaeus the Younger named the Pommereulla cornucopiæ in her honor. Piecing together biographical elements with archival evidence, this study provides for the first time a narrative of her life and botanical practice.
Dans le Nouveau Traité de physique (1742), ouvrage méconnu du médecin François-Joseph Hunauld (1701-1742), l’auteur croise le savoir scientifique avec le merveilleux de la fiction. Inspiré par les ...Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes de Fontenelle et du Spectacle de la Nature de Pluche, Hunauld présente un voyage imaginaire lors duquel des figures allégoriques et mythologiques découvrent au narrateur, un jeune étudiant en médecine, la machine du monde, depuis les règnes du minéral et du végétal jusqu’au corps humain. L’auteur sollicite les ressources discursives du mécanisme cartésien mais, conscient des limites de ce système explicatif à donner des images sensibles du vivant, il les rehausse d’images merveilleuses qu’il emprunte à l’imaginaire analogique et alchimique. Il est notable que les images les plus aptes, selon lui, à représenter le vivant relèvent du règne végétal. La plante serait alors une anti-machine.
This study presents for the first time a partial translation of Clémence Lortet’s manuscript entitled “Promenades Botaniques” (Botanical Walks), which had remained unpublished and little known until ...recently. Clémence Lortet, born Richard (1772–1835), was a student and friend of physician and botanist Jean- Emmanuel Gilibert. Although she shunned publicity for most of her life, Lortet was a key figure of botany in the Lyons area in the period 1808–1835. While all her works were published under the names of her collaborators (Gilibert and others), she was instrumental in the founding of the Lyons branch of the Linnean Society. A staunch defender of the newly born French Republic, and closely connected with Freemasonry, she helped botanist G. Battista Balbis safely relocate from Italy to France. She also prompted collaborations and exchanges among botanists based in the Lyons area. Her Botanical Walks provided readers with a floristic guide. Lortet also filled her itineraries with personal memories, lyrical expressions and esthetic appreciations of various sceneries, wherein she emulates Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker (1782). Finally, her text can also be read as a moving homage paid to the memory of Gilibert, her teacher and friend, who had first recommended botany to her as a salutary diversion against the somber impressions left by the French Terror. The following analysis aims to shed light on the various cultural, botanical and literary elements in Lortet’s sole attempt to craft an original instance of personal writing out of an inventory of the flora of Lyons.
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