Herbs, Plants, and Vegetal Bodies: Botanical Knowledge in Medical, Naturalistic, and Philosophical Contexts

In this panel, we aim to discuss the study of plants in different contexts, periods, and areas from Late Middle Ages to the Early Modern world. The recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of the study of vegetation in diverse areas of human activity, thereby suggesting that the claim that botany was just a secondary branch of knowledge throughout the ages is not supported by documentation. In contrast, this field of knowledge stands as a complex assmeblage of inputs, aims, case studies, and methodologies, and reveals a broader confrontation with nature as a whole. In this panel, we would like to approach this through different case studies. These cases involve a wide range of practices and practitioners (botanists, alchemists, physicians, natural scholars, philosophers and collectors) and concerns as, for example, (a) the exchanges of specimens, seeds, or parts of plants, (b) the study of herbs in pharmaco-therapeutics, (c) the natural-philosophical attempts to explain vegetal bodies, and (d) the natural-historical work of representing and cataloguing specimens’ diversities. Ultimately, the aim of the panel is to explore the complexity and the intersections in the knowledge of the second realm of nature.