Verfasst von:	Menzies, Nicholas K. [VerfasserIn]
Titel:	Ordering the myriad things
Titelzusatz:	from traditional knowledge to scientific botany in China
Verf.angabe:	Nicholas K. Menzies
Verlagsort:	Seattle
Verlag:	University of Washington
E-Jahr:	2021
Jahr:	[2021]
Umfang:	xx, 288 Seiten
Illustrationen:	Illustrationen
Gesamttitel/Reihe:	Culture, place, and nature : studies in anthropology and environment
Fussnoten:	Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN:	978-0-295-74946-4
	978-0-295-74945-7
Abstract:	How the southern mountain tea flower became Camellia reticulata -- The historical context of an epistemic transition -- Nature, the myriad things, and their investigation -- A new language to name and describe plants -- Observing nature, practicing science -- The inventory of nature -- Botanical illustration -- Spaces for communicating and informing -- Museums, exhibitions, and botanical gardens -- The dawn redwood, metasequoia glyptostroboides.
	"English-language literature on the history of science is still stubbornly Euro-centric, and international scholarly discourse has engaged insufficiently with Chinese resources that document sophisticated premodern knowledge of the natural world. The case of botany is especially useful for investigating "traditional" systems of organization, classification, observation, and description and their transition to "modern" ones. China's vast and ancient body of documented knowledge about plants is best known but not limited to a rich corpus of Materia Medica. Written sources include horticultural manuals and monographs, comprehensive encyclopedias, geographies, and specialized anthologies of verse and prose. Their authors were keen observers of nature. Until the late nineteenth century, however, their intent was to inquire into and to verify what had been written about plants in the referential classical texts rather than to deploy a set of diagnostic tools using a common terminology and methodology to identify and explain new and unknown species or properties. Ordering the Myriad Things is the story of how traditional knowledge of plants in China gave way to scientific botany over a period of about a hundred years between 1850 and 1950. A dramatic shift occurred during this period, from the "traditional" study and representation of plants as objects steeped in a rich cultural heritage to the "scientific" study of plants and organisms in a hierarchy of taxonomic relationships to other plants, and investigations of their broader ecological status. This shift not only expanded the universe of plants beyond the familiar to encompass unknown species and unknown geographies, but fueled a new knowledge of China itself"--
URL:	Inhaltsverzeichnis: https://www.gbv.de/dms/bowker/toc/9780295749457.pdf
Schlagwörter:	(g)China    / (s)Botanik    / (s)Pflanzen    / (s)Systematik    / (s)Klassifikation    / (z)Geschichte 1848-1959
	(s)Pflanzen    / (s)Vegetation    / (s)Klassifikation    / (s)Klassieren    / (s)Botanik    / (g)China
Sprache:	eng
Bibliogr. Hinweis:	Erscheint auch als : Online-Ausgabe: Menzies, Nicholas K: Ordering the myriad things. - Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2021] |(DLC)2021009139
RVK-Notation:	LC 54440
K10plus-PPN:	1758659874