The philosopher as botanist, musician, and artisan

PHIL 2027

2008-09

Music & Botany: some common themes

• Music was for Rousseau’s youth, what botany was for his later years

• Philosophically interesting– Music and philosophy have a long history: Plato,

Aristotle, Rousseau, Nietzsche

• Terrain on which pedagogical ideas could be applied:– Simple and clear language: – Accessibility of subject matter– Utility.

Pedagogical ideas in Music and Botany

• 17th c. universal language schemes:– Leibniz favored Chinese or other idiograms

• Accessibility of subject matter depends on

• Simple and clear languages: – Binomial plant names (Linnaeus)– Botanical ‘characters’ (Rousseau; next slide)– Numerical notation system for music

(Rousseau; see handout, Confs., Bk 7)

‘Systema vegetabilium’ [vegetable, i.e. plant system]

Botany

1762-1778

Famous portrait of Rousseau

What is botany for Rousseau?

• Standpoint outside society (Lévi-Strauss on Rousseau as ‘founder of the human sciences’)– ‘nature never lies’ (Revs., pt 7, inter alia)

• Edifying—natural theology (see also ‘Prof. of faith, Emile)– nourishes the soul (OC, iv.1151);– ‘The study of nature detaches us from ourselves, and elevates us to its

Author…. it is in this way that natural history and botany have a use for Wisdom and for virtue’ (letter to Duchess of Portland, 3 September 1766)

– Plants = ‘the richest and most varied of the three’ realms of nature (OC, iv.1249).

• Relaxing– wandering from one plant to the next; lying on ground to observe it;– displaces bitter thoughts about others (Reveries, pt 7)

• Better than chemistry (Institutions chymiques, 1740’s)– Chemistry studies what is dead; grinds plants in mortar for medicines

(pharmacology); connected to wealth, mining (Revs., pt 7).

His method

• ‘Dans de grandes et fréquentes herborisations il a fait une immense collection de plantes; il les a desséchées avec des soins infinis; il les a collées avec une grande propreté sur des papiers qu’il ornoit de cadres rouges. Il s’est appliqué à conserver la figure et la couleur des fleurs et des feuilles, au point de faire de ces herbiers ainsi préparés des recueils de miniatures. Il en a donné, envoyé à diverses personnes, et ce qui lui reste suffiroit pour persuader à ceux qui savent combine ce travail exige de tems et de patience qu’il en fait son unique occupation’.

• Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacques: Dialogues [2nd autobiographical work] OC, i.832.

What he produced

• Writings on botany– All published posthumously– 8 letters were translated/converted into a Linnaean

text• Herbaria: 4 extant in France, Switzerland

– 4 have disappeared– 2 or 3 attributed to him are doubtful

• Some portable; others kept in boxes, not portable

• Is this strange, given his apparently anti-scientific attitudes (Revs., pt. 7)?

Writings on botany

1) Eight letters on botany for Madeleine-Catherine Delessert and her five-year old daughter (1747-1816)

-uses natural family system of Jussieu (6 families)

2) ‘Introduction’, a history of botany; - fragment in the archives of the BPUN

(Neuchâtel);- praises Linnaean nomenclature;

3) Fragments for a dictionary of terms of usage in botany (no MS; possibly just notes he took);

4) Letters to other correspondents;• Published posthumously by du Peyrou and Moultou in Œuvres

complètes (Geneva, 1781-2).

Context

Eighteenth-century science

Informal venues for doing science

• Coffee houses• Salons• Academies, e.g. Royal Academy of Sciences,

Paris• Correspondence and exchange networks:

– Haller, Linnaeus, Rousseau• Private natural history ‘cabinets’, laboratories:

– Dupin de Francueil, Lavoisier (rich people—tax farmers)

• Universities: more important in Holland and Germany than in France, Switzerland or Britain.

Eighteenth-century schemata of knowledge

Systems of botanical classification

• Linnaean artificial sexual system—1730’s– 24 classes– 23 based on sexual parts of plants—number and

position of stamens and pistils– Class 24 = cryptogamia

• Natural systems– Plant families supposedly found in nature; Bernard de

Jussieu—mid-18th c., jardin du roi (Paris), petit Trianon (Versailles), published 1789 by his nephew

– Linnaeus also sought to develop a ‘natural’ system, as the best approach to classification.

Rococo Shells from Dezaillier d’Argenville (1742)

Examples of herbaria

Linnaeus and Rousseau

Linnaeus (1707-1778): herbaria

• “[a] Herbarium is better than any picture, and necessary for every botanist” (Linnaeus, Phil. Bot. 2003 [1751]:18);

• “[p]lants that have been collected by a given method…into a herbarium made from living plants, which…are arranged according to a system, so that they may be promptly produced” (329)

• the beginner “should himself collect, dry, and glue on sheets of paper the larger plants, as many as he can” (329; emphasis original).

• Rousseau admired this work and “derive[d] a more genuine profit” from it “than from all the books on morality” (Letter to Linnaeus, 21 Sept. 1771; CW, 244).

Rousseau’s portable Herbarium (l.) versus Hallers Herbarium (r.)

Linnaean Specimen, Hibiscus esculentus (Uppsala)

Cyperus fuscus(Montmorency)

Comparison of 3 Herbaria

Place Montmorency Zürich Paris

Dimensions 23 x 16.4 cm 21.6 x 10.6 cm 15.8 x 10 cm

Contents 168 species 99 flowering plants, 1 fern,1 alga

Over 315 moss and lichen samples

Recipient Madeleine-Catherine Delessert

Julie Willading-Boy de la Tour, née Delessert

Unknown

Organizing

Principle

Alphabetical Linnaean Unknown, possibly chronological

Some teachers

Abraham

Gagnebin

Claret de

La Tourrette

Pierre

Clappier

Dates &

Occupation

1707-1800,

Physician/bot

1729-1793

Jurist/bot

1740-1818

Physician/bot

Location La Ferrière,

Swiss Jura

Lyon Montpellier

Herbarium Dispersed: Paris, NEU, London

7,000 sp., Lyon, but dispersed; only lichens intact

None known

Influence Taught Rousseau rudiments of botany

Bot dict, lichen collection

His great conservation skill, CW 206

Paris, F. 15

• ‘Mnium serpyllifolium .a punctatum’, now M. punctatum

• 5 Hypnum proliferum, 1753 nom. inval., some authors would accept Thuidium

tamariscinum (Hedwig) • 6.a Hypnum denticulatum,

now Plagiothecium denticulatum.

Ecology

in Rousseau’s herbaria

Paris, F. 24

• 12 ‘Trouvée a Monquin au printems en abondance couchée dans le limon [silt] d’une eau courante selon la direction du fil de l’eau. Feuillage assez âpre et rigide au toucher, sans aucun vestige de fructification.’

• o Bryum cæspiticium • p. Mnium undulatum • nom. inval. = Atrichum

undulatum

Translation

“Found in abundance at Monquin in Spring lying in the silt of a running stream in the direction of the flow of the water without any vestige of fructification.”

Translation:

“This plant is rare and little known.”

Translations of the 8 Letters

• English (Rev. Thomas Martyn, Linnaean)

• Portuguese (from Martyn)

• French 1789 (from Martyn)

• Danish 1789

• Russian 1810

Translation by Martyn: Title Page, 2d ed. (1787)

Martyn introduces the Linnaean system to students of botany

“I will now open the whole mystery….To do this you must learn a system ; in which however you are not to expect that all vegetables are arranged in natural classes, such as I have hitherto explained to you, but after an artificial method…” (emph. added; p. 85).

Martyn justifies the choice of the Linnéen system

“The system I propose to you is not the French one by Tournefort, which is very beautiful, and has great merit; but the Swedish one by Linnaeus. I prefer this, because it is most complete, and most in fashion” (Martyn, Lettre IX, p. 86).

The Linnaean Rousseau of Martyn becomes a global phenomenon

• 8 editions: 1785-1815; copies in– U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland; – In the private library of Thomas Jefferson (destroyed

in a fire at the Library of Congress, 1851);– Continental Europe: France, Netherlands, Germany,

Switzerland;– South America: Chile.

• Translations of the 32 letters (including the 24 of Martyn) – in French (1789), – in Portuguese (1801).

L’édition française de 1789(vol. 5 des Œuvres complètes)

• « Les lettres élémentaires sur la botanique furent particulièrement goutées en Angleterre. M. Martyn, professeur de l’université de Cambridge, jaloux de rendre hommage à la mémoire de M. Rousseau, a publié vingt-quatre lettres familières sur la méthode de Linné, pour servir de suite aux six [sic] de M. Rousseau. Chaque lettre est accompagnée d’une gravure coloriée pour faciliter l’intelligence des caractères qui servent à designer les classes » (Rousseau/Martyn, 1789 : 4-5).

L’édition française de 1789

• « Cet ouvrage a été très-accueilli, et mérite de l’être. Nous en présentons ici la traduction françoise, suivie des mêmes gravures, et nous avons lieu d’en espérer les mêmes succès en France. Nous n’avons aucun ouvrage élémentaire où l’on puisse espérer de trouver plus de moyens d’approfondir la méthode linnéenne, qui est aujourd’hui la plus accréditée.

• L’auteur de ces lettres a suivi de très-près la marche de Rousseau, et le traducteur n’a rien négligé pour en rendre le véritable sens » (Rousseau/Martyn, 1789 : 4-5).

English imitators of Rousseau

• Priscilla Wakefield. An Introduction to botany, in a series of familiar letters, with illustrative engravings. 2nd ed. (London: E. Newbery, 1798);

• [Maria Elizabeth Jacson]. Botanical Dialogues between Hortensia and her Four Children. (London: J. Johnson, 1797). – Title page cites the Martyn translation of the letters on botany

• . Botanical Lectures. By a Lady. Altered from ‘Botanical Dialogues for the Use of Schools’, and Adapted to the Use of Persons of all Ages. By the same Author. (London: J. Johnson, 1804); see especially pp. 4, 52, 55.