Network texts: Technologies of writing, reading and publishing in 17th and 18th century botany

Project description

This project examines the interlocking practices of knowledge formation, knowledge textualisation and the publication of botanical works, on which the working and publication mode of early modern botany is based. The focus is thus on text-related scientific practices, which have so far been overshadowed by an interest in object-related practices such as the collection or exchange of plants. These practices of producing and publishing botanical texts characterise not only the working methods of individual scholars. They also define the functioning of a publication system that was used by the botanical community as a whole and through which this community was in turn constituted.

For botanists of the 17th and 18th centuries - in this project we are talking about male scholars - the compilation of their works was a process that involved contributions from several, sometimes countless, people and took years. Authors updated their local or regional floras in cycles of additions and corrections. As soon as new information became available, it was incorporated into a work and an updated edition was published. As a result, most botanical publications were both provisional and iterative. It will be shown how this way of working enabled the botanical community to keep pace with the ever-expanding information needs of their discipline and to develop forms of writing, reading and publishing that catered for the constant need to correct the information being processed.