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Chapter ID: CBB406419554

An Idea Ahead of Its Time: Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Mobile Botanical Laboratory (2016)

Cook, Alexandra (Author)

Pages: 27-49

URI: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-58106-8_2

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Experiments and experimentation Chemistry Scientific expeditions Laboratories Botany 18th century Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

Despite his polemics against the sciences, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) pursues plant studies experimentally during expeditions on foot. While he rejects the experimental science of chemistry in favour of botany, this rejection of chemistry does not entail a rejection of experimentation. Rather, Rousseau objects to the avarice with which he believed chemistry was contaminated. Yet, despite its association with a discredited science, the chemistry laboratory inspires Rousseau’s declaration that the fields adorned with flowers provide the botanist’s “only laboratory”. Proceeding from an eighteenth-century understanding of “experiment” as “test”, Rousseau and his collaborators test others’ reports during their botanical expeditions; (2) use instruments as aids to the senses, and (3) carefully organize the work to be done. These botanical expeditions are likewise experimental in their open-endedness.

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Book Marianne Klemun; Ulrike Spring (2016) Expeditions as Experiments: Practising Observation and Documentation. unapi

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