Appliquée à la lecture des ouvrages de Théophraste sur les plantes, la notion de genre facilite l’analyse d’un de ses deux critères classificatoires : la distinction entre « mâles » et « femelles ». Le maitre de la botanique grecque projette sur le monde végétal les représentations culturelles du masculin et du féminin en pays grec. Les plantes étant chargées de sens différents selon les cultures, cette constatation invite à tenir compte du genre des plantes dans l’étude de leur symbolique, (...) notamment dans la sphère du religieux. Les agronomes romains n’emploient pas eux les qualificatifs « mâles » et « femelles » pour décrire deux plantes s’unissant en vue de leur reproduction. Plusieurs critères entrent en jeu dans le choix de ces dénominations : la ressemblance entre un aspect de la plante et une partie de l’anatomie féminine ou masculine ; l’analogie entre une caractéristique de la plante et une attitude culturellement considérée comme féminine ou masculine. En somme, ce sont majoritairement des critères relevant du genrequi déterminent la catégorisation des végétaux en « mâles » et « femelles ». Mais ces catégories sont rarement essentialisées. Elles fonctionnent comme un couple polarisé, permettant de distinguer deux espèces similaires en leur reconnaissant des qualités relatives et non absolues. (shrink)

Central in the analyses of women’s and gender studies within the history of education has been Rousseau’s (Emil oder Über die Erziehung, 12th edn. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1762) educational novel Emile, especially Book 5, which deals with the education of Sophie, Emilie’s future spouse. Given the lasting interest in the person of Rousseau and his work, it is astonishing that there is a work by him, that has not been a focus of analysis in studies on the history of education, (...) namely, Rousseau’s Lettres élementaires sur la botanique. Linnaeus had early on espoused a classification bases on the sexuality of the plants. Their sexualizing plants was in keeping with the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment, which had also put the new order of human sexual relations on the agenda. The following article focusses on the question what importance Rousseau’s letters on botany can be accorded in this controversy over the sexuality of the plants and the relations between the sexes. (shrink)

Taking as its point of departure the place of the vegetal realm within Jane Campion’s filmmaking, this article attends to both living and artificial plants, homing in on the exquisitely crafted paper flowers of The Power of the Dog to explore their entanglement with human power relations. Manmade flowers are clearly distinct from the flowers of the garden or the prairie, but in this Western, they form part of a broader floral aesthetic with their living kin. Drawing upon thought (...) that stems from actual plants (Deleuze and Guattari’s arboreal-rhizomatic thinking) and vegetal philosophy (Marder, Coccia), as well as parallel botany’s attention to the artificial (Lionni), I follow the fate of one paper flower as it intersects with the gendered history of artificial flower making and floral sexual symbolism. Thinking with this paper flower, I engage with theories that variously question binary power relations (Cixous, Barthes, Steinbock), reading these alongside scholarship on sex, gender, and masculinity in the Western (Neale, Mulvey, Bruzzi), and broaching the hierarchies of settler colonialism. The film’s floral aesthetic, I argue, challenges the either/or logic of male or female, masculine or feminine, and even though it cannot fully break away from the binaries it critiques, it is indebted to registering the importance of the nuance (Barthes) in the unthreading of power. (shrink)

In this article, I advance how the work of transfeminist artistic collective Quimera Rosa formulates new understandings of gender and sexuality in the attempt of ‘becoming plant’. I will first analyse their earlier post-porn work and the use of hacked devices for the formulation of human/nonhuman erotic connections. I will then move to their most recent Trans*Plant project, which involves a human – plant transition. In relation and comparison to the notion of ‘ecosexuality’, I will finally draw an anti-capitalist, posthuman (...) sex/gender practice that radically escapes legibility and identity formulations to create open-ended planetary erotic alliances. (shrink)

Coming from a prosperous London Quaker family, the author Priscilla Wakefield wrote educational books for children, and one work for adults, Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex, also reissued in this series. This 1796 book on botany, a science which 'contributes to health of body and cheerfulness of disposition' but is difficult to study because of its Latin nomenclature and the cost of textbooks, offers a simple introduction for children through the medium of letters between sisters, as (...) 'Felicia' shares with 'Constance' her growing understanding of plant science. Felicia's governess is a follower of Linnaeus, whose classificatory system is described as 'the one universally adopted', and by the twenty-eighth and final letter, Felicia is describing the class Cryptogamia. This illustrated account in simple language gives an insight into the level of education thought appropriate for young girls at the end of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Sex, Gender, Ethics, and the Darwinian Evolution of Humanity examines the impact of Darwin's 'Descent of Man' on contemporary biology and the humanities. Its publication in 1871 was a founding event in anthropology. Its content was primarily concerned with the development of sexual life, social life, and intellectual life, not only as outcomes of evolution, but as components that have actively intermixed over time with the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection. The stamp of Darwinism on modern thought is still very (...) important and brings novelties to academic studies. Several fields influenced by Darwinian anthropology developed in recent decades, including evolutionary ethics, the evolution of sociality and sexual communication in animal and plant species. Sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are topics that draw heavily on Darwin's 'Descent of Man'. The understanding of Darwin's thought has also progressed greatly in recent decades, following the systematic study of Darwin's correspondence and notebooks, leading to a reassessment of the development of his thought on humans, social groups, and heredity, and how they come together in his theory of evolution. The book combines a historical perspective on Darwin's achievement and his legacy. It will be of interest to students and scholars in a variety of fields, from experimental biology to the social and historical sciences. (shrink)

The evolution of biparental sexual reproduction in animals and plants is a prominent focus in modern biology. One hundred and fifty years ago, the German biologist Julius Sachs (1832–1897) published the fourth and final edition of his influential _Textbook of Botany_. In the text, he referred to the work of Wilhelm Hofmeister (1824–1877) and proposed that it is possible to reconstruct the origins and evolution of sexuality via systematic comparisons among the life cycles of simple versus complex organisms. Sachs’s (...) 1874 book presented the green alga _Pandorina_ as an example of ancestral life cycles, and that of the land plants as the most complex photosynthetic organisms. Herein, we describe the 150-year-old hypothesis proposed by Sachs and show how the purported “architect of modern plant physiology” provided insights into (1) recent papers implicating the role of HMG-box genes for the expression of male versus female sex determination in complex eukaryotes, such as animals, brown algae, and fungi; and (2) the continuing debate about the meaning of homology in the context of evolution. We conclude that the physiologist Sachs, along with Hofmeister, was also one of the founders of comparative sex research in animals and plants. (shrink)

This study considers three noblewomen – Lady Amelia Hume, Jane Barrington, and Mary Watson-Wentworth, Marchioness of Rockingham – whose contributions to plant studies were so important that Linnean Society President James Edward Smith dedicated three books to them. Their skills in cultivating newly imported exotic plants rivaled those of elite nurserymen, and taxonomists of the highest caliber came to depend on them to unlock information encoded within flowers to enable classification and publication. Eventually, the women played strategic roles within (...) national scientific studies of the world’s plants orchestrated by Smith, Joseph Banks, and William Roxburgh. The stories of Hume, Barrington, and Rockingham complicate our understandings of the gendered, professional, and disciplinary hierarchies of knowledge that constituted British science in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They also resituate the domestic hothouse as a publicly engaged laboratory and museum. (shrink)

Biomedical and social scientists are increasingly calling the biological sex into question, arguing that sex is a graded spectrum rather than a binary trait. Leading science journals have been adopting this relativist view, thereby opposing fundamental biological facts. While we fully endorse efforts to create a more inclusive environment for gender‐diverse people, this does not require denying biological sex. On the contrary, the rejection of biological sex seems to be based on a lack of knowledge about evolution and it champions (...) species chauvinism, inasmuch as it imposes human identity notions on millions of other species. We argue that the biological definition of the sexes remains central to recognising the diversity of life. Humans with their unique combination of biological sex and gender are different from non‐human animals and plants in this respect. Denying the concept of biological sex, for whatever cause, ultimately erodes scientific progress and may open the flood gates to “alternative truths.”. (shrink)

The impact of Foucault's work can still be felt across a range of academic disciplines. It is nevertheless important to remember that, for him, theoretical activity was intimately related to the concrete practices of self-transformation; as he acknowledged: `I write in order to change myself.' 1 This avowal is especially pertinent when considering Foucault's work on the relationship between sex and power. For Foucault not only theorized about this topic; he was also actively involved in the S&M subculture of the (...) 1970s. Although his explicit discussions of S&M are somewhat piecemeal, in this article I will show how they provide a useful point of access into his broader conception of power relations. Having first reconstructed Foucault's quasi-Sartrean account of creative self-transformation — specifically through one's sexuality — I will then explain why his defence of S&M (as embodying `strategic' power) is insufficiently sensitive to the inherent ambiguities of this `game'. Key Words: consent • desire • identity • limits • pleasure • power • role-play • subjectivity • trust. (shrink)

Le E dit muet, ou encore féminin, caduc, instable, concentre régulièrement l’attention dans les discours tenus sur la langue française, du XVIe siècle à nos jours. Parce qu’il sert à la formation du féminin et qu’il caractérise les rimes dites féminines, parce qu’il relève d’un traitement particulier dans la métrique française classique, et ne trouve pas son équivalent dans le système phonétique d’autres langues, il s’est peu à peu vu investi par écrivains et théoriciens des deux sexes de valeurs de (...) féminité, puis de poéticité et de francité. Le parcours chronologique proposé éclaire les idéologies de la langue française en montrant combien elles sont profondément associées, de façon explicite ou non, à une conception de la place des femmes dans la société et la culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto WeiningerBéla SzabadosJews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger, edited by Nancy A. Harrowitz and Barbara Hyams; 341 pp. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995, $54.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.“Every artist has been influenced by others and shows traces of that influence yet his significance for us is nothing but his personality. What he inherits from others can be nothing but eggshells,” said Wittgenstein, listing (...) Weininger as a seminal influence on his work, “a seed out of which his plant grew.” Weininger’s influence fell on other leading cultural figures early this century such as Kraus, Kafka, Freud, Joyce, Lawrence, Canetti, Stein and others. This book aims to retrieve that influence and provide a broad interdisciplinary representation of new critical readings of Weininger’s legacy.The fact and extent of Weininger’s influence seems puzzling: his fame stems from his misogyny and anti-Semitism. In Sex and Character Weininger claims that: humans are bisexual, a mixture of male and female; woman is nothing but sexuality; individuals must choose between the masculine and feminine elements within themselves; sexual abstinence is a precondition of spirit and genius; there can be no justification for sex even for procreation within marriage; furthermore, “the Jew is saturated with femininity and has little sense of good and evil.” How could an author with such odd and odious views exert any influence at all?Yet Weininger was pivotal: his writing erases boundaries between discipline, genre, and nationality, revealing tensions and contradictions in Viennese and Western culture. So many ‘isms’ mark him as a patriarch of the tradition: [End Page 548] essentialism, transcendentalism, dualism, theism, and his belief in a rational self. Yet this is juxtaposed with postmodernist themes: deconstruction of sexual and gender dichotomies, rejection of essentialism concerning individuals, an emphasis on difference and the personal, the ethical primacy of practice over theory. His influence is felt in literature, philosophy, science, history, and because of Jehoshua Sobol’s play, The Soul of a Jew, in theatre.Jews and Gender divides into three parts. The first introduces readers to Weininger research and provides new bibliographic information. To begin with, the editors offer us the necessary background with a concise critical essay on the history of Weininger reception. This is followed by Jacques Le Rider revisiting Weininger scholarship subsequent to the publication of his own book, The Otto Weininger Case. The section ends with Hannelore Rodlauer’s efforts to piece together fragments from Weininger’s education. The second section, “In Context,” focuses on Weininger in the context of his contemporaries. Allan Janik starts off with his examination of the riddle of Weininger’s influence on Wittgenstein. Next, Nancy Harrowitz sketches and discusses affinities between Weininger and his nineteenth-century forerunner Lomboroso. Then Steven Beller explores the surprising question of whether Weininger was a liberal in an ethos when European liberalism exerted immense pressure on Jews to assimilate the whole set of social, religious, national, cultural values of a community. Sander Gilman in turn traces connections between Freud and Weininger on questions of race and gender. In her essay on “Characterology,” Katherine Arens situates Weininger in relation to Austrian “scientific” racism. In his contribution, John Hoberman reflects on Weininger’s critique of Jewish masculinity, locating its source in the stereotypes prevalent in those times.The third section of the volume looks at Weininger and his impact on modern literature. In “A Scientific Image of Woman,” Gisela Brude-Firnau discusses the way in which Weininger’s work can be seen as a contentious response to the women’s movement. Jeffrey Mehlman discerns Weininger in one of Apolinnaire’s major poems, “La Chanson du Malaimé,” where the anger against woman is quirkily actualized as a fury against the Jews. Gerald Stieg goes on to draw affinities between Kafka and Weininger. Then Marilyn Reizbaum, Natania Rosenfeld, and Elfriede Pöder explore in separate essays Weininger’s influence on James Joyce’s Ulysses by probing Bloom’s Jewish self-hatred, the figure of the womanly wandering Jew, and Molly as pure sexuality, respectively. Alberto Cavaglion proceeds to trace the appearance of Weininger’s thought in Italo Svevo’s novel The Confessions of Zeno... (shrink)

The Botany of Desire:. Plant's‐Eye View of the World. By Michael Pollan. 2001. New York: Random House. 271 pages. $24.95 (hardback). ISBN 0‐375‐50129‐0.

German Romanticism is a thinking of life as exposed. Philosophical conceptions of botanical life are paradigmatic of this. Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel each address the plant in their respective philosophies of nature. This article traces the connections and divergences in their thinking of plants, focusing on the role of love, lack, and exposure in order to present the plant as a peculiarly apt figure for considerations of life as exposed.

Since the eighteenth century, the study of plants has reflected an increasingly mechanized and technological view of the natural world that divides the humanities and the natual sciences. In broad terms, this article proposes a context for research into flora through an interrogation of existing literature addressing a rapprochement between ways to knowledge. The natureculture dichotomy, and more specifically the plant-to-human sensory disjunction, follows a parallel course of resolution to the schism between objective and subjective forms of knowledge. The (...) foundations of taxonomic botany, as well as the allied fields of environmental studies, ethnobotany and economic botany, are undergirded by universalizing, sensorylimited visual structuring of the natural world. As the study of everyday embodied interactions of humans with flora, expanding upon the lens of cultural ecology, "cultural botany" provides a transdisciplinary research approach. Alternate embodied cultural engagements with flora emerge through a syncretic fusion of diverse methodologies. (shrink)

Despite progress, gender gaps persist in mathematical and language-related fields, and gender stereotypes likely play a role. The current study examines the relations between parents’ gender-related beliefs and their adolescent child’s motivation and career aspirations through a survey of 172 parent-child dyads. Parents reported their gendered beliefs about ability in mathematics and language arts, as well as their prescriptive gender role beliefs. Students reported their expectancies and values in these two domains, as well as their career aspirations The results of (...) path models suggested that parents’ ability stereotypes about language boosted girls’ motivation for language arts, thereby nudging them away from STEM pathways. Girls’ career aspirations stemmed not only from their valuation of the corresponding domain, but also from their valuation of competing domains. Such findings highlight the need to consider multiple domains simultaneously in order to better capture the complexity of girls’ career decisions. For boys, parents’ language ability stereotypes were directly related to mathematical career aspirations. These results suggest that stereotypes that language arts is not for boys push them instead toward mathematics. Our study also highlighted the unique role of parental beliefs in traditional gender roles for boys’ motivation and career aspirations. Specifically, parents’ gender role stereotypes directly related to less interest in language arts only among boys. This highlights that research into gender gaps in female-dominated fields should consider stereotypes related to appropriate behavior and social roles for boys. (shrink)

This article examines the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church from an ethical point of view. The article uses the RRICC values model of ethical decision making (i.e., responsibility, respect, integrity, competence, concern) to review the behavior of Catholic bishops and other religious superiors as they have tried to manage clergy sex offenders and their victims. Hopefully, the recent press attention and resulting policy changes on these matters from the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops will increase the (...) chances that future decisions will be ethical ones. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the French philosopher René Descartes was far more involved in the study of plants than has been generally recognized. We know that he did not include a botanical section in his natural philosophy, and sometimes he differentiated between plants and living bodies. His position was, moreover, characterized by a methodological rejection of the catalogues of plants. However, this paper reveals a significant trend in Descartes's naturalistic pursuits, starting from the end of (...) 1637, whereby he became increasingly interested in plants. I explore this shift by examining both Descartes's correspondence and several notes contained in theExcerpta anatomica. Grounded in direct observations, Descartes's work on vegetation provides a modest, though not unimportant, contribution to a natural-philosophical approach to the vegetal realm. This had a direct bearing on his lifelong ambition to explain the nature of living bodies and also fuelled the emergence of botany as a modern science. (shrink)

At the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the 19th, Spain and the Italian States contributed to the development of European agricultural science and the improvement of manufacturing. They collaborated with each other and reworked the most advanced models of France, Central Europe and Great Britain. Despite their somewhat less prosperous economic status, they demonstrated great originality in research and experimentation. In this process, botanical knowledge served as a starting point for a new epistemological path. Through three case (...) studies – the botanists Antonio José Cavanilles and Domenico Nocca, and the agriculturist Filippo Re – my article analyses how Spanish and Italian naturalists and learned individuals contributed to forming the concept of ‘economic botany’ through the exchange of seeds, plant specimens, books, journals, and – more in general – opinions, becoming germinal forces in a large transnational network. (shrink)

Introduction A Brief Conceptual Framework for Biology PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING NATURE 1. The Antecedents of Scientific Thought Animism, Totemism, and Shamanism The Paleolithic View Mesopotamia Egypt 2. Aristotle and the Greek View of Nature The Science of Animal Biology The Parts of Animals The Classification of Animals The Aristotelian System Basic Questions 3. Those Rational Greeks? Theophrastus and the Science of Botany The Roman Pliny Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine Erasistratus Galen of Pergamum The Greek Miracle 4. The Judeo-Christian Worldview (...) The Bishop of Hippo Scholastic Thought Islamic Science Books on Beasts Antecedents of a Revolution 5. The Revival of Science Andreas Vesalius and the Study of Structure William Harvey and the Study of Function Sir Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration Induction, Hypothesis, Deduction The Very Small--Animalcules Robert Hooke and the Discovery of Cells 6. Figur’d Stones and Plastick Virtue Marine Life on Mountain Tops? Figured Stones of Unknown Creatures Baron Cuvier Quarries of the Paris Basin Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism William Smith and the Geological Column Understanding Nature in 1850 PART TWO: THE GROWTH OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 7. The Paradigm of Evolution First Questions The Paradigm of Natural Theology First Answers 8. Testing Darwins Hypotheses Have Life Forms Changed over Time? Do Species Evolve into Different Species over Time? Has There Been Time Enough for Evolution? Is Natural Selection the Mechanism of Change? The Genetic Basis of Natural Selection Accounting for the Diversity of Life 9. In the Light of Evolution Comparative Anatomy Embryonic Development Classification Microstructure Molecular Processes 10. Life over Time The Origin of Life The Rise of Multicelled Organisms What Is a Phylum? Burgess Shale Metazoans Early Evolution of the Vertebrates The Age of Dinosaurs Birds, Mammals, and Flowering Plants The Rancho La Brea Tar Pits Human Evolution The Role of Extinction in Evolution PART THREE: CLASSICAL GENETICS 11. Pangenesis What Is the Question? Hippocrates and Aristotle The Darwinian Answer Assembling the Data Formulating the Hypothesis by Induction Galton’s Rabbits 12. The Cell Theory The Discovery of Cells: Robert Hooke Schwann and Cells in Animals Gametes as Cells Omnis cellula e cellula? The Technology of Cell Research 13. The Hypothesis of Chromosomal Continuity The Ephemeral Nucleus Schneider, Flemming, and Cell Division The Chromosomes and inheritance Gamete Formation Fertilization 14. Mendel and the Birth of Genetics Model for Monohybrid Crosses Model for Dihybrid Crosses Mendel’s Laws Initial Opposition to Mendelism 15. Genetics + Cytology: 1900-1910 Sutton’s Model The Cytological Basis of Mendel’s Laws Boveri and Abnormal Chromosome Sets Variations in Mendelian Ratios The Discovery of Sex Chromosomes 16. The Genetics of the Fruit Fly Morgan’s First Hypothesis Morgan’s Second Hypothesis The Fly Room Linkage and Crossing-Over The Cytological Proof of Crossing-Over Mapping the Chromosomes The Final Proof The Determinants of Sex The Conceptual Foundations of Classical Genetics 17. The Structure and Function of Genes One Gene, One Enzyme The Substance of Inheritance The Watson-Crick Model of DNA Genes and the Synthesis of Proteins The Genetic Code PART FOUR: THE ENIGMA OF DEVELOPMENT 18. First Principles The Peripatetic Stagirite The Death and Rebirth of Scientific Thought Harvey and Malpighi A Two-Millennial Summing Up Preformation versus Epigenesis 19. The Century of Discovery Von Baer’s Discovery of the Mammalian Ovum Darwin’s Contribution to Embryology Haeckel and Recapitulation 20. Descriptive Embryology Germ Layers The External Development of the Amphibian Embryo The Internal Development of the Amphibian Embryo 21. The Dawn of Analytical Embryology His, Roux, and Mosaic Development Driesch and Regulative Development Novelty in Development Cell Lineage Nucleus or Cytoplasm? Fin de Siècle 22. Interactions during Development Amphibian Organizers Secondary Organizers The Reacting Tissue The Chemical Nature of the Organizer Putting It All Together Conclusion Further Reading References Illustration Credits Index. (shrink)

In this paper, private gardens are portrayed as spaces and implements of aristocratic passion for plant collecting, of competition within the gentry, as well as of scientific professionalisation for botanists. This paper traces the early history of botanical collections in the Russian Empire from the 18th to the early 19th century as part of an elite culture which encouraged amateur patrons to invest in expeditions, gardens, and, consequently, in professionals to manage such projects. Young graduates of European universities who began (...) their careers working at private botanical institutions could later successfully apply for academic positions. The circulation of specimens had developed as a key element of botanical collection and an important basis for the networking of professionals and amateurs around the world. This paper argues that collecting plant specimens became an important means for engaging in “power games” and even “plant diplomacy.” These new responsibilities significantly increased botanists' status as experts. A diverse group of personalities, such as the Empress Catherine II, King George III of England, the industrialist Prokophy Demidov, aristocrat Alexei Razumovsky, Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, the academician Peter Simon Pallas—all shared a passion for botanical collecting and were engaged in power games at different levels, using botany as an instrument of influence. (shrink)

On 6 September 1836, George White wrote from Hatton Garden to T. B. Hall in Liverpool:I see by an advertisement that [there is] a proposition to form a Society to be called the Botanical Society of London—Its objects are the advancement of Botanical Science in general but more especially systematic and descriptive Botany—the formation of a Library, Museum & Herbarium—A meeting will be held at the Crown & Anchor, Strand, tomorrow evening & it is my intention to attend it—It has (...) been proposed thatLadiesshould be admitted!!!If the writer of those words lived up to his declared intention and did attend that or any other of the long string of inaugural meetings the Society held during the last quarter of that year, he would have been startled, perhaps even appalled to find how seriously that last-mentioned proposal had been taken. For on 3 November he would have found in the room at the Crown and Anchor Tavern (according to one report) ‘a crowded assembly of both ladies and gentlemen’. He would also have heard the founder of the Society, the nineteen-year-old Daniel Cooper, deliver a paper on the effects of light on plants, which (according to the same report) ‘excited great interest, more particularly with the ladies’. A fortnight later the meeting was again ‘numerously attended’ and again it attracted a number of the supposedly unlearned sex, some of whom by then were ‘members of the society’ unambiguously. (shrink)

This is a rebuttal to Fiona Probyn-Rapsey’s criticisms of the original furry research conducted in 2006 and published in 2008. Her focus on gender identity disorder misses the main point of the study, which was that it was the first empirical study to collect data scientifically and report findings on the furry fandom, an often misrepresented subculture.

This paper demonstrates the importance of the reception and development of Goethe’s metamorphosis of plants as a methodological and philosophical framework in the history of botanical theories. It proposes a focus on the textbooks written by the German botanist Ludwig Reichenbach and his first attempt to use Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis of plants as fundamental to his natural system of plants published under the title ‘Botany for Women’, in German Botanik für Damen. In this book, Reichenbach paid (...) particular attention to Goethe’s sensitive views on the essence of nature; he regarded Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis in the plant kingdom as an ideal model to interpret connections of natural phenomena, in particular as a conceptual frame for a natural system. Furthermore, he aimed to develop the philosophical statement of the metamorphosis, in which he called for nature-philosophical conceptions in order to materialize his representation of plant “affinities,” and of a kind of “ontogeny” of the whole plant kingdom. This paper demonstrates that, between speculative views and empirical attempts, the extent to which Reichenbach actually belonged to a new “school” of thought, which left its mark on the history and philosophy of botany. (shrink)

The present paper consists of two parts. In the first, some issues related to the character of biological experiments conducted under in vitro cultures are portrayed. The relevant aspects of these procedures are explicated from the viewpoint of the experimental botanist. It is a case study for the considerations in the second part, which presents selected philosophical and legal issues involved in biological experiments from the general perspective of philosophical investigations concerning the problem of plants’ axiology. Obviously, the nature (...) of the considerations is limited; not all important questions from the perspective of biology and philosophy have been raised. Nevertheless, the authors hope that the analyzed issues may be interesting for both biologists and philosophers. (shrink)

Darwin and the Art of Science will consist of excerpts from six of Darwin's books, chosen and introduced by James Costa. The excerpts will be arranged by plant (rather than according to which book they're from) in order to make the most of extraordinary images provided by the Oak Springs Garden Foundation library. As a group, they will provide unparalleled access to Darwin's fascinating observations and musings about the world of plants and how their distinctive features have evolved.

This book provides an interdisciplinary study of how design and botanical science came together in the 19th century, examining the work of leading botanists, designers and illustrators such as Sarah Drake, John Lindley, Owen Jones and Christopher Dresser. It reveals how design reformers looked to 'art botany', the practice of basing decorative form and ornament on the hidden, natural laws that govern plant growth and structure, as a model for how to create and identify what is new and incorporate it (...) into what was already familiar and meaningful, in order to develop a national design aesthetic and a professional field of practice. (shrink)

Many Global North contexts are experiencing conflict in feminist discourses between supporters of trans and gender diverse self-identification and self-proclaimed ‘gender critical’ feminists who consider this to undermine feminist goals. We argue that the channelling of contemporary feminist discourse into defensive and oppositional channels has foreclosed the space for more nuanced and future-oriented, utopian thought around freedom from sex/gender, limiting the prospect of developing a coalition of actors focused not on difference, but rather on commonality. Putting classic feminist works by (...) Simone de Beauvoir, Shulamith Firestone and Luce Irigaray into dialogue, we consider an alternative approach to freedom premised on an ontology of potentiality combined with acceptance of the materiality of the binary gender hierarchy, that nonetheless remains utopian and open-ended, demonstrating the capacity to transcend these impasses and potentially overcome these divides. (shrink)

This article presents a comparative analysis of the views on plants in Ps. Aristotle namely Nicolaos of Damascus and Avicenna, examining the distinct philosophical frameworks each thinker employs to understand the nature of plants. The representative work of the Aristotelian tradition, De Plantis, offers a naturalistic perspective, focusing on biological processes such as growth, nourishment, and reproduction. (T)his approach is empirical, categorizing plants as distinct from animals but still subject to similar material causes within the natural order. (...) The Aristotelian framework, emphasizing observable processes, laid the foundation for subsequent studies in plant biology. In contrast, Avicenna builds upon Aristotelian ideas, introducing a metaphysical dimension. In his Kitab al-Nabat, Avicenna posits the existence of the “vegetative soul” as a guiding principle that governs plant growth, while also reflecting divine intelligence and cosmic order. Avicenna’s metaphysical and theological insights distinguish his approach from Aristotelian naturalism, positioning plants as both biological entities and manifestations of divine wisdom. This article highlights how the intellectual development of botany and the history of philosophy has been shaped by the synthesis of Aristotelian empirical naturalism and Avicenna’s metaphysical synthesis. The comparison reveals the continued relevance of these two perspectives in contemporary debates in the philosophy of biology, particularly in reconciling material causality with higher principles of existence. (shrink)

Sex chromosomes in plants have been known for a century, but only recently have we begun to understand the mechanisms behind sex determination in dioecious plants. Here, we discuss evolution of sex determination, focusing on Silene latifolia, where evolution of separate sexes is consistent with the classic “two mutations” model—a loss of function male sterility mutation and a gain of function gynoecium suppression mutation, which turned an ancestral hermaphroditic population into separate males and females. Interestingly, the gynoecium suppression (...) function in S. latifolia evolved via loss of function in at least two sex‐linked genes and works via gene dosage balance between sex‐linked, and autosomal genes. This system resembles X/A‐ratio‐based sex determination systems in Drosophila and Rumex, and could represent a steppingstone in the evolution of X/A‐ratio‐based sex determination from an active Y system. (shrink)

Uncultivated plants are an important part of agricultural systems and play a key role in the survival of rural marginalized groups such as women, children, and the poor. Drawing on the gender, environment, and development literature and on the notion of women’s social location, this paper examines the ways in which gender, ethnicity, and economic status determine women’s roles in uncultivated plant management in Ixhuapan and Ocozotepec, two indigenous communities of Veracruz, Mexico. The first is inhabited by Nahua and (...) the second by Popoluca peoples. Information was gathered through group and individual interviews and a food frequency survey. Results show that the gender ideology prevailing in each community, resulting from distinct ethnic affiliations and economic contexts, shapes women’s plant management. In Ixhuapan, Nahua women are used to leaving their community to generate income, while in Ocozotepec men are considered the main breadwinners and are the mediators between Popoluca households and the larger society. Nahua women gather quelites at the cornfields more often than their men, and more often than their female counterparts in Ocozotepec. They also manage and sell plants from their homegardens at higher percentages than Popoluca women. However, women in both communities use intensely the plants of their homegardens and play a key role in biodiversity conservation and cultural permanence. (shrink)

From birth to 15 months infants and caregivers form a fundamentally intersubjective, dyadic unit within which the infant’s ability to recognize gender/sex in the world develops. Between about 18 and 36 months the infant accumulates an increasingly clear and subjective sense of self as female or male. We know little about how the precursors to gender/sex identity form during the intersubjective period, nor how they transform into an independent sense of self by 3 years of age. In this Theory and (...) Hypothesis article I offer a general framework for thinking about this problem. I propose that through repetition and patterning, the dyadic interactions in which infants and caregivers engage imbue the infant with an embodied, i.e., sensori-motor understanding of gender/sex. During this developmental period (which I label Phase 1) gender/sex is primarily an intersubjective project. From 15 to 18 months (which I label Phase 2) there are few reports of newly appearing gender/sex behavioral differences, and I hypothesize that this absence reflects a period of developmental instability during which there is a transition from gender/sex as primarily inter-subjective to gender/sex as primarily subjective. Beginning at 18 months (i.e., the start of Phase 3), a toddler’s subjective sense of self as having a gender/sex emerges, and it solidifies by 3 years of age. I propose a dynamic systems perspective to track how infants first assimilate gender/sex information during the intersubjective period (birth to 15 months); then explore what changes might occur during a hypothesized phase transition (15 to 18 months), and finally, review the emergence and initial stabilization of individual subjectivity-the period from 18 to 36 months. The critical questions explored focus on how to model and translate data from very different experimental disciplines, especially neuroscience, physiology, developmental psychology and cognitive development. I close by proposing the formation of a research consortium on gender/sex development during the first 3 years after birth. (shrink)

‘Flourishing’ is a concept of the good life of plants which comprises an empirical and an evaluative aspect. In this article, I shall discuss this concept as a starting point for addressing the moral status of plants anew; I shall therefore first outline the content of flourishing as explained in botany. The article then explores the evaluative aspect of flourishing in the context of three questions. These questions are: how does the concept of flourishing fit into moral theory? (...) Why do plants deserve a moral standing? And finally, what are the consequences of this approach to plants in ethics? The exploration of these questions contributes to a fine-grained perspective on the moral implications of the capacity of plants to flourish. (shrink)