Biography

Fabrizio Baldassarri is a historian of science with an expertise on French philosopher René Descartes, natural philosophy and medicine. With a 3-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship, he has recently focused on the study of plants in early modern natural philosophy, and its intersections with plant anatomy, medicine, and plant classification, from Andrea Cesalpino to Marcello Malpighi, Nehemiah Grew, John Ray and John Locke. He has widely published on Descartes, and on plant studies in medicine, philosophy, and botany in pre-modern science. He has an upcoming book on plants in early modern philosophy and science and coordinates the Manipulating Flora group.

Project Summary

This project concentrates on the challenges horticulturists, gardeners and naturalists faced in cultivating (and propagating) plants in pre-modern times. While different layers (practical expertise and theoretical knowledge) and different actors interconnected in studying plants, the main focus of this project is to deal with the role of the environment as a crucial feature of Renaissance botany in Italy and England. For instance, in mentioning the different habitats and grounds of each plant, scholars such as Pietro Andrea Mattioli acknowledged a relation between the environment and the kind of plants, while Ulisse Aldrovandi attempted a classification of plants according to their birthplace and habitat. In order to achieve this knowledge, scholars and naturalists required the expertise of gardeners, horticulturists, male and female plant lovers, as the latter provided the former with data and revealed the changes and transformations plants undergo in different environment. As a result, scholars dealt with plant propagation and transformation, ultimately shaping pre-modern plant classification. This project aims to develop a new attention to plant studies, connecting the practical expertise with the theoretical investigations of the role of the environment and habitat in pre-modern science.