Ancient Botany

Ancient Botany PDF Author: Gavin Hardy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134386788
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin have brought together their botanical and historical knowledge to produce this unique overview of ancient botany. It examines all the founding texts of botanical science, such as Theophrastus' Enquiry into Plants, Dioscorides' Materia Medica, Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Nicolaus of Damascus' On Plants, and Galen' On Simple Remedies, but also includes lesser known texts ranging from the sixth century BCE to the seventh century CE, as well as some material evidence. The authors adopt a thematic approach rather than a chronological one, considering important issues such as the definition of a plant, nomenclature, classifications, physiology, the link between plants and their environment, and the numerous usages of plants in the ancient world. The book also takes care to place ancient botany in its historical, social and economic context. The authors have explained all technical botanical terms and ancient history notions, and as a result, this work will appeal to historians of ancient science, medicine and technology; classicists; and botanists interested in the history of their discipline.

Ancient Botany

Ancient Botany PDF Author: Gavin Hardy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134386788
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin have brought together their botanical and historical knowledge to produce this unique overview of ancient botany. It examines all the founding texts of botanical science, such as Theophrastus' Enquiry into Plants, Dioscorides' Materia Medica, Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Nicolaus of Damascus' On Plants, and Galen' On Simple Remedies, but also includes lesser known texts ranging from the sixth century BCE to the seventh century CE, as well as some material evidence. The authors adopt a thematic approach rather than a chronological one, considering important issues such as the definition of a plant, nomenclature, classifications, physiology, the link between plants and their environment, and the numerous usages of plants in the ancient world. The book also takes care to place ancient botany in its historical, social and economic context. The authors have explained all technical botanical terms and ancient history notions, and as a result, this work will appeal to historians of ancient science, medicine and technology; classicists; and botanists interested in the history of their discipline.

De Causis Plantarum

De Causis Plantarum PDF Author: Theophrastus
Publisher: London : Heinemann ; Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
ISBN:
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Theophrastus of Eresus in Lesbos, born about 370 BCE, is the author of the most important botanical works that have survived from classical antiquity. He was in turn student, collaborator, and successor of Aristotle. Like his predecessor he was interested in all aspects of human knowledge and experience, especially natural science. His writings on plants form a counterpart to Aristotle's zoological works. In the Enquiry into Plants Theophrastus classifies and describes varieties--covering trees, plants of particular regions, shrubs, herbaceous plants, and cereals; in the last of the nine books he focuses on plant juices and medicinal properties of herbs. The Loeb Classical Library edition is in two volumes; the second contains two additional treatises: On Odours and Weather Signs. In De Causis Plantarum Theophrastus turns to plant physiology. Books One and Two are concerned with generation, sprouting, flowering and fruiting, and the effects of climate. In Books Three and Four Theophrastus studies cultivation and agricultural methods. In Books Five and Six he discusses plant breeding; diseases and other causes of death; and distinctive flavours and odours. Theophrastus's celebrated Characters is of a quite different nature. This collection of descriptive sketches is the earliest known character-writing and a striking reflection of contemporary life.

The Naming of Names

The Naming of Names PDF Author: Anna Pavord
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408820765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 802

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Book Description
For centuries, some of the most brilliant minds in Europe searched for the rules of nature's game. In a world full of plagues and poisons, many medicines were made from plant extracts and there was a practical need to differentiate between one plant and another. Alongside this was an overwhelming desire to make sense of the natural world. Scholars, aided by the artists who painted the first pictures of plants, set out looking, writing and classifying, but 2,000 years were to pass before any rules became clear. Anna Pavord takes us on an exhilarating and fascinating journey through botanical history, travelling from Athens in the third century BC, through Constantinople and Venice, Padua and Pisa to the present day.

Herbarium

Herbarium PDF Author: Barbara M. Thiers
Publisher: Timber Press
ISBN: 1604699302
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
“A sweeping history of the origins, development, and future of herbaria and their role in plant consternation.” —The American Gardener Since the 1500s, scientists have documented the plants and fungi that grew around them, organizing the specimens into collections. Known as herbaria, these archives helped give rise to botany as its own scientific endeavor. Herbarium is a fascinating enquiry into this unique field of plant biology, exploring how herbaria emerged and have changed over time, who promoted and contributed to them, and why they remain such an important source of data for their new role: understanding how the world’s flora is changing. Barbara Thiers, director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, also explains how recent innovations that allow us to see things at both the molecular level and on a global scale can be applied to herbaria specimens, helping us address some of the most critical problems facing the world today.

Heathen

Heathen PDF Author: Kathryn Gin Lum
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674275799
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Philip Schaff Prize, American Society of Church History S-USIH Book Award, Society for U.S. Intellectual History Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History, Organization of American Historians “A fascinating book...Gin Lum suggests that, in many times and places, the divide between Christian and ‘heathen’ was the central divide in American life.”—Kelefa Sanneh, New Yorker “Offers a dazzling range of examples to substantiate its thesis. Rare is the reader who could dip into it without becoming much better informed on a great many topics historical, literary, and religious. So many of Gin Lum’s examples are enlightening and informative in their own right.”—Philip Jenkins, Christian Century “Brilliant...Gin Lum’s writing style is nuanced, clear, detailed yet expansive, and accessible, which will make the book a fit for both graduate and undergraduate classrooms. Any scholar of American history should have a copy.” —Emily Suzanne Clark, S-USIH: Society for U.S. Intellectual History In this sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses—discourses, specifically, of race. Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term “heathen” fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as “other” due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Race continues to operate as a heathen inheritance in the United States, animating Americans’ sense of being a world apart from an undifferentiated mass of needy, suffering peoples. Heathen thus reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.

On Weather Signs

On Weather Signs PDF Author: Theophrastus
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004155937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This text and commentary is the first to take account of all the manuscripts and to place the work in its historical and scientific context, as well as the first to describe its manuscript tradition.

Plants at the Margin

Plants at the Margin PDF Author: R. M. M. Crawford
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139469290
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Margins are by their very nature environmentally unstable - does it therefore follow that plant populations adapted for life in such areas will prove to be pre-adapted to withstand the changes that may be brought about by a warmer world? Biogeography, demography, reproductive biology, physiology and genetics all provide cogent explanations as to why limits occur where they do, and the purpose of this book is to bring together these different avenues of enquiry. Crawford's numerous beautiful illustrations of plants in their natural habitats remind us that the environment remains essential to our understanding of plants and their function. This book is suited to students, researchers and anyone with an interest in the impact of climate change on our world.

A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome, 2 Volume Set

A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome, 2 Volume Set PDF Author: Georgia L. Irby
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119100704
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1111

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Book Description
A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome brings a fresh perspective to the study of these disciplines in the ancient world, with 60 chapters examining these topics from a variety of critical and technical perspectives. Brings a fresh perspective to the study of science, technology, and medicine in the ancient world, with 60 chapters examining these topics from a variety of critical and technical perspectives Begins coverage in 600 BCE and includes sections on the later Roman Empire and beyond, featuring discussion of the transmission and reception of these ideas into the Renaissance Investigates key disciplines, concepts, and movements in ancient science, technology, and medicine within the historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts of Greek and Roman society Organizes its content in two halves: the first focuses on mathematical and natural sciences; the second focuses on cultural applications and interdisciplinary themes 2 Volumes

Plant-animal interactions in Mediterranean-type ecosystems

Plant-animal interactions in Mediterranean-type ecosystems PDF Author: Margarita Arianoutsou-Faraggitaki
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401109087
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
The Sixth International Conference on Mediterranean Climate ecosystems was held at Maleme (Crete), Greece, from September 23 to September 27, 1991. This conference had as its theme 'Plant-Animal Interactions in Mediterranean-type Ecosystems'. Most of the papers presented to that meeting have already been published (see Thanos, C.A. ed., 1992, Proceedings of the VI International Conference on Mediterranean Climate Ecosystems, Athens, 389 pp.). These 57 papers were all necessarily short. But the theme of plant-animal interactions was considered by the Organizing Committee to be so important to a fundamental understanding of the ecology of Mediterranean-climate ecosystems and to an enhanced management ·of those systems that various international research scientists were invited to prepare longer contributions on major aspects of the overall theme. The Book that follows represents the result of those invitations. All five regions of Mediterranean climate are represented - Chile, California, southern Australia and the Cape Province of South Africa, as well as the Mediterranean Basin itself.

Soma

Soma PDF Author: David Spess
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co
ISBN: 9780892817313
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Shrouded in mystery for centuries, Soma is simultaneously a sacred hallucinogenic plant, a personified God, and a cosmological principle. With the renewed interest in the ritual use of psychoactive substances, shamanism, and alternative modalities of healing, Soma provides an important key to understanding the earliest systemized methods of medicine, psychology, magic, rejuvenation, longevity, and alchemy.