Ordering the Myriad Things

aw_product_id: 
30958278629
merchant_image_url: 
https://cdn.waterstones.com/bookjackets/large/9780/2957/9780295749464.jpg
merchant_category: 
Books
search_price: 
22.99
book_author_name: 
Nicholas K. Menzies
book_type: 
Paperback
publisher: 
University of Washington Press
published_date: 
24/11/2021
isbn: 
9780295749464
Merchant Product Cat path: 
Books > History > Regional & national history > Asia
specifications: 
Nicholas K. Menzies|Paperback|University of Washington Press|24/11/2021
Merchant Product Id: 
9780295749464
Book Description: 
China's vast and ancient body of documented knowledge about plants includes horticultural manuals and monographs, comprehensive encyclopedias, geographies, and specialized anthologies of verse and prose written by keen observers of nature. Until the late nineteenth century, however, standard practice did not include deploying a set of diagnostic tools using a common terminology and methodology to identify and describe new and unknown species or properties.Ordering the Myriad Things relates how traditional knowledge of plants in China gave way to scientific botany between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, when plants came to be understood in a hierarchy of taxonomic relationships to other plants and within a broader ecological context. This shift not only expanded the universe of plants beyond the familiar to encompass unknown species and geographies but fueled a new knowledge of China itself. Nicholas K. Menzies highlights the importance of botanical illustration as a tool for recording nature-contrasting how images of plants were used in the past to the conventions of scientific drawing and investigating the transition of "traditional" systems of organization, classification, observation, and description to "modern" ones.

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