“Let no one enter here if he is a botanist”

We sometimes remember that Descartes practiced, in his Dutch backyard or in the amphitheater of Leiden, the anatomy on the “ heads of various animals ». More rarely, we know that Rousseau composed a herbarium and written Letters on botany where he is a good connoisseur and fervent admirer of Linnaeus ; that Kant mobilizes a reflection on the tree and the plant in a few important pages of his Critique of the faculty to judge ; that Bergson compares the animal and the plant in theCreative evolution… These three big names would perhaps be enough to convince of the permanence and the relevance of a philosophical interrogation on the plant. A few pages torn from their works would be a good taste of what a “ Philosophers herbarium », To use the nice title given by Jean-Marc Drouin to his book.

A history of botany

However, rather than granting an exclusive privilege to the classic figures of the history of philosophy, Drouin preferred to give, equally, the voice to the many botanists, more or less ancient, more or less known to the general public: in Tournefort, Ray, Linné, Adanson, Lamarck, in Jussieu or Candolle, but also in Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, Thémistocle Lestiboudois, Christian Konrad Sprengel or Jagadish Chandra Bose. Each time, a philosophical problem must emerge from the study of texts entitled “ Rarancules family examination “,” Study on the species during a revision of cupuliferous ” Or “ Treaty of fodder plants ». This is where we are invited to discover new philosophical nuggets, gradually free from a botanical material which seems to surround it like a gangue but which in reality constitutes its very substance. To follow the many sons where these references meet, ultimately, the reader sees the distinction between botanists and philosophers fall: on both sides, philosophy is made And botany. However, can we speak, and in what sense, of a botanical philosophy ?

A botanical philosophy ?

Noting with fun that no philosophical school has written on its door “ That no one enter here if he is not botanist (P. 222), Drouin intends to give reflection on the plant its philosophical dignity. No, it will not simply be a question here of jammingly renting the beauty of the small flowers of the fields, but rather of talking about it “ philosophically ». What to say ? The beauty given to flowers makes it possible to ask the question of teleology in nature. Likewise, the book is organized in large paintings which summon classic problems of philosophy and botany. The classifications make it possible to recall the quarrel of universals and open up to the problem of nominalism and realism. The reproduction of plants by grafts and cuttings invites you to reflect on individuality. The sensitivity of certain plants such as Mimosa Pudica questions the distinction of animal and plant and opens the hypothesis of a “ Plant subjectivity ». Each time, the botanical field offers a set of places where a philosophical problem can be posed philosophically in all its clarity but also already partially resolved.

Treat botanists as plants

The herbarium of philosophers is not a pure botanical philosophy abstract: he always keeps, as his title suggests, a sense of matters. Philosophy never floats among general ideas: it is not like the famous dove of which Kant was laughing, hoping that the air is removed so that it can finally fly higher without meeting resistance. Drouin never summons botany as a reference among others, purely illustrative. He makes it the heart of a philosophical reflection, which could only take off there and which is constituted by the meditation of the own procedures of this science. This is undoubtedly why the philosophical problems he poses are always intertwined with historical notations, which make its context in each thought. Drouin has a very particular way of constantly circumstantial the authors he summons: undoubtedly a practice of good herbalist, which meticulously notes on each specimen collected the precise place and the date of the collection. Because time and space imports to a good understanding of what is collected. Philosophers-Botanists are treated as plants: duly labeled and dissected by Drouin as in a herbarium whose pages are turned with curiosity. Whether we consider that these details give the different philosophical ideas a seat and a little anecdotal marrow, or that we judge on the contrary that these references produce an effect of jamming, damaging to the general intelligibility of the work, this historical thickness if we want, inseparably spatial and temporal, is nonetheless, undeniably, a major characteristic of the philosophical journey, wake of botanists.

Manipulate or observe ?

The contrast to the work of François Dagognet can help to better grasp the particular character of The herbarium of philosophers. Dagognet is relatively absent from the work of Drouin, who only quotes it only with nosology (the classification of diseases). However, his work also constitutes an attempt to philosophize from the plant and its characteristics. So, Living control (Paris, Hachette, 1988) highlighted the natural processes, from an analysis of the sheet and glucose. If Dagognet borrowed its examples from the plant world, it was, he said, because “ Vegetality (…) represents the living being of choice, the most offered, the least coiled on it, more malleable and modifiable than the animal-objectacle. In addition, the plant does not arouse the hostile and late reactions of nature defenders (P. 13). Dagognet therefore used plants as a lever to blow up a set of ethical resistance to the modification of the living and its industrial use. By that, he intended to set up a new concept of nature, established from the millennial practice of farmers: a “ Brakeless polyphenomenality “, An entity” polydirectional Who tries all possible variations, which man can therefore prolong and supplement, thereby only promoting deployment (which constitutes the very definition of nature).

At Drouin, the approach of plants is quite different. Of course, Drouin does not pour into the contemplation of natural harmonies ; But it is clear that at home, the interest in botany goes hand in hand with a curiosity of a naturalist in the field. Natural sciences are not reduced to physiology or genetics, but give pride of place to systematics, ecology, evolution-in short to deploy the plant in time and space (a dimension underestimated by Dagognet, more occupied with administration and exploitation). Furthermore, agronomy is not mentioned in an abstract way, but thanks to a set of concrete figures like that of Adolphe Dureau de la Malle (1777-1857), owner of an area in the Perche where he made several botanical observations, published in 1824 under the title: “ Memoir on alternation or on this problem: alternative succession in the reproduction of plant species living in society a general law of nature ? »The naturalistic dimension and the historical depth of this Philosophers herbarium are also accompanied by a true ecological sensitivity, palpable when Drouin, author also of a classic Ecology and its history (1993), proposes to go from a “ control of nature “” “ The concern for a master’s degree in this mastery (P. 184).

Fuel

Holding these different lines, Drouin forages and writes perhaps the best pages of the book when he mobilizes the full extent of his vast erudition to show the extension of the theme of the structure and fertilization of Kant and Sprengel flowers to Edmond Goblot, including Botanic writings from Darwin ; or when it follows the impact of the classifying model and the reference to Linné in fields as diverse as nosology, psychology, the painting gallery of Vienna or the Tale morphology of Vladimir Propp. Each time, Drouin invites us to follow the thread of his discoveries: often curious, always unexpected, surprising extensions sometimes to the point of becoming disconcerting.

In the passage of Dagognet to Drouin, of a philosophy of the living in the herbarium of the philosophers, we undoubtedly lose something of the haughty (and often cavalier) curriculum of Dagognet, which led us in a provocative contestation of “ naturalism ” contemporary. The herbarium of philosophers De Drouin offers a return to a more classic and less iconoclastic naturalism: where each page invites to philosophical reflection, by evoking, about plants, the charm of the memories of ancient times and the trace of exotic places.