The Naming of Names
The Search for Order in the World of Plants
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
The Naming of Names traces the search for order in the natural world, a search that for hundreds of years occupied some of the most brilliant minds in Europe, reaching its apex during the renaissance. Anna Pavord takes us on a thrilling adventure into botanical history, travelling from Athens in the third century BC, through Constantinople, Venice, the medical school at Salerno to the universities of Pisa and Padua. The journey, traced here for the first time, involves the culture of Islam, the first expeditions to the Indies and the first settlers in the New World. Gradually, over a long period in Europe, plants assumed identities and acquired names. Artists painted the first pictures of them. Plants acquired the two-part names that show how they are related to other plants. But who began all this work, and how was it done? Sumptuously illustrated in full colour, The Naming of Names gives a compelling insight into a world full of intrigue and intensely competitive egos.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pavord, author of the The Tulip and an expert gardener, traces the history of plant taxonomy from the ancient Greeks to 17th-century British botanist John Ray in this hefty tome, and though her passion for plants is apparent on every page, readers who don't share the same level of enthusiasm will be frustrated by Pavord's encyclopedic approach. Pavord, in prose as rich and colorful as the too-infrequent illustrations, contextualizes plant classification within larger intellectual, political and cultural spheres, but she verges dangerously close to writing a textbook; the vast amount of information she packs into brief, rapid-fire sections can overwhelm. In the best sections, she slows down to draw detailed portraits of researchers and describe how each contributed to the slowly evolving (and, until the late 1600's, unnamed) science of botany. Ray, for instance, marked "a quiet, lonely, dogged consummation" with "no fireworks, no claps of thunder, no swelling symphonic themes" when, shortly before his death and suffering from gangrene, he penned the six fundamental rules of botany. Pavord's prose dazzles, but it's not enough to carry readers with a casual interest in plants or gardening through an otherwise dense history.
