ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Cultivating History of Science in the Garden

• In Event: Plant Humanities 1 - Mapping an Emerging Field

English Abstract

The Botanical Garden and Museum of the University of Padua (Italy) represents a complex ecosystem of disciplines, plants, and people, which has developed over time. Founded in 1545 as a garden of medicinal plants, today this place intertwines research, education, and dissemination in an inseparable way. It preserves various types of collections related to the plant world—herbaria and other scientific and teaching collections, archives, books, and living plants—but it also hosts different disciplines, from the science of plants to the history of science, as well as a range of professions, from gardeners to museum curators, from scientists to librarians and historians of science. In a place shaped by history, nature, and science such as this, what role can a collection-based history of science play? The approach of the Plant Humanities offers valuable insights for answering this question, fostering multidisciplinary perspectives and collaboration among different kinds of expertise and languages. The paper will focus on the case study of Padua, discussing ongoing interdisciplinary projects on the herbarium collections and on the history of the Garden. In recent years, it has been the history of science chair that has coordinated the digitization project of Padua’s roughly 600,000 herbarium specimens—recently completed—and developed the concept for the new Botanical Museum inaugurated in February 2023. The case of Padua shows how plants and natural history spaces can today be at the heart of a history-of-science program, within a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary framework that also includes reflections on digital tools and content accessibility.

Author

• Elena Canadelli, University of Padova