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Science and Civilisation in China, Part 4, Traditional Botany

An Ethnobotanical Approach

Georges Metailie

$385

Hardback

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English
Cambridge University Press
24 September 2015
This volume offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of botanical knowledge in China from ancient times to the end of the seventeenth century. In this highly illustrated study, Georges Métailié explores the perception and use of a wealth of plants and vegetation in China before the introduction of modern botany. Drawing from a number of original Chinese texts, which have been translated for the first time, Métailié gives new insights into a variety of aspects of plant knowledge in ancient China. Chapters are devoted to traditional botany and sources of classification, aquatic plants, fungi, horticultural techniques, fruit production, grafting and the influences of ancient Chinese plant culture on Europe. This volume combines technical expertise in the identification of plants with historical and anthropological sensitivity to propose a new, non-teleological view of scientific knowledge about the botanical world in ancient China.

By:  
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 254mm,  Width: 197mm,  Spine: 50mm
Weight:   1.660kg
ISBN:   9781107109872
ISBN 10:   1107109876
Series:   Science and Civilisation in China
Pages:   788
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Primary ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Georges Métailié is Emeritus Director of Research at the National Centre for Scientific Research, and member of the Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris, France. Beginning with the study of ancient Chinese botanical knowledge, he is now mainly working on the comparative study of the history of knowledge about plants and animals in China and Japan since the sixteenth century. For more than twenty years, he has been lecturing at the National Museum for Natural History in Paris in the field of ethnobotany. He is an honorary fellow of the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, UK, a foreign member of the Washington Academy of Sciences, USA, and received, in 2006, with Francine Fèvre, the Auguste Chevalier Award of the Académie des Sciences in Paris, France.

Reviews for Science and Civilisation in China, Part 4, Traditional Botany: An Ethnobotanical Approach

'Metailie has written not merely a supplement, but a new and original history of Chinese botany, one that puts Cullen's caveat into perspective.' Herman Reichenbach, Archives of Natural History


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