Jean-Jacques and his main steps in botany - Ville de Genève

Jean-Jacques and his main steps in botany
RoUssEaU’s aNTi-
mEdiCal HERbalism
1712-1739
i n
March 1728, Rousseau fled Geneva.
In Annecy, he met Françoise-Louise
de la Tour, baronne de Warens (1699-
1762), an aristocrat from canton of Vaud,
whom he called “Maman”; like many
women of her class, M me de Warens made
herbal medicines at home, but unusually,
she also produced them for the commercial
“ Two or three times the contentment I
saw in Anet’s eyes upon coming back
burdened with new plants brought to me to the point of
going herborizing with him. I am almost sure that if
I had done so a single time it would have won me over,
and perhaps I would be a great botanist today:
for I know no study in the world that mixes better with
my natural tastes than that of plants, and the life that
I have been leading for the past ten years in the country
is hardly anything but a continuous herborization....
since I did not have any idea of botany at that time,
I had acquired a sort of disdain and even disgust for it;
I looked as it as a sort of Apothecary’s study.”
(Christopher Kelly (trans.), “The Confessions”
in The collected writings of Rousseau, vol. 5
[Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995], p. 151)
market, assisted by her valet, Claude Anet
(d. 1734), who knew plants and their uses.
Rousseau later claimed that he believed
botany suited his natural inclinations from
a young age even if he did not act upon his
inclination until middle age. He justified
this delay by citing his distaste for the
pharmaceutical use of plants.
Private conversation between
J. J. Rousseau with M me de Warens
drawing by m. leloir engraved by l. Ruet
© akg-images / de agostini Picture library
1712
Rousseau is boRn on 28 June.
1717
DiscoveRy of plant sexuality by the fRench
botanist, sebastien vaillant (1669-1722).
1727
beginning of woRk on plant physiology: the
english physiologist, stephen hales (1677-
1761), highlights plant tRanspiRation.
1736
Jean-Jacques Rousseau leaving Geneva in 1728
Vintage poster by J. Courvoisier, 1912
© bGE - Geneva library, Geneva iconographic Collection
in his SyStema naturae the sweDish botanist
caRolus linnaeus (1707-1778) pResents his sexual
system of plant classification, which is baseD on
the numbeR of stamens anD the position of pistils.
(Kenneth Yung & alexandra Cook, trans.)

Jean-Jacques and his main steps in botany
RoUssEaU iN THE
CHEmiCal laboRaToRY
1740-1750
A diversion during one of Rouelle’s chemistry lectures at the Jardin du Roi [Paris] From de l. Figuier, Vies des savants illustres: savants du XVIII e siècle, Hachette, Paris, 1874 © iam /akg-images
i n
the 1740’s Rousseau studied chemistry
in Paris with his patron, Dupin de
Francueil. Francueil set up a laboratory,
a costly individual undertaking before
the institutionalisation of science. Rous-
seau wrote a long treatise on chemistry,
Institutions chimiques, which was discov-
ered in 1882 in Trélex (canton of Vaud).
These studies influenced his turn to bot-
any: he characterized the fields as the
botanist’s “only laboratory”, but he rejected
chemical analysis and the pharmacist’s
mortar and pestle, preferring to preserve
the plant itself.
“I became attached to Chemistry. Along with
M. de Francueil I took several courses with M. Rouelle,
and for good or ill we began to scribble on paper about that science
whose elements we barely possessed. In 1747 we went to pass the
autumn in [Touraine] at the Château of Chenonceaux, the royal
house on the Cher, built by Henri II for Diane de Poitiers....
I composed other little works there... and all that was done without
discontinuing my work on Chemistry....”
Christopher Kelly (trans.), “The Confessions” in The collected writings of Rousseau, vol. 5
[Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995], p. 287
“M. de Francueil was studying natural history and chemistry at that
time and was making a [natural history] collection. I believe that he
aspired to the Academy of Sciences: for that purpose he wanted to write
a book, and he judged that I could be useful to him in this labor.”
Christopher Kelly (trans.), “The Confessions” in The collected writings of Rousseau, vol. 5
[Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995], p. 286

Jean-Jacques and his main steps in botany
HERboRisaTioNs:
sCiENCE aNd soCiabiliTY
1764-1778
i n
the eighteenth century the “herborisation”,
or botanical expedition, formed an essential
part of the botanist’s training, and provided
the specimens for the herbarium, a collection
of dried plants preserved for future reference
and pedagogical purposes. From 1764 to 1778
Rousseau made many botanical expeditions
in Switzerland, in England, in the Dauphiné,
and the environs of Paris; these were usually in
the company of other botanists or students of
botany. He recounts these expeditions in his
correspondence and The Reveries of the Solitary
Walker. These expeditions were scientific as well
as sociable, with the goal of collecting complete
specimens, especially of rare species.
J. J. Rousseau botanizing in the vicinity of Montreuil
oil on canvas by C. Fouqueray
© ile-de-France Region - General inventory / J. b. Vialles
© document Hôtel-de-Ville de montreuil
“It was... in 1764 that Mr. du Peyrou, Colonel Pury, Rousseau and myself were all together
in the val de Travers. We planned to collect plants from all over the Jura, to study the sexual
system of Linnæus, to draw on the general principles of the science [of botany], to study the stamens and
pistils with the help of a magnifying glass, to study in each plant the traits assigned to each of the twenty-
four classes of the ingenious nomenclature of that great naturalist. Rousseau recommended that we each
take a copy of Linnæus’s Systema naturæ.”
1751
linnaeus pResents elements of a pReliminaRy
natuRal methoD foR the classification of
plants in his PhiloSoPhia botanica.
1753
in his SPecieS Plantarum linnaeus invents
a binomial nomenclatuRe in latin (genus
name followeD by the species name) foR the
naming all plants.
1762
the english botanist, william huDson (1730-
1793), aDopts linnaean nomenclatuRe foR his
Flora anglica, a woRk on english plants.
1763-1764
the fRench botanist, michel aDanson (1727-
1806), intRoDuces an oRiginal methoD of
natuRal plant classification, which is baseD
on 65 chaRacteRs in his Famille deS PlanteS.
1768
the swiss (beRnese) botanist, albRecht von
halleR (1708-1777), publishes his hiStoria
StirPium indigenarum helvetiae, the fiRst floRa
of switzeRlanD, but Does not use linnaean
nomenclatuRe.
1774
the fRench botanist, antoine-lauRent De
Jussieu (1748-1836), publishes his exPoSition d’un
nouvel ordre deS PlanteS, adoPté danS leS démonStra-
tionS du jardin royal, the basis foR the cuRRent
classification of the moRe impoRtant plants,
incluDing the maJoRity of the “natuRal” plant
family names that aRe cuRRently RecogniseD.
1778
Rousseau Dies on 2 July at the age of 66.
(Kenneth Yung & alexandra Cook, trans.)
J. J. Rousseau returning
from botanising in
June 1778
drawing by N. monsiau
engraved by l.-m. Halbou, 1797
© bGE - Geneva library,
Geneva iconographic Collection
François-louis d’Escherny, Mélanges de littérature, d’histoire, de morale et de philosophie, vol. 3
[Paris: bossange, 1811], p. 41
(orange Translations & Rinske Kuiper, trans.)

Jean-Jacques and his main steps in botany
sCiENCE
aNd aEsTHETiCs:
RoUssEaU’s HERbaRia
H erbaria
are dried plant collections,
which are used for teaching,
research, and recording biodiversity.
Rousseau made herbaria for his friends in
order to teach them botany and awaken
their interest in nature. How he learned
this art is not exactly known, yet Rousseau
was an artisan at heart, acquiring many
“All of a
sudden at the age
of sixty-five plus, deprived of
the little memory I used to
have and of my remaining
strength to wander around the
countryside, without a guide,
without books, without a
garden, without a herbarium,
here I am caught up again in
this folly, but with still more
ardor than I had in giving
myself up to it the first time.
Now I am seriously preoccu-
pied with the prudent project
of learning [Johan Andreas]
Murray’s whole Regnum
vegetabile by heart and of
becoming acquainted with all
the known plants on earth.
Unable to buy any botany
books again, I set myself the
task of copying those lent
to me and resolved to make
another herbarium richer
than the first, while waiting
to put all the plants of the
seas and the Alps and all the
trees of the Indies in it....”
Charles E. butterworth (trans.)
“The Reveries of the solitary walker, seventh
walk” in The collected writings of Rousseau, vol. 8
[Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000],
pp. 57-58
Amourettes tremblantes
[Quaking grass, Briza media l.]
From the «Small herbarium for
Mademoiselle Julie Boy de la Tour»
© Zurich Central library
skills during his life-engraving, music-
copying, lace-making, and book-binding.
His herbaria are works of art, carefully
executed, some of them providing detailed
notes, including their provenance, rarity,
and other features. A fine example is the
herbarium he made for Julie Boy de la
Tour (1751-1826) in 1772.
Small herbarium for
Mademoiselle Julie Boy de la Tour
© Zurich Central library