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Elements of The Philosophy of Plants

Plate IV of botanical drawings from K. Sprengel's Elements of The Philosophy of Plants

Elements of The Philosophy of Plants (original German title: Neue Entdeckungen im ganzen Umfang der Pflanzenkunde) is a botany textbook written by the German botanist Kurt Sprengel (1766-1833) and the Swiss botanist Augustin-Pyrame de Candolle (1778-1841). It was first published 1820 in the German language and then anonymously translated into English in 1821. The first three parts of the book, which contain chapters about nomenclature, the theory of classification and phytography, were copied and translated from de Candolle's book Théorie élémentaire de la botanique (1819). The other parts of the textbook were written by Sprengel, where he described the anatomy and composition of plants, impact factors on the life of plants, plant diseases and the history of botany. Additionally, the last part of the book characterizes 46 diffrent plants containing a description, the geographic locations and applications. To provide a pictural representation of the findings, 8 plates with botanical drawings were added at the beginning of the book. The intention of the authors to publish this book was to update the knowledge in botany for the scientific community at this time, as the findings of the German botanist Willdenow (1765-1812) were seen as outdated and knew information was added to Carl Linnaeus' (1707-1778) work. Kurt Sprengel had some setbacks at the beginning of his carreer as a botanist (before 1800), but after cooperating with other German and Swiss botanists and publishing a paper about botanical history (original German title: Geschichte der Botanik) he gained acknowledgement in the scientific community.

Context

At the beginning of the 19th century science in Europe was hindered by the events of the Napoleonic wars and political reactions thereafter. Following Napoleon’s victory over Prussia in 1806, Germany experienced a flood of industrialisation and nationalism, sparking the expansion of all sciences, including botany where German botanists soon became leaders in the field. Botany of the nineteenth century revived the focus on internal structures of plants, aided by advances on the microscope, which were handier and had a better resolution. Thereby, a greater insight into the plants could be obtained to draw plant sketches in more detail and gain more knowledge about plant processes. However, only after 1840 the microscopes were good enough to examine the development of the plant organs. Additionally, the German botanist Johann Moldenhawer devised a technique known as maceration: plant samples are kept in water and the middle lamella dissolved, allowing the tissue to break up into individual cells. This simple, yet insightful contribution enabled the details of the plant structures to be seen. In both the 18th and 19th century, Plato's allegory of the cave had an impact on the perspective of  botany, because of his concept of the “idea” which was combined with a classification of lower and higher living systems. Therefore, it became important for botanists at the time to introduce a classification of plants, where an order of lower and higher living systems can be seen. Linnaeus was influenced by Plato’s systemisation and by the 19th century the Linnean taxonomy system was generally accepted and advances on plant classification were made by Robert Brown and Auguste de Candolle in the beginning of the century. After Linnaeus’ classification of plants, the European botanists did not consider botany as a science anymore. Because Linnaeus already classified a lot of plants, they thought the only remaining task was to find new, unknown plants, to classify them according to the system of Linnaeus. Furthermore, the stabilising economies around Europe granted the expansion of exploration and thus the addition of new plants.

Kurt Sprengel

Kurt Sprengel was born in 1766 in Halle (Germany) and grew up with 14 brothers and sisters. He studied medicine and botany at the University of Halle and got a medical historian, as which he worked as a private lecturer. During his medical work he became more interested into plants which can be applied for medicine and switched later completely to botany. In 1795 he became Professor at the University of Halle and also the director of the botanical garden in Halle. There, he had a collection of 700-800 of the scarcest plants from the Canary-islands, New Caledonia, Cape of good Hope, New Zealand and Patagonia. Thereby, he helped the botanical garden to become more famous. During his career Sprengel wrote around 21 books in the fields of medicine and botany. Because he was able to speak 7 different languages (German, English, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and French), most of his books were translated in one or more other languages. One of his most famous work, was an extensive herbarium, which was important for and used by many botanists in Germany and England. Its importance was due to the large classification and a brief description of plants all around the world. Willdenow and Foster took parts out of it for their own herbaria. After Sprengel’s death it was given to his son, which shared it with other botanists. In World War II it was destroyed. Another important book he wrote, was the “History of Botany” (1817) (original German title: Geschichte der Botanik). This topic he took up again in the book “Elements of The Philosophy of Plants” (1820), which he wrote in cooperation with De Candolle.

In the 18th century microscopes were a rarely used method to observe plants, however because they developed further in the end of the 18th century and therefore became handier, Sprengel was one of the first botanists that started to use them again and did therefore pioneering work in the field of botany. To gain a better understanding of the plants and to make more detailed plant drawings, the use of a microscope was important for him. 1802; Sprengel invited Goethe into his house, to use the microscope together for Goethe’s plant studies and visited the botanical garden. Goethe cited Kurt Sprengel’s work in his study about the germination of the date palm. Furthermore, they became friends and Goethe acknowledged and promoted Sprengel’s work.

In the year 1833 Sprengel died in Halle and he bequeathed his three sons Wilhelm (1792–1828), Gustav (1794–1841) und Anton Sprengel (1803–1854). Until his dead Sprengel was a member and honorary member of 70 academies in Germany and abroad and had therefore a big influence in medicine and botany at this time in Germany.