Networked texts. Practices of writing, reading, and publishing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century botany

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Bettina Dietz
• Subject Area: History of Science ; Early Modern History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508886028

This project investigates the fundamentally networked practices of botanical text making and botanical publishing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The focus will be on textual scientific practices that have been overshadowed by a lasting interest in object-related practices such as collecting and exchanging plants. These practices of text making are not only defining features of the working mode of individual scholars but they shaped the functioning of a publication system that was used by the botanical community collectively. The project will focus on four main aspects: on the practice of iterative publishing and its product, iterative books; on the posthumous (iterative) publishing of botanical material that was left behind after a scholar had died; on the often global dimensions of writing, rewriting and publishing iterative books; and on the fact that during these repeated cycles of rewriting and updating botanical books they became increasingly interlinked to form what can be called the networked text of early modern botany.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants