149-576: Bibliotheca Botanica ("Bibliography of botany", Amsterdam, 1736, Salomen Schouten; 2nd edn., 1751) is a botany book by Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). The book was written and published in Amsterdam when Linnaeus was twenty-eight and dedicated to the botanist Johannes Burman (1707–1779). The first edition appeared in 1736 with the full title Bibliotheca Botanica recensens libros plus mille de plantis huc usque editos secundum systema auctorum naturale in classes, ordines, genera et species ; it
298-410: A golden age lasting from 1683 to 1703 (see also Incrementa Botanices , Biuur 1753 and Reformatio Botanices , Reftelius, 1762, for other historical notes by Linnaeus). The Preface mentions that Bibliotheca Botanica was the first part of a planned Bibliotheca medica (which he did not produce). Linnaean authority Frans Stafleu describes the book: The Bibliotheca is a concise history of botany in
447-483: A botanically and pharmacologically important herbal Historia Plantarum in 1544 and a pharmacopoeia of lasting importance, the Dispensatorium in 1546. Naturalist Conrad von Gesner (1516–1565) and herbalist John Gerard (1545– c. 1611 ) published herbals covering the supposed medicinal uses of plants. Naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) was considered the father of natural history , which included
596-538: A century before, were first observed . In 2019, the international collaboration Event Horizon Telescope presented the first direct image of a black hole 's accretion disc . Modern science is commonly divided into three major branches : natural science , social science , and formal science . Each of these branches comprises various specialised yet overlapping scientific disciplines that often possess their own nomenclature and expertise. Both natural and social sciences are empirical sciences , as their knowledge
745-414: A considerable problem in agriculture, and the biology and control of plant pathogens in agriculture and natural ecosystems . Ethnobotany is the study of the relationships between plants and people. When applied to the investigation of historical plant–people relationships ethnobotany may be referred to as archaeobotany or palaeoethnobotany . Some of the earliest plant-people relationships arose between
894-452: A continuum between the major morphological categories of root, stem (caulome), leaf (phyllome) and trichome . Furthermore, it emphasises structural dynamics. Modern systematics aims to reflect and discover phylogenetic relationships between plants. Modern Molecular phylogenetics largely ignores morphological characters, relying on DNA sequences as data. Molecular analysis of DNA sequences from most families of flowering plants enabled
1043-474: A discipline. Ideas on human nature, society, and economics evolved during the Enlightenment. Hume and other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed A Treatise of Human Nature , which was expressed historically in works by authors including James Burnett , Adam Ferguson , John Millar and William Robertson , all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behaved in ancient and primitive cultures with
1192-404: A dry, enumerative, but very efficient style. Linnaeus describes the development of botanical science by subdividing the authors in various categories and by adding several statements on the main events in human affairs without which the growth of botany as a science cannot be understood. The often enlightening and amusing names for the various categories of botanists show not only a good knowledge of
1341-411: A few of their scientific predecessors – Galileo , Kepler , Boyle , and Newton principally – as the guides to every physical and social field of the day. The 18th century saw significant advancements in the practice of medicine and physics; the development of biological taxonomy by Carl Linnaeus ; a new understanding of magnetism and electricity; and the maturation of chemistry as
1490-619: A general compendium of some 12,000 items in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew arranged by authors' forenames, appeared in 1545 as an attempt to bring some order into the rapidly increasing range of literature consequent to the Renaissance and the introduction of printing. The Bibliotheca Botanica was the first botanical bibliography arranged by subject. The titles were arranged hierarchically into 16 classes or chapters, each with one or more ordines or sections. Applying this methodus naturalis to books and people
1639-423: A greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to take shape, along with the changing of "natural philosophy" to "natural science". New knowledge in science is advanced by research from scientists who are motivated by curiosity about the world and a desire to solve problems. Contemporary scientific research
SECTION 10
#17330929556991788-400: A hierarchical classification of plant species that remains the reference point for modern botanical nomenclature . This established a standardised binomial or two-part naming scheme where the first name represented the genus and the second identified the species within the genus. For the purposes of identification, Linnaeus's Systema Sexuale classified plants into 24 groups according to
1937-466: A highly stable universe where there could be little loss of resources. However, with the advent of the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution there was an increased understanding that not all forms of energy have the same energy qualities , the ease of conversion to useful work or to another form of energy. This realisation led to the development of the laws of thermodynamics , in which
2086-455: A hypothesis proves unsatisfactory it is modified or discarded. If the hypothesis survives testing, it may become adopted into the framework of a scientific theory , a validly reasoned , self-consistent model or framework for describing the behaviour of certain natural events. A theory typically describes the behaviour of much broader sets of observations than a hypothesis; commonly, a large number of hypotheses can be logically bound together by
2235-407: A new non- teleological way. This implied a shift in the view of objects: objects were now considered as having no innate goals. Leibniz assumed that different types of things all work according to the same general laws of nature, with no special formal or final causes. During this time the declared purpose and value of science became producing wealth and inventions that would improve human lives, in
2384-404: A plant sucks water through them under water stress. Lignin is also used in other cell types like sclerenchyma fibres that provide structural support for a plant and is a major constituent of wood. Sporopollenin is a chemically resistant polymer found in the outer cell walls of spores and pollen of land plants responsible for the survival of early land plant spores and the pollen of seed plants in
2533-552: A polymer of fructose is used for the same purpose in the sunflower family Asteraceae . Some of the glucose is converted to sucrose (common table sugar) for export to the rest of the plant. Unlike in animals (which lack chloroplasts), plants and their eukaryote relatives have delegated many biochemical roles to their chloroplasts , including synthesising all their fatty acids , and most amino acids . The fatty acids that chloroplasts make are used for many things, such as providing material to build cell membranes out of and making
2682-458: A preference for one outcome over another. Eliminating the bias can be achieved through transparency, careful experimental design , and a thorough peer review process of the experimental results and conclusions. After the results of an experiment are announced or published, it is normal practice for independent researchers to double-check how the research was performed, and to follow up by performing similar experiments to determine how dependable
2831-456: A priori disciplines and because of this, there is disagreement on whether they constitute a science. Nevertheless, the formal sciences play an important role in the empirical sciences. Calculus , for example, was initially invented to understand motion in physics. Natural and social sciences that rely heavily on mathematical applications include mathematical physics , chemistry , biology , finance , and economics . Applied science
2980-460: A process that generates molecular oxygen (O 2 ) as a by-product. The light energy captured by chlorophyll a is initially in the form of electrons (and later a proton gradient ) that's used to make molecules of ATP and NADPH which temporarily store and transport energy. Their energy is used in the light-independent reactions of the Calvin cycle by the enzyme rubisco to produce molecules of
3129-505: A pure form of carbon made by pyrolysis of wood, has a long history as a metal- smelting fuel, as a filter material and adsorbent and as an artist's material and is one of the three ingredients of gunpowder . Cellulose , the world's most abundant organic polymer, can be converted into energy, fuels, materials and chemical feedstock. Products made from cellulose include rayon and cellophane , wallpaper paste , biobutanol and gun cotton . Sugarcane , rapeseed and soy are some of
SECTION 20
#17330929556993278-400: A revolution in information technology and the rise of the global internet and mobile computing , including smartphones . The need for mass systematisation of long, intertwined causal chains and large amounts of data led to the rise of the fields of systems theory and computer-assisted scientific modelling . The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 by identifying and mapping all of
3427-457: A separate discipline from philosophy when Wilhelm Wundt founded the first laboratory for psychological research in 1879. During the mid-19th century Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently proposed the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858, which explained how different plants and animals originated and evolved. Their theory was set out in detail in Darwin's book On
3576-592: A separate field because they rely on deductive reasoning instead of the scientific method or empirical evidence as their main methodology. Applied sciences are disciplines that use scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine . The history of science spans the majority of the historical record, with the earliest written records of identifiable predecessors to modern science dating to Bronze Age Egypt and Mesopotamia from around 3000 to 1200 BCE . Their contributions to mathematics, astronomy , and medicine entered and shaped
3725-475: A set of basic assumptions that are needed to justify the scientific method: there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers; this objective reality is governed by natural laws ; these laws were discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation. Mathematics is essential in the formation of hypotheses , theories , and laws, because it is used extensively in quantitative modelling, observing, and collecting measurements . Statistics
3874-463: A set of rules. It includes mathematics, systems theory , and theoretical computer science . The formal sciences share similarities with the other two branches by relying on objective, careful, and systematic study of an area of knowledge. They are, however, different from the empirical sciences as they rely exclusively on deductive reasoning, without the need for empirical evidence, to verify their abstract concepts. The formal sciences are therefore
4023-478: A single theory. Thus, a theory is a hypothesis explaining various other hypotheses. In that vein, theories are formulated according to most of the same scientific principles as hypotheses. Scientists may generate a model , an attempt to describe or depict an observation in terms of a logical, physical or mathematical representation, and to generate new hypotheses that can be tested by experimentation. While performing experiments to test hypotheses, scientists may have
4172-429: A strong awareness of the determining forces of modernity . Modern sociology largely originated from this movement. In 1776, Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations , which is often considered the first work on modern economics. During the nineteenth century many distinguishing characteristics of contemporary modern science began to take shape. These included the transformation of the life and physical sciences;
4321-526: A student of Aristotle who invented and described many of its principles and is widely regarded in the scientific community as the "Father of Botany". His major works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants , constitute the most important contributions to botanical science until the Middle Ages , almost seventeen centuries later. Another work from Ancient Greece that made an early impact on botany
4470-438: A unified theory in the early 20th-century when the modern synthesis reconciled Darwinian evolution with classical genetics . Albert Einstein 's theory of relativity and the development of quantum mechanics complement classical mechanics to describe physics in extreme length , time and gravity . Widespread use of integrated circuits in the last quarter of the 20th century combined with communications satellites led to
4619-454: A useful proxy for temperature in historical climatology , and the biological impact of climate change and global warming . Palynology , the analysis of fossil pollen deposits in sediments from thousands or millions of years ago allows the reconstruction of past climates. Estimates of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations since the Palaeozoic have been obtained from stomatal densities and
Bibliotheca Botanica - Misplaced Pages Continue
4768-1010: A variety of spatial scales in groups, populations and communities that collectively constitute vegetation. Regions with characteristic vegetation types and dominant plants as well as similar abiotic and biotic factors, climate , and geography make up biomes like tundra or tropical rainforest . Herbivores eat plants, but plants can defend themselves and some species are parasitic or even carnivorous . Other organisms form mutually beneficial relationships with plants. For example, mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia provide plants with nutrients in exchange for food, ants are recruited by ant plants to provide protection, honey bees , bats and other animals pollinate flowers and humans and other animals act as dispersal vectors to spread spores and seeds . Plant responses to climate and other environmental changes can inform our understanding of how these changes affect ecosystem function and productivity. For example, plant phenology can be
4917-628: A way of drug discovery . Plants can synthesise coloured dyes and pigments such as the anthocyanins responsible for the red colour of red wine , yellow weld and blue woad used together to produce Lincoln green , indoxyl , source of the blue dye indigo traditionally used to dye denim and the artist's pigments gamboge and rose madder . Sugar, starch , cotton, linen , hemp , some types of rope , wood and particle boards , papyrus and paper, vegetable oils , wax , and natural rubber are examples of commercially important materials made from plant tissues or their secondary products. Charcoal ,
5066-452: A wider range of shared characters and were widely followed. The Candollean system reflected his ideas of the progression of morphological complexity and the later Bentham & Hooker system , which was influential until the mid-19th century, was influenced by Candolle's approach. Darwin 's publication of the Origin of Species in 1859 and his concept of common descent required modifications to
5215-406: Is De materia medica , a five-volume encyclopedia about preliminary herbal medicine written in the middle of the first century by Greek physician and pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides . De materia medica was widely read for more than 1,500 years. Important contributions from the medieval Muslim world include Ibn Wahshiyya 's Nabatean Agriculture , Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī 's (828–896)
5364-405: Is peppermint , Mentha × piperita , a sterile hybrid between Mentha aquatica and spearmint, Mentha spicata . The many cultivated varieties of wheat are the result of multiple inter- and intra- specific crosses between wild species and their hybrids. Angiosperms with monoecious flowers often have self-incompatibility mechanisms that operate between the pollen and stigma so that
5513-476: Is a broad, multidisciplinary subject with contributions and insights from most other areas of science and technology. Research topics include the study of plant structure , growth and differentiation, reproduction , biochemistry and primary metabolism , chemical products, development , diseases , evolutionary relationships , systematics , and plant taxonomy . Dominant themes in 21st-century plant science are molecular genetics and epigenetics , which study
5662-487: Is based on empirical observations and is capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions. Natural science is the study of the physical world. It can be divided into two main branches: life science and physical science . These two branches may be further divided into more specialised disciplines. For example, physical science can be subdivided into physics, chemistry , astronomy , and earth science . Modern natural science
5811-439: Is becoming a central feature of computational contributions to science, for example in agent-based computational economics , random forests , topic modeling and various forms of prediction. However, machines alone rarely advance knowledge as they require human guidance and capacity to reason; and they can introduce bias against certain social groups or sometimes underperform against humans. Interdisciplinary science involves
5960-698: Is considered to be one of the most important publications in medicine and was used until the 18th century. By the eleventh century most of Europe had become Christian, and in 1088, the University of Bologna emerged as the first university in Europe. As such, demand for Latin translation of ancient and scientific texts grew, a major contributor to the Renaissance of the 12th century . Renaissance scholasticism in western Europe flourished, with experiments done by observing, describing, and classifying subjects in nature. In
6109-762: Is gathered by ethnobotanists. This information can relay a great deal of information on how the land once was thousands of years ago and how it has changed over that time. The goals of plant ecology are to understand the causes of their distribution patterns, productivity, environmental impact, evolution, and responses to environmental change. Plants depend on certain edaphic (soil) and climatic factors in their environment but can modify these factors too. For example, they can change their environment's albedo , increase runoff interception, stabilise mineral soils and develop their organic content, and affect local temperature. Plants compete with other organisms in their ecosystem for resources. They interact with their neighbours at
Bibliotheca Botanica - Misplaced Pages Continue
6258-535: Is highly collaborative and is usually done by teams in academic and research institutions , government agencies, and companies. The practical impact of their work has led to the emergence of science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritising the ethical and moral development of commercial products, armaments, health care, public infrastructure, and environmental protection . The word science has been used in Middle English since
6407-451: Is still a major foundation of modern botany. Her books Plant Anatomy and Anatomy of Seed Plants have been key plant structural biology texts for more than half a century. The discipline of plant ecology was pioneered in the late 19th century by botanists such as Eugenius Warming , who produced the hypothesis that plants form communities , and his mentor and successor Christen C. Raunkiær whose system for describing plant life forms
6556-400: Is still given to these groups by botanists, and fungi (including lichens) and photosynthetic protists are usually covered in introductory botany courses. Palaeobotanists study ancient plants in the fossil record to provide information about the evolutionary history of plants . Cyanobacteria , the first oxygen-releasing photosynthetic organisms on Earth, are thought to have given rise to
6705-444: Is still in use today. The concept that the composition of plant communities such as temperate broadleaf forest changes by a process of ecological succession was developed by Henry Chandler Cowles , Arthur Tansley and Frederic Clements . Clements is credited with the idea of climax vegetation as the most complex vegetation that an environment can support and Tansley introduced the concept of ecosystems to biology. Building on
6854-495: Is the science of plant life and a branch of biology . A botanist , plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word botanē ( βοτάνη ) meaning " pasture ", " herbs " " grass ", or " fodder "; Botanē is in turn derived from boskein ( Greek : βόσκειν ), "to feed" or "to graze ". Traditionally, botany has also included
7003-447: Is the search for solutions to practical problems using this knowledge. Most understanding comes from basic research, though sometimes applied research targets specific practical problems. This leads to technological advances that were not previously imaginable. Scientific research involves using the scientific method , which seeks to objectively explain the events of nature in a reproducible way. Scientists usually take for granted
7152-498: Is the study of ferns and allied plants. A number of other taxa of ranks varying from family to subgenus have terms for their study, including agrostology (or graminology) for the study of grasses, synantherology for the study of composites, and batology for the study of brambles. Study can also be divided by guild rather than clade or grade . Dendrology is the study of woody plants. Many divisions of biology have botanical subfields. These are commonly denoted by prefixing
7301-526: Is the successor to the natural philosophy that began in Ancient Greece . Galileo , Descartes , Bacon , and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches that were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures , and presuppositions , often overlooked, remain necessary in natural science. Systematic data collection, including discovery science , succeeded natural history , which emerged in
7450-427: Is the use of the scientific method and knowledge to attain practical goals and includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Engineering is the use of scientific principles to invent, design and build machines, structures and technologies. Science may contribute to the development of new technologies. Medicine is the practice of caring for patients by maintaining and restoring health through
7599-403: Is used to make falsifiable predictions, which are typically posted before being tested by experimentation. Disproof of a prediction is evidence of progress. Experimentation is especially important in science to help establish causal relationships to avoid the correlation fallacy , though in some sciences such as astronomy or geology, a predicted observation might be more appropriate. When
SECTION 50
#17330929556997748-410: Is used to summarise and analyse data, which allows scientists to assess the reliability of experimental results. In the scientific method an explanatory thought experiment or hypothesis is put forward as an explanation using parsimony principles and is expected to seek consilience – fitting with other accepted facts related to an observation or scientific question. This tentative explanation
7897-553: The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group to publish in 1998 a phylogeny of flowering plants, answering many of the questions about relationships among angiosperm families and species. The theoretical possibility of a practical method for identification of plant species and commercial varieties by DNA barcoding is the subject of active current research. Botany is divided along several axes. Some subfields of botany relate to particular groups of organisms. Divisions related to
8046-495: The Book of Plants , and Ibn Bassal 's The Classification of Soils . In the early 13th century, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati , and Ibn al-Baitar (d. 1248) wrote on botany in a systematic and scientific manner. In the mid-16th century, botanical gardens were founded in a number of Italian universities. The Padua botanical garden in 1545 is usually considered to be the first which is still in its original location. These gardens continued
8195-611: The Byzantine empire and Arabic translations were done by groups such as the Nestorians and the Monophysites . Under the Caliphate , these Arabic translations were later improved and developed by Arabic scientists. By the 6th and 7th centuries, the neighbouring Sassanid Empire established the medical Academy of Gondeshapur , which was considered by Greek, Syriac, and Persian physicians as
8344-417: The C 4 carbon fixation pathway for photosynthesis which avoid the losses resulting from photorespiration in the more common C 3 carbon fixation pathway. These biochemical strategies are unique to land plants. Phytochemistry is a branch of plant biochemistry primarily concerned with the chemical substances produced by plants during secondary metabolism . Some of these compounds are toxins such as
8493-706: The Early Middle Ages (400 to 1000 CE), but in the Medieval renaissances ( Carolingian Renaissance , Ottonian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century ) scholarship flourished again. Some Greek manuscripts lost in Western Europe were preserved and expanded upon in the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age , along with the later efforts of Byzantine Greek scholars who brought Greek manuscripts from
8642-551: The Proto-Italic language as * skije- or * skijo- meaning "to know", which may originate from Proto-Indo-European language as *skh 1 -ie , *skh 1 -io , meaning "to incise". The Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben proposed sciō is a back-formation of nescīre , meaning "to not know, be unfamiliar with", which may derive from Proto-Indo-European *sekH- in Latin secāre , or *skh 2 - , from *sḱʰeh2(i)- meaning "to cut". In
8791-504: The alkaloid coniine from hemlock . Others, such as the essential oils peppermint oil and lemon oil are useful for their aroma, as flavourings and spices (e.g., capsaicin ), and in medicine as pharmaceuticals as in opium from opium poppies . Many medicinal and recreational drugs , such as tetrahydrocannabinol (active ingredient in cannabis ), caffeine , morphine and nicotine come directly from plants. Others are simple derivatives of botanical natural products. For example,
8940-565: The auxin plant hormones by Kenneth V. Thimann in 1948 enabled regulation of plant growth by externally applied chemicals. Frederick Campion Steward pioneered techniques of micropropagation and plant tissue culture controlled by plant hormones . The synthetic auxin 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid or 2,4-D was one of the first commercial synthetic herbicides . 20th century developments in plant biochemistry have been driven by modern techniques of organic chemical analysis , such as spectroscopy , chromatography and electrophoresis . With
9089-501: The camera obscura and the telescope . At the start of the Renaissance, Roger Bacon , Vitello , and John Peckham each built up a scholastic ontology upon a causal chain beginning with sensation, perception, and finally apperception of the individual and universal forms of Aristotle. A model of vision later known as perspectivism was exploited and studied by the artists of the Renaissance. This theory uses only three of Aristotle's four causes: formal, material, and final. In
SECTION 60
#17330929556999238-626: The cell theory with Theodor Schwann and Rudolf Virchow and was among the first to grasp the significance of the cell nucleus that had been described by Robert Brown in 1831. In 1855, Adolf Fick formulated Fick's laws that enabled the calculation of the rates of molecular diffusion in biological systems. Building upon the gene-chromosome theory of heredity that originated with Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), August Weismann (1834–1914) proved that inheritance only takes place through gametes . No other cells can pass on inherited characters. The work of Katherine Esau (1898–1997) on plant anatomy
9387-444: The cellulose and lignin used to build their bodies, and secondary products like resins and aroma compounds . Plants and various other groups of photosynthetic eukaryotes collectively known as " algae " have unique organelles known as chloroplasts . Chloroplasts are thought to be descended from cyanobacteria that formed endosymbiotic relationships with ancient plant and algal ancestors. Chloroplasts and cyanobacteria contain
9536-424: The historical method , case studies , and cross-cultural studies . Moreover, if quantitative information is available, social scientists may rely on statistical approaches to better understand social relationships and processes. Formal science is an area of study that generates knowledge using formal systems . A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to
9685-427: The indigenous people of Canada in identifying edible plants from inedible plants. This relationship the indigenous people had with plants was recorded by ethnobotanists. Plant biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes used by plants. Some of these processes are used in their primary metabolism like the photosynthetic Calvin cycle and crassulacean acid metabolism . Others make specialised materials like
9834-431: The materialistic sense of having more food, clothing, and other things. In Bacon's words , "the real and legitimate goal of sciences is the endowment of human life with new inventions and riches ", and he discouraged scientists from pursuing intangible philosophical or spiritual ideas, which he believed contributed little to human happiness beyond "the fume of subtle, sublime or pleasing [speculation]". Science during
9983-426: The pines , and flowering plants ) and the free-sporing cryptogams including ferns , clubmosses , liverworts , hornworts and mosses . Embryophytes are multicellular eukaryotes descended from an ancestor that obtained its energy from sunlight by photosynthesis . They have life cycles with alternating haploid and diploid phases. The sexual haploid phase of embryophytes, known as the gametophyte , nurtures
10132-499: The prevention , diagnosis , and treatment of injury or disease. The applied sciences are often contrasted with the basic sciences , which are focused on advancing scientific theories and laws that explain and predict events in the natural world. Computational science applies computing power to simulate real-world situations, enabling a better understanding of scientific problems than formal mathematics alone can achieve. The use of machine learning and artificial intelligence
10281-481: The theory of impetus . His criticism served as an inspiration to medieval scholars and Galileo Galilei, who extensively cited his works ten centuries later. During late antiquity and the early Middle Ages , natural phenomena were mainly examined via the Aristotelian approach. The approach includes Aristotle's four causes : material, formal, moving, and final cause. Many Greek classical texts were preserved by
10430-406: The 13th century, medical teachers and students at Bologna began opening human bodies, leading to the first anatomy textbook based on human dissection by Mondino de Luzzi . New developments in optics played a role in the inception of the Renaissance , both by challenging long-held metaphysical ideas on perception, as well as by contributing to the improvement and development of technology such as
10579-707: The 14th century in the sense of "the state of knowing". The word was borrowed from the Anglo-Norman language as the suffix -cience , which was borrowed from the Latin word scientia , meaning "knowledge, awareness, understanding". It is a noun derivative of the Latin sciens meaning "knowing", and undisputedly derived from the Latin sciō , the present participle scīre , meaning "to know". There are many hypotheses for science ' s ultimate word origin. According to Michiel de Vaan , Dutch linguist and Indo-Europeanist , sciō may have its origin in
10728-444: The 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and other biotic beings. Today, "natural history" suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences. Social science is the study of human behaviour and the functioning of societies. It has many disciplines that include, but are not limited to anthropology , economics, history, human geography , political science , psychology, and sociology. In
10877-408: The 3-carbon sugar glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate (G3P). Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate is the first product of photosynthesis and the raw material from which glucose and almost all other organic molecules of biological origin are synthesised. Some of the glucose is converted to starch which is stored in the chloroplast. Starch is the characteristic energy store of most land plants and algae, while inulin ,
11026-633: The 3rd millennium BCE, the ancient Egyptians developed a decimal numbering system , solved practical problems using geometry , and developed a calendar . Their healing therapies involved drug treatments and the supernatural, such as prayers, incantations , and rituals. The ancient Mesopotamians used knowledge about the properties of various natural chemicals for manufacturing pottery , faience , glass, soap, metals, lime plaster , and waterproofing. They studied animal physiology , anatomy , behaviour , and astrology for divinatory purposes. The Mesopotamians had an intense interest in medicine and
11175-506: The Candollean system to reflect evolutionary relationships as distinct from mere morphological similarity. Botany was greatly stimulated by the appearance of the first "modern" textbook, Matthias Schleiden 's Grundzüge der Wissenschaftlichen Botanik , published in English in 1849 as Principles of Scientific Botany . Schleiden was a microscopist and an early plant anatomist who co-founded
11324-404: The Enlightenment was dominated by scientific societies and academies , which had largely replaced universities as centres of scientific research and development. Societies and academies were the backbones of the maturation of the scientific profession. Another important development was the popularisation of science among an increasingly literate population. Enlightenment philosophers turned to
11473-634: The Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity , whereby formal attempts were made to provide explanations of events in the physical world based on natural causes, while further advancements, including the introduction of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system , were made during the Golden Age of India . Scientific research deteriorated in these regions after the fall of the Western Roman Empire during
11622-410: The Greek philosopher Leucippus and his student Democritus . Later, Epicurus would develop a full natural cosmology based on atomism, and would adopt a "canon" (ruler, standard) which established physical criteria or standards of scientific truth. The Greek doctor Hippocrates established the tradition of systematic medical science and is known as " The Father of Medicine ". A turning point in
11771-453: The Milesian school, which was founded by Thales of Miletus and later continued by his successors Anaximander and Anaximenes , were the first to attempt to explain natural phenomena without relying on the supernatural . The Pythagoreans developed a complex number philosophy and contributed significantly to the development of mathematical science. The theory of atoms was developed by
11920-551: The Origin of Species , published in 1859. Separately, Gregor Mendel presented his paper, " Experiments on Plant Hybridisation " in 1865, which outlined the principles of biological inheritance, serving as the basis for modern genetics. Early in the 19th century John Dalton suggested the modern atomic theory , based on Democritus's original idea of indivisible particles called atoms . The laws of conservation of energy , conservation of momentum and conservation of mass suggested
12069-474: The Vegetable Kingdom at the start of chapter XII noted "The first and most important of the conclusions which may be drawn from the observations given in this volume, is that generally cross-fertilisation is beneficial and self-fertilisation often injurious, at least with the plants on which I experimented." An important adaptive benefit of outcrossing is that it allows the masking of deleterious mutations in
12218-412: The above pair of categories gives rise to fields such as bryogeography (the study of the distribution of mosses). Different parts of plants also give rise to their own subfields, including xylology , carpology (or fructology) and palynology , these been the study of wood, fruit and pollen/spores respectively. Botany also overlaps on the one hand with agriculture, horticulture and silviculture, and on
12367-472: The advent of writing systems in early civilisations like Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia , creating the earliest written records in the history of science in around 3000 to 1200 BCE . Although the words and concepts of "science" and "nature" were not part of the conceptual landscape at the time, the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians made contributions that would later find a place in Greek and medieval science: mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. From
12516-439: The ancestor of plants by entering into an endosymbiotic relationship with an early eukaryote, ultimately becoming the chloroplasts in plant cells. The new photosynthetic plants (along with their algal relatives) accelerated the rise in atmospheric oxygen started by the cyanobacteria , changing the ancient oxygen-free, reducing , atmosphere to one in which free oxygen has been abundant for more than 2 billion years. Among
12665-447: The base of most food chains because they use the energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil and atmosphere, converting them into a form that can be used by animals. This is what ecologists call the first trophic level . The modern forms of the major staple foods , such as hemp , teff , maize, rice, wheat and other cereal grasses, pulses , bananas and plantains, as well as hemp , flax and cotton grown for their fibres, are
12814-500: The blue-green pigment chlorophyll a . Chlorophyll a (as well as its plant and green algal-specific cousin chlorophyll b ) absorbs light in the blue-violet and orange/red parts of the spectrum while reflecting and transmitting the green light that we see as the characteristic colour of these organisms. The energy in the red and blue light that these pigments absorb is used by chloroplasts to make energy-rich carbon compounds from carbon dioxide and water by oxygenic photosynthesis ,
12963-446: The broader historical sense of botany include bacteriology , mycology (or fungology) and phycology - the study of bacteria, fungi and algae respectively - with lichenology as a subfield of mycology. The narrower sense of botany in the sense of the study of embryophytes (land plants) is disambiguated as phytology. Bryology is the study of mosses (and in the broader sense also liverworts and hornworts). Pteridology (or filicology)
13112-455: The characters may be artificial in keys designed purely for identification ( diagnostic keys ) or more closely related to the natural or phyletic order of the taxa in synoptic keys. By the 18th century, new plants for study were arriving in Europe in increasing numbers from newly discovered countries and the European colonies worldwide. In 1753, Carl Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum ,
13261-398: The combination of two or more disciplines into one, such as bioinformatics , a combination of biology and computer science or cognitive sciences . The concept has existed since the ancient Greek period and it became popular again in the 20th century. Scientific research can be labelled as either basic or applied research. Basic research is the search for knowledge and applied research
13410-610: The course of tens of thousands of years, taking different forms around the world, and few details are known about the very earliest developments. Women likely played a central role in prehistoric science, as did religious rituals . Some scholars use the term " protoscience " to label activities in the past that resemble modern science in some but not all features; however, this label has also been criticised as denigrating, or too suggestive of presentism , thinking about those activities only in relation to modern categories. Direct evidence for scientific processes becomes clearer with
13559-461: The developing diploid embryo sporophyte within its tissues for at least part of its life, even in the seed plants, where the gametophyte itself is nurtured by its parent sporophyte. Other groups of organisms that were previously studied by botanists include bacteria (now studied in bacteriology ), fungi ( mycology ) – including lichen -forming fungi ( lichenology ), non- chlorophyte algae ( phycology ), and viruses ( virology ). However, attention
13708-505: The discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel and Marie Curie in 1896, Marie Curie then became the first person to win two Nobel Prizes . In the next year came the discovery of the first subatomic particle, the electron . In the first half of the century the development of antibiotics and artificial fertilisers improved human living standards globally. Harmful environmental issues such as ozone depletion , ocean acidification , eutrophication , and climate change came to
13857-517: The dying Byzantine Empire to Western Europe at the start of the Renaissance . The recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived " natural philosophy ", which was later transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The scientific method soon played
14006-584: The earliest medical prescriptions appeared in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur . They seem to have studied scientific subjects which had practical or religious applications and had little interest in satisfying curiosity. In classical antiquity , there is no real ancient analogue of a modern scientist. Instead, well-educated, usually upper-class, and almost universally male individuals performed various investigations into nature whenever they could afford
14155-459: The earliest was the Padua botanical garden . These gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy and led in 1753 to the binomial system of nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus that remains in use to this day for the naming of all biological species. In the 19th and 20th centuries, new techniques were developed for
14304-419: The efforts of early humans to identify – and later cultivate – plants that were edible, poisonous, and possibly medicinal, making it one of the first endeavours of human investigation. Medieval physic gardens , often attached to monasteries , contained plants possibly having medicinal benefit. They were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities , founded from the 1540s onwards. One of
14453-453: The extensive earlier work of Alphonse de Candolle , Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943) produced accounts of the biogeography , centres of origin , and evolutionary history of economic plants. Particularly since the mid-1960s there have been advances in understanding of the physics of plant physiological processes such as transpiration (the transport of water within plant tissues), the temperature dependence of rates of water evaporation from
14602-612: The form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into two or three major branches: the natural sciences (e.g., physics , chemistry , and biology ), which study the physical world ; and the behavioural sciences (e.g., economics , psychology , and sociology ), which study individuals and societies. The formal sciences (e.g., logic , mathematics, and theoretical computer science ), which study formal systems governed by axioms and rules, are sometimes described as being sciences as well; however, they are often regarded as
14751-563: The fossil record. It is widely regarded as a marker for the start of land plant evolution during the Ordovician period. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today is much lower than it was when plants emerged onto land during the Ordovician and Silurian periods. Many monocots like maize and the pineapple and some dicots like the Asteraceae have since independently evolved pathways like Crassulacean acid metabolism and
14900-462: The free energy of the universe is seen as constantly declining: the entropy of a closed universe increases over time. The electromagnetic theory was established in the 19th century by the works of Hans Christian Ørsted , André-Marie Ampère , Michael Faraday , James Clerk Maxwell , Oliver Heaviside , and Heinrich Hertz . The new theory raised questions that could not easily be answered using Newton's framework. The discovery of X-rays inspired
15049-425: The frequent use of precision instruments; the emergence of terms such as "biologist", "physicist", and "scientist"; an increased professionalisation of those studying nature; scientists gaining cultural authority over many dimensions of society; the industrialisation of numerous countries; the thriving of popular science writings; and the emergence of science journals. During the late 19th century, psychology emerged as
15198-451: The functional relationships between plants and their habitats – the environments where they complete their life cycles . Plant ecologists study the composition of local and regional floras , their biodiversity , genetic diversity and fitness , the adaptation of plants to their environment, and their competitive or mutualistic interactions with other species. Some ecologists even rely on empirical data from indigenous people that
15347-519: The genes of the human genome . The first induced pluripotent human stem cells were made in 2006, allowing adult cells to be transformed into stem cells and turn into any cell type found in the body. With the affirmation of the Higgs boson discovery in 2013, the last particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics was found. In 2015, gravitational waves , predicted by general relativity
15496-415: The genome of progeny. This beneficial effect is also known as hybrid vigor or heterosis. Once outcrossing is established, subsequent switching to inbreeding becomes disadvantageous since it allows expression of the previously masked deleterious recessive mutations, commonly referred to as inbreeding depression. Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in
15645-444: The global carbon and water cycles and plant roots bind and stabilise soils, preventing soil erosion . Plants are crucial to the future of human society as they provide food, oxygen, biochemicals , and products for people, as well as creating and preserving soil. Historically, all living things were classified as either animals or plants and botany covered the study of all organisms not considered animals. Botanists examine both
15794-431: The heliocentric model. The printing press was widely used to publish scholarly arguments, including some that disagreed widely with contemporary ideas of nature. Francis Bacon and René Descartes published philosophical arguments in favour of a new type of non-Aristotelian science. Bacon emphasised the importance of experiment over contemplation, questioned the Aristotelian concepts of formal and final cause, promoted
15943-562: The history of early philosophical science was Socrates ' example of applying philosophy to the study of human matters, including human nature, the nature of political communities, and human knowledge itself. The Socratic method as documented by Plato 's dialogues is a dialectic method of hypothesis elimination: better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general commonly-held truths that shape beliefs and scrutinises them for consistency. Socrates criticised
16092-554: The idea that science should study the laws of nature and the improvement of all human life. Descartes emphasised individual thought and argued that mathematics rather than geometry should be used to study nature. At the start of the Age of Enlightenment , Isaac Newton formed the foundation of classical mechanics by his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica , greatly influencing future physicists. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz incorporated terms from Aristotelian physics , now used in
16241-621: The important botanical questions of the 21st century are the role of plants as primary producers in the global cycling of life's basic ingredients: energy, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and water, and ways that our plant stewardship can help address the global environmental issues of resource management , conservation , human food security , biologically invasive organisms , carbon sequestration , climate change , and sustainability . Virtually all staple foods come either directly from primary production by plants, or indirectly from animals that eat them. Plants and other photosynthetic organisms are at
16390-470: The important early Methodists were Italian physician and botanist Andrea Caesalpino , the English naturalist John Ray , German physician and botanist Augustus Quirinus Rivinus , and a French physician, botanist, and traveller Joseph Pitton de Tournefort . Botanical bibliography effectively began, as did bibliography in general, with the work of the sixteenth-century Swiss natural historian and polymath Conrad Gesner (1516–1565). His Bibliotheca Universalis ,
16539-478: The internal functions and processes within plant organelles , cells, tissues, whole plants, plant populations and plant communities. At each of these levels, a botanist may be concerned with the classification ( taxonomy ), phylogeny and evolution , structure ( anatomy and morphology ), or function ( physiology ) of plant life. The strictest definition of "plant" includes only the "land plants" or embryophytes , which include seed plants (gymnosperms, including
16688-509: The late 20th century active recruitment of women and elimination of sex discrimination greatly increased the number of women scientists, but large gender disparities remained in some fields. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1964 led to a rejection of the steady-state model of the universe in favour of the Big Bang theory of Georges Lemaître . The century saw fundamental changes within science disciplines. Evolution became
16837-403: The leaf shapes and sizes of ancient land plants . Ozone depletion can expose plants to higher levels of ultraviolet radiation-B (UV-B), resulting in lower growth rates. Moreover, information from studies of community ecology , plant systematics , and taxonomy is essential to understanding vegetation change , habitat destruction and species extinction . Inheritance in plants follows
16986-576: The leaf surface and the molecular diffusion of water vapour and carbon dioxide through stomatal apertures. These developments, coupled with new methods for measuring the size of stomatal apertures, and the rate of photosynthesis have enabled precise description of the rates of gas exchange between plants and the atmosphere. Innovations in statistical analysis by Ronald Fisher , Frank Yates and others at Rothamsted Experimental Station facilitated rational experimental design and data analysis in botanical research. The discovery and identification of
17135-698: The life cycle of plants, the first use of the term. Heller notes the incomplete coverage of material, incorrect dating of books, and many minor errors in his book descriptions. Also, that his "natural method" of classifying books was "not very practical". Full bibliographic details including exact dates of publication, pagination, editions, facsimiles, brief outline of contents, location of copies, secondary sources, translations, reprints, travelogues, and commentaries are given in Stafleu and Cowan's Taxonomic Literature . Botany Botany , also called plant science (or plant sciences ), plant biology or phytology ,
17284-458: The literature, but also an awareness of the fact that botanical history is human history. The term "methodists" (methodici, equivalent to present-day systematists) was coined by Linnaeus in his Bibliotheca Botanica to denote the authors who care about the principles of classification in contrast to the collectors who are concerned primarily with the description of plants paying little or no attention to their arrangement into genera etc. For Linnaeus
17433-576: The maintenance of biodiversity . Botany originated as herbalism , the study and use of plants for their possible medicinal properties . The early recorded history of botany includes many ancient writings and plant classifications. Examples of early botanical works have been found in ancient texts from India dating back to before 1100 BCE, Ancient Egypt , in archaic Avestan writings, and in works from China purportedly from before 221 BCE. Modern botany traces its roots back to Ancient Greece specifically to Theophrastus ( c. 371 –287 BCE),
17582-493: The major groups of organisms that carry out photosynthesis , a process that uses the energy of sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars that can be used both as a source of chemical energy and of organic molecules that are used in the structural components of cells. As a by-product of photosynthesis, plants release oxygen into the atmosphere, a gas that is required by nearly all living things to carry out cellular respiration. In addition, they are influential in
17731-474: The mechanisms and control of gene expression during differentiation of plant cells and tissues . Botanical research has diverse applications in providing staple foods , materials such as timber , oil , rubber, fibre and drugs, in modern horticulture , agriculture and forestry , plant propagation , breeding and genetic modification , in the synthesis of chemicals and raw materials for construction and energy production, in environmental management , and
17880-605: The most important medical hub of the ancient world. The House of Wisdom was established in Abbasid -era Baghdad , Iraq , where the Islamic study of Aristotelianism flourished until the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. Ibn al-Haytham , better known as Alhazen, used controlled experiments in his optical study. Avicenna 's compilation of the Canon of Medicine , a medical encyclopaedia,
18029-662: The notion that the only function of the eye is perception, and shifted the main focus in optics from the eye to the propagation of light. Kepler is best known, however, for improving Copernicus' heliocentric model through the discovery of Kepler's laws of planetary motion . Kepler did not reject Aristotelian metaphysics and described his work as a search for the Harmony of the Spheres . Galileo had made significant contributions to astronomy, physics and engineering. However, he became persecuted after Pope Urban VIII sentenced him for writing about
18178-596: The number of their male sexual organs. The 24th group, Cryptogamia , included all plants with concealed reproductive parts, mosses , liverworts , ferns , algae and fungi . Botany was originally a hobby for upper-class women. These women would collect and paint flowers and plants from around the world with scientific accuracy. The paintings were used to record many species that could not be transported or maintained in other environments. Marianne North illustrated over 900 species in extreme detail with watercolor and oil paintings. Her work and many other women's botany work
18327-449: The older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism . Aristotle in the 4th century BCE created a systematic programme of teleological philosophy. In the 3rd century BCE, Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric model of the universe, with the Sun at the centre and all the planets orbiting it. Aristarchus's model
18476-447: The other hand with medicine and pharmacology, giving rise to fields such as agronomy , horticultural botany, phytopathology and phytopharmacology . The study of plants is vital because they underpin almost all animal life on Earth by generating a large proportion of the oxygen and food that provide humans and other organisms with aerobic respiration with the chemical energy they need to exist. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria are
18625-404: The outcome of prehistoric selection over thousands of years from among wild ancestral plants with the most desirable characteristics. Botanists study how plants produce food and how to increase yields, for example through plant breeding , making their work important to humanity's ability to feed the world and provide food security for future generations. Botanists also study weeds, which are
18774-791: The pain killer aspirin is the acetyl ester of salicylic acid , originally isolated from the bark of willow trees, and a wide range of opiate painkillers like heroin are obtained by chemical modification of morphine obtained from the opium poppy . Popular stimulants come from plants, such as caffeine from coffee, tea and chocolate, and nicotine from tobacco. Most alcoholic beverages come from fermentation of carbohydrate -rich plant products such as barley (beer), rice ( sake ) and grapes (wine). Native Americans have used various plants as ways of treating illness or disease for thousands of years. This knowledge Native Americans have on plants has been recorded by enthnobotanists and then in turn has been used by pharmaceutical companies as
18923-598: The past, science was a synonym for "knowledge" or "study", in keeping with its Latin origin. A person who conducted scientific research was called a "natural philosopher" or "man of science". In 1834, William Whewell introduced the term scientist in a review of Mary Somerville 's book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences , crediting it to "some ingenious gentleman" (possibly himself). Science has no single origin. Rather, systematic methods emerged gradually over
19072-479: The plants with a highly fermentable sugar or oil content that are used as sources of biofuels , important alternatives to fossil fuels , such as biodiesel . Sweetgrass was used by Native Americans to ward off bugs like mosquitoes . These bug repelling properties of sweetgrass were later found by the American Chemical Society in the molecules phytol and coumarin . Plant ecology is the science of
19221-486: The pollen either fails to reach the stigma or fails to germinate and produce male gametes . This is one of several methods used by plants to promote outcrossing . In many land plants the male and female gametes are produced by separate individuals. These species are said to be dioecious when referring to vascular plant sporophytes and dioicous when referring to bryophyte gametophytes . Charles Darwin in his 1878 book The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization in
19370-442: The polymer cutin which is found in the plant cuticle that protects land plants from drying out. Plants synthesise a number of unique polymers like the polysaccharide molecules cellulose , pectin and xyloglucan from which the land plant cell wall is constructed. Vascular land plants make lignin , a polymer used to strengthen the secondary cell walls of xylem tracheids and vessels to keep them from collapsing when
19519-493: The practical value of earlier "physic gardens", often associated with monasteries, in which plants were cultivated for suspected medicinal uses. They supported the growth of botany as an academic subject. Lectures were given about the plants grown in the gardens. Botanical gardens came much later to northern Europe; the first in England was the University of Oxford Botanic Garden in 1621. German physician Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566)
19668-562: The public's attention and caused the onset of environmental studies . During this period scientific experimentation became increasingly larger in scale and funding . The extensive technological innovation stimulated by World War I , World War II , and the Cold War led to competitions between global powers , such as the Space Race and nuclear arms race . Substantial international collaborations were also made, despite armed conflicts. In
19817-461: The rise of the related molecular-scale biological approaches of molecular biology , genomics , proteomics and metabolomics , the relationship between the plant genome and most aspects of the biochemistry, physiology, morphology and behaviour of plants can be subjected to detailed experimental analysis. The concept originally stated by Gottlieb Haberlandt in 1902 that all plant cells are totipotent and can be grown in vitro ultimately enabled
19966-676: The same fundamental principles of genetics as in other multicellular organisms. Gregor Mendel discovered the genetic laws of inheritance by studying inherited traits such as shape in Pisum sativum ( peas ). What Mendel learned from studying plants has had far-reaching benefits outside of botany. Similarly, " jumping genes " were discovered by Barbara McClintock while she was studying maize. Nevertheless, there are some distinctive genetic differences between plants and other organisms. Species boundaries in plants may be weaker than in animals, and cross species hybrids are often possible. A familiar example
20115-453: The seminal encyclopaedia Natural History . Positional notation for representing numbers likely emerged between the 3rd and 5th centuries CE along Indian trade routes. This numeral system made efficient arithmetic operations more accessible and would eventually become standard for mathematics worldwide. Due to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire , the 5th century saw an intellectual decline and knowledge of Greek conceptions of
20264-567: The sixteenth century Nicolaus Copernicus formulated a heliocentric model of the Solar System, stating that the planets revolve around the Sun, instead of the geocentric model where the planets and the Sun revolve around the Earth. This was based on a theorem that the orbital periods of the planets are longer as their orbs are farther from the centre of motion, which he found not to agree with Ptolemy's model. Johannes Kepler and others challenged
20413-407: The social sciences, there are many competing theoretical perspectives, many of which are extended through competing research programmes such as the functionalists , conflict theorists , and interactionists in sociology. Due to the limitations of conducting controlled experiments involving large groups of individuals or complex situations, social scientists may adopt other research methods such as
20562-590: The study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress . Nowadays, botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants , including some 391,000 species of vascular plants (of which approximately 369,000 are flowering plants ) and approximately 20,000 bryophytes . Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with
20711-450: The study of plants, including methods of optical microscopy and live cell imaging , electron microscopy , analysis of chromosome number , plant chemistry and the structure and function of enzymes and other proteins . In the last two decades of the 20th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecular genetic analysis , including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately. Modern botany
20860-471: The study of plants. In 1665, using an early microscope, Polymath Robert Hooke discovered cells (a term he coined) in cork , and a short time later in living plant tissue. During the 18th century, systems of plant identification were developed comparable to dichotomous keys , where unidentified plants are placed into taxonomic groups (e.g. family, genus and species) by making a series of choices between pairs of characters . The choice and sequence of
21009-476: The time. Before the invention or discovery of the concept of phusis or nature by the pre-Socratic philosophers , the same words tend to be used to describe the natural "way" in which a plant grows, and the "way" in which, for example, one tribe worships a particular god. For this reason, it is claimed that these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and the first to clearly distinguish "nature" and "convention". The early Greek philosophers of
21158-526: The use of genetic engineering experimentally to knock out a gene or genes responsible for a specific trait, or to add genes such as GFP that report when a gene of interest is being expressed. These technologies enable the biotechnological use of whole plants or plant cell cultures grown in bioreactors to synthesise pesticides , antibiotics or other pharmaceuticals , as well as the practical application of genetically modified crops designed for traits such as improved yield. Modern morphology recognises
21307-485: The word plant (e.g. plant taxonomy, plant ecology, plant anatomy, plant morphology, plant systematics, plant ecology), or prefixing or substituting the prefix phyto- (e.g. phytochemistry , phytogeography ). The study of fossil plants is palaeobotany . Other fields are denoted by adding or substituting the word botany (e.g. systematic botany ). Phytosociology is a subfield of plant ecology that classifies and studies communities of plants. The intersection of fields from
21456-476: The world deteriorated in Western Europe. During the period, Latin encyclopaedists such as Isidore of Seville preserved the majority of general ancient knowledge. In contrast, because the Byzantine Empire resisted attacks from invaders, they were able to preserve and improve prior learning. John Philoponus , a Byzantine scholar in the 500s, started to question Aristotle's teaching of physics, introducing
21605-425: Was a mark of his 'scholastic' view of the world. Most subsequent classifications of botanical literature, including geographical entities, would be more or less empirically based highlighting a recurrent conflict between essentialism , empiricism , nominalism and other doctrines in the theory and practice of any kind of classification. Linnaeus employed the Latin term biologi to refer to botanists who wrote about
21754-667: Was an elaborate classification system for his catalogue of books. A digest of Bibliotheca Botanica , which elaborated on the first chapter of the Fundamenta Botanica , is given in Aphorisms 5–52 of the Philosophia Botanica . The Preface, dated 8 August 1735, on pages 2–19 contains Linnaeus's extended account of botanical history in the form of a botanical analogy; in pages 2–3 Linnaeus lists previous bibliographers and then gives his account of botanical history leading to
21903-399: Was one of "the three German fathers of botany", along with theologian Otto Brunfels (1489–1534) and physician Hieronymus Bock (1498–1554) (also called Hieronymus Tragus). Fuchs and Brunfels broke away from the tradition of copying earlier works to make original observations of their own. Bock created his own system of plant classification. Physician Valerius Cordus (1515–1544) authored
22052-412: Was the beginning of popularizing botany to a wider audience. Increasing knowledge of plant anatomy , morphology and life cycles led to the realisation that there were more natural affinities between plants than the artificial sexual system of Linnaeus. Adanson (1763), de Jussieu (1789), and Candolle (1819) all proposed various alternative natural systems of classification that grouped plants using
22201-501: Was widely rejected because it was believed to violate the laws of physics, while Ptolemy's Almagest , which contains a geocentric description of the Solar System , was accepted through the early Renaissance instead. The inventor and mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse made major contributions to the beginnings of calculus . Pliny the Elder was a Roman writer and polymath, who wrote
#698301