This paper elucidates the philosophical origins of the conception of plants as machines and analyses the contemporary technical and ethical consequences of that thinking. First, we explain the historical relationship between the explicit animal machine thesis of Descartes and the implicit plant machine thesis of today. Our hypothesis is that, although it is rarely discussed, the plant machine thesis remains influential. We define the philosophical criteria for both a moderate and radical interpretation of the thesis. Then, assessing the compatibility of (...) current botanical knowledge with both interpretations, we find that neither withstands scrutiny. We trace how biological and agricultural sciences have historically relied upon thinking of plants as machines and how they continue to do so today through rhetoric centred on breeding, biotechnology, and production. We discuss some of the most important legal and ethical consequences of obscuring the vitality of plants. Finally, we explore less reductive and destructive ways of thinking about, and using, plants. (shrink)

If we look at Isis as an archive of research articles representing ways in which historians have written about science over the past century, then one changing practice can be found in discussions of the usefulness of metaphors in the history of the sciences. During the first half of Isis’s history, metaphors were represented in stable categories: image studies, scientific analogies, diffusion, and individual scientists associated with metaphor. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, tools drawn from sociology, feminism, and the (...) history of literature, among others, created new discussions about how metaphors might be used. More recently, useful hybrids have further diversified the ways in which metaphors are discussed. Throughout the history of Isis, the usefulness of metaphors has been renegotiated in ways that suggest a periodization of metaphoric use and access to alternative histories of the sciences. (shrink)

There is an interesting historical detour in the dissemination of one of the seventeenth century’s most praised discoveries: the reception of Harvey’s account of the circulation of the blood is closely intertwined, especially in the Low Countries, with Descartes’ account of the origin of the heartbeat. Descartes was one of the first figures to support the circulation of the blood and to give credit to Harvey for it, although he presumably arrived at the same conclusion independently through his own anatomical (...) experiments. He did so while vocally rejecting Harvey’s views on the muscular nature of the heart and his explanation of cardiac motion, to promote his own mechanistic solutions instead. Although Descartes’ .. (shrink)