#lbtb18 theme: plants & people

The Text as Fieldwork: The Book of Nature in Early Modern Japan

~ Federico Marcon

In early modern Japan, the study of nature, known at the time as honzōgaku, was primarily a bookish enterprise. The work of scholars who studied rocks and minerals, herbs and plants, flowers and trees, insects and fish, birds and animals—or, as they collectively called them, “myriads of things” (banbutsu) or “herbs-trees-birds-beasts-insects-fish-metals-jewels-grounds-stones” (sōmokukinjūchūgyokingyokudoseki)—began and ended with books. Canonical encyclopedias like Li Shizhen’s Bencao gangmu (Honzō kōmoku in Japanese editions) and Kaibara Ekiken’s Yamato honzō served not only as foundations of scholars’ research and repositories of institutional knowledge but also as the ultimate source of legitimation for their claims on nomenclature, taxonomy, morphology, and aspect as well as for the pharmacological, gastronomical, agricultural, and aesthetic use of plants and animals.

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Formatting Modern Man on Paper: Ernst Neufert’s ‘Lehren’

~ Anna-Maria Meister

When an architect in Germany designs a building, chances are that she will reach for “the Neufert” at some point—Ernst Neufert’s (1900–86) Bauentwurfslehre or Building Design Handbook.[1] Now in its 41st German edition, with 18 international editions, the book comprises an encyclopedic assortment of measures and floor plan elements that still serves as a reference for the organization of competition briefs and the execution of commissioned buildings. With its collection of suggestions for architectural programs for everything from dog kennels and zeppelins to office buildings and school layouts, the volume has arguably educated more of Germany’s architects and shaped more of its architectural heritage and current production than any architectural schools or famous masters.

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Of Horses, Men, Books, and Things: Learning How to Ride in Early Modern Europe

~ Isabelle Schürch

Learning how to ride a horse has always been a tricky business. Xenophon pondered it in the fifth century BCE. So did the famous Renaissance riding master Federico Grisone. Even today, book shops have plenty of titles on learning how to ride (Figure 1). To put it a bit bluntly, riding a horse is about more than just sitting on a creature that moves. Unlike walking a dog or hunting with a hawk, horse riding is not only an activity shared by a human and an animal actor but entails actual co-movement. Whereas a dog or a falcon is instrumentally conditioned to fulfill a specific function according to human commands, horse riding is a physically shared co-activity based on (ideally) harmonious movement.

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