“Reconnecting Sloane” is an inter-disciplinary and multi-institutional project exploring the vast collection of the physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753). This review surveys recent scholarship within the different but overlapping methodological and conceptual approaches used by the collaborative team to understand early modern cultures of natural history collecting. Starting with the global geography of Sloane's botanical collections and material studies of natural objects, it then considers sociable practices of science and issues of trust and authenticity. Finally, it explores scholarship surrounding the organization of natural objects and its role in knowledge formation, before discussing how we might best approach current museum collections.
This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of Open Library of Humanities, which is a journal published by the Open Library of Humanities.
Between the late seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, the physician Hans Sloane (1660–1753) formed a botanical collection, which he termed the ‘Vegetable Substances’. It comprised over 12,500 specimens and corresponding catalogue descriptions. These bits of plants were sealed into small glass boxes so that viewers could examine them closely without damaging them. While Sloane never described the use of this collection, it formed part of his method of understanding and ordering the world around him. This method included writing descriptions of plant specimens that acknowledged their context: the people who collected them, where they came from and their local uses. This paper also suggests a more fluid concept of use by examining the uses of the plants in the collection in terms of medicine and gardening.
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