Plant knowledge-making and the entanglements of natural things: investigations with Hans Sloane's herbarium

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Brad Scott (Queen Mary University of London)
• Monday 09 February 2026, 13:00-14:00
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact ma2019.

The herbarium accumulated by Hans Sloane (1660–1753) is the largest pre-Linnaean plant collection in the world. Comprising over 125,000 specimens, now bound in 272 volumes, its components were gathered and assembled by hundreds of individuals from many parts of the world. With such diverse sources, some dating from the early seventeenth century, Sloane’s collection is a valuable witness to the practices of herbarium construction and plant knowledge-making in this period.

In this presentation, Brad Scott presents the work he has recently undertaken during his PhD at Queen Mary University of London and the Natural History Museum. In it, he suggests how the herbarium as a technology was not simply a tool of knowledge production, but also of knowledge effacement. Such processes were evident during the assembly and management of the component collections by their various creators and owners, and in the curatorial history of the collection since Sloane’s death. Furthermore, different ways of knowing and the social and economic infrastructures that supported herbarium construction are barely visible within the pages of plant collections. Through a series of short case studies, the presentation will explore how the practices of collection-building normalised the gaps and silences in herbaria, and thereby occluded certain categories of knowledge and the agency of many knowledge-holders.

This talk is part of the Cabinet of Natural History series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cabinet of Natural History
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• Department of History and Philosophy of Science
• Featured lists
• Featured talks
• Guy Emerson's list
• History and Philosophy of Science long list
• Philosophy Events
• Philosophy and History of Science
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• Yishu's list
• custom
• hc446
• jer64's list
• ji247's list
• yk449

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.