Federico Marcon. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan

Early modern Japanese honzōgaku (materia medica; nature studies) publications were extraordinarily comprehensive. Some exceeded one thousand volumes, their authors variously devoting their lifetimes to cataloguing every species of flora and fauna from every region of Japan. These studies, however, have not received due attention because their contributions to “the nature of knowledge” were ultimately discredited by Japan’s eventual adoption of Western science. Federico Marcon’s rich history of honzōgaku fills this lacuna and in the process makes an enormous contribution to the field of early modern Japanese history. Given the inseparability of honzōgaku’s scientific advances and concurrent epistemological shifts, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan is as much about the evolving state of knowledge as it is an investigation of nature studies itself. The introductory chapter promises a great deal. If one accepts Marcon’s contention that “‘nature’ is one of the most important concepts in the intellectual history of the Western world” (17), then his proposal to chronicle the evolution of that concept and then connect it to Japan’s turn toward Western science would seem both exceptionally challenging and exceptionally valuable to our understanding of that era. Doing justice to the interconnections of knowledge and nature would seem to involve transfixing the moving target of knowledge itself, or entirely rewriting large portions of early modern Japan’s intellectual history.

Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies