Informal Correspondence Anticipating a Scientific Paradigm Shift: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Botanical Exchanges with the Boy de la Tour and Delessert Families

Abstract

In this lecture I argued that the philosopher J.J. Rousseau's adoption of the natural family system of classification fell victim to a collective amnesia that can be understood through the prism of Robert Proctor's notion of agnatology, or culturally-induced forgetting/ignorance. Neither feminist nor mainstream Rousseau scholars are prepared to face the paradigm shift involved in acknowledging that Rousseau adopted the nomenclature of (sexist, imperialist) Linnaeus, while adopting the classification of natural families taught by the Jussieus in Paris.