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Variations littéraires sur l’échec scientifique : L’herborisation désastreuse de Jean-Jacques Rousseau au Pilat (1769)
Abstract
In August 1769, Jean-Jacques Rousseau herborizes with three novice botanists in the Pilat Massif. Of all Rousseau’s botanical expeditions, this herborization of several days is the one that the philosopher comments the most abundantly in his correspondence. It is also probably the most disastrous: Rousseau recounts and analyses the failure of the excursion on scientific, organisational and social levels. On the one hand, the botanist reinvests scientific failure in a literary way by constructing a pleasant account of the adventure. On the other hand, the failure of the trip calls into question Rousseau’s place and role in the networks of naturalists, contributing to a form of “botanical crisis”. The thinness of his collection contrasts in particular with the fruitful herborizations of his friend from Lyon Marc-Antoine-Louis Claret de La Tourrette, who is writing a flora of Mount Pilat and who apparently counted on Rousseau’s collaboration. Complex, the episode helps us understand the codes of scientific exchange, as Rousseau comprehends them, as well as the sometimes-ambiguous status of the amateur botanist in the scientific community.
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