Herbalism

Japanese: herbalism

… Aristotle, who is considered the father of natural history, left no writings on botany (although it is said that he created botanical gardens, and it is hard to imagine that he had no interest in botany), and his student Theophrastus's Historia plantarum is said to be the beginning of botany. In the Middle Ages, there was a time when herbalism was the main focus. Modern botany, along with the remarkable development of research equipment, is achieving great results in the analysis of life phenomena. …

From [Botanical Medicine]

...In China, there is no field known as natural history, which deals with plants and animals. Instead, knowledge of these subjects is accumulated in herbal books, which are indispensable for research in these fields. [Akira Akahori]
[Botanical pharmacognosy]
The core of pharmacognosy is the natural history botany that developed independently in China and Japan and does not follow the two-nomenclature system that began with Linnaeus, but it is not limited to this and can also refer to botany in general before modern science, in which case it also includes what is called herbalism in Europe. Regardless of whether it is Eastern or Western, botany began as a practical science, and one of the reasons why it became possible to distinguish between the various species of differentiated plants was probably to distinguish between those that were useful and those that were not, and those that were harmful and those that were not.

*Some of the terminology that mentions "herbalism" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

Japanese:

…　博物学の祖とされるアリストテレスには植物学の著述は残されておらず(彼が植物園をつくっていたともいわれ，植物学に関心がなかったとは思えないが)，その弟子のテオフラストスの《植物誌Historia plantarum》などが植物学のはじまりといわれる。中世には本草学herbalismという記載を主とした時代があった。近代植物学は研究機器のめざましい発達とともに，生命現象の解析に大きな成果を上げつつある。…

【本草学】より

…また中国では動植物などに関するいわゆる博物学という分野は存在せず，それらの知識は本草書のなかに蓄積されているから，本草書はそれらの分野の研究にも不可欠である。【赤堀昭】
［植物学としての本草学］
　中国と日本で独自に発達し，リンネに始まる二命名法に従わない博物学的な植物学が本草学の中心であるが，これに限らず近代科学以前の植物学一般をさして，広く本草学ということもあり，その場合にはヨーロッパでいうハーバリズムherbalismをもこれに含める。　洋の東西を問わず，植物学は実学として始まったものであり，多様に分化した植物の種差が識別されるようになったのも，有用なものとそうでないもの，害悪となるものとそうでないものとを識別することがきっかけの一つであったろう。…

※「herbalism」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典第２版について | 情報

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