Reception
editVon Sachs had a high reputation in the field of botany and History of Botany was regarded as a work worthy of serious study by botany scholars.[1] A review of the book by the journal the American Naturalist congratulates the German Royal Academy of Sciences for selecting Sachs as the author of the book on the botanical history by stating: “Germans may, however, well be proud of the large and honorable share which their country men are here shown to have taken in the advancement of the science, and they may congratulate themselves upon the selection of an historian who has not ignored the claims of other nations”.[2]
In 1909, J. Reynolds Green published the book "A History of Botany 1860-1900; Being a Continuation of Sachs History of botany, 1530-1860" carrying on Sachs's work with regards to the end of the 19th century.[3] In honor of the 100th anniversary of Sachs’s birth in 1932, the President of the Linnean Society of London, F. E. Weiss commemorated Sachs as being the author of the best “History of Botany” that they had at the time.[4]
Some late historians of science harshly criticized Sachs’s History of Botany pointing out historical inaccuracies in his book. Marshall A. Howe dislikes the predominantly German focus of the book and E. L. Greene wrote: “Julius von Sachs, the last in the line, copied Sprengel’s caption The German Fathers, etc., but knew next to nothing of their works, even rating as unimportant Valerius Cordus, who was immeasurably the greatest of them all.”[5][6]
E. L. Greene also accuses Sachs of discarding the role of Dioscorides as one of the firsts to recognize natural families of plants by stating that: “it is propagating fable in place of history to affirm that natural families were first recognized and indicated by any Linnaeus, or Adanson, or Jussieu of the eighteenth century”.[6]
R.J. Harvey-Gibson spends several words in the introduction of his “Outlines of the History of Botany” (1919) criticizing Sachs for neglecting the pre-sixteenth century history of botany.[7] Charles Singer defends Sachs by pointing out that the author "frankly" called his book "History of Botany (1530-1860)" with 1530 indicating what Sachs saw as the date during which modern botany was founded thanks to the work of the German botanists Brunfels, Fuchs, and Bock.[1] Harvey-Gibson uses this claim to blame Sachs for overlooking the importance of men like Theophrastus, Tournefort and Haller in the history of botany, preferring the “dull crabbed phraseology of the German herbalists of the sixteenth century”.[7]
- ^ a b Singer, Charles (1920). "Review of Outlines of the History of Botany, Harvey-Gibson, R. J." Isis. 3 (2): 297–299. ISSN 0021-1753.
- ^ Sachs, Julius (1876-02-01). "Sach's History of Botany". The American Naturalist. 10 (2): 107–108. doi:10.1086/271596. ISSN 0003-0147.
- ^ Green, R. J. (1909). A History of Botany 1860-1900 Being a Continuation of Sachs History of Botany, 1530-1860. Oxford, Clarendon Press. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.28456
- ^ Proceedings Linnean Society London, Volume 145, Issue 1, January 1934, Pages 1–133, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.1932.tb01348.x
- ^ Howe, Marshall A. (1910). Greene, Edward Lee (ed.). "Greene's Landmarks of Botanical History". Torreya. 10 (7): 149–156. ISSN 0096-3844.
- ^ a b Greene, E. L. (1910). Landmarks of botanical history: a study of certain epochs in the development of the science of botany(No. 1870). Smithsonian institution.
- ^ a b Harvey-Gibson, R. J. (Robert John). (1919). Outlines of the history of botany. London: A.& C. Black.