Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at King's College London and the

L.m.U in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, Better Nature, the French

Garden. The story goes that a young Descartes, recently graduated from his studies with the Jesuits,

lived in a village outside of Paris called

Saint-Germain. Here he would have been able to visit Royal Gardens, which featured a grotto

with dramatic lighting, music from a hydraulic organ, and songs made by mechanical birds.

It's almost irresistible to think that these gardens helped to inspire his mechanistic approach to nature.

If so, Descartes would return the favor, because the story also goes that 17th century French gardens were inspired by his philosophy.

With their geometric layout, they put his rationalistic approach to nature into physical form,

creating what we might venture

to call Cartesian spaces.

This is the most obvious and familiar connection between intellectual history and the sort of

garden, built by Louis XIV at Versailles, but there are others.

These gardens grew from many seeds, including contemporary science, the colonialist enterprise,

and the political ideology and iconography of the French crown.

And that's before we even get to the story about the cuckold and the deceased elephant.

Which makes this a good occasion finally to say something about plants.

I've been remiss about addressing this subject. We're almost 500

episodes in and have spoken plenty about animals, and goodness knows more than enough about humans,

but plants have had to wait their turn quietly, which fortunately is something they should be

pretty good at. Aristotle already observed that their lack of motion must be connected to the fact that they get by

without the power of sensation. Whereas animals use their senses to go after food, plants can just

...