Looking for Theophrastus : travels in search of a lost philosopher / Laura Beatty.
Material type: TextPublisher: London : Atlantic Books, 2022Copyright date: ©2022Description: 341 pages : illustrations, map ; 23 cmISBN:- 1838954368 (hardback)
- 9781838954369 (hardback)
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
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Lending Books | Elisabeth C. Miller Library Tall Shelves | QK31.T44 B42 2022 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Checked out | 05/22/2024 | 39352800189094 |
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QK31.S69 S69 1949 The valley of flowers. | QK31.S84 S84 1984 Behind the scenes / | QK31.S96 S96 1985 Mountains of the Moon / | QK31.T44 B42 2022 Looking for Theophrastus : travels in search of a lost philosopher / | QK31 .T46 2022 Chasing plants : journeys with a botanist through rainforests, swamps, and mountains / | QK31.T66 M25 1992 John Torrey / | QK31.T72 A55 1964 The Tradescants : their plants, gardens and museum, 1570-1662 / |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 316-322) and index.
Standing on the deck of a ferry boat, Laura Beatty watches as the assembled port and buildings of mainland Greece disappear from view. Her destination is Lesbos, but she's not only travelling across the stretch of glittering blue sea - she's also travelling 2,000 years into the past, to a time when the world was a wild place of gods and warrior kings. It's here she needs to go to retrieve a forgotten philosopher, one who worked side-by-side with Aristotle to learn and to classify the world, to rely on his senses rather than myth to explain what governs the seasons and the soil, to put down on parchment the glorious multiplicity of character types he met on his travels across ancient Greece. That philosopher is Theophrastus, a gentle, peaceful, wondering man whose work took him from the academies of Athens to the reckless court of Philip of Macedonia, and in time would inspire Linnaeus' system of classification and, quite possibly, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales - and the modern form of the novel that the Tales, in turn inspired. But if one person achieved so much, why is his name so little recognised? In Looking for Theophrastus, Laura Beatty restores this important figure to collective consciousness, and in doing so travels in Theophrastus's own footsteps, exploring how we see, receive and relate to the world around us and questioning what we lose from the modern way of living when we forget those ancients who first taught us how to see.