Ordering the Myriad Things

"A useful glossary of names, places, and botanical terms in Chinese and English, along with the detailed index, make this work valuable for researchers but the story is accessible to general readers. This book will fascinate anyone interested in botany and the geopolitical dimensions of modern science."

"This is a well-researched and well-written study of an important part of the history of botany, and of the resourcefulness and determination of Chinese botanists. It belongs in botanical and horticultural libraries everywhere, and as a story, it is recommended to anyone with an interest in plants and how they are studied."

"An indispensable addition to our still rather limited knowledge of scientific development in late Imperial and Republican China. Books such as this one are instrumental in putting together the complicated and at times complexing puzzle of the emergence and development of modern scientific practice in China, a process, which has consequences up to the present day."

"Ordering the Myriad Things sets out to show how two knowledge systems—one that preoccupied itself by trying to understand how processes of change generated and manifested themselves through things such grasses, trees, and grains and another that sought understanding by making encountered objects the object of study themselves—interacted and ultimately became intertwined."

"Menzies presents a process-focused chronicle of how one newly emergent scientific discipline—botany—was introduced to China and developed by successive generations of Chinese botanists...Excellent, engaging, and well-written."

"In this scrupulously researched monograph, Nicholas K. Menzies narrates personal, institutional, and scientific stories in astonishing and vivid detail to create a sweeping narrative of the establishment of the modern science of botany in China."

"A fascinating and well-researched inquiry into the development of modern Chinese botany."

"[A] welcome presentation of the history of modern botany in China. . . . The thought-provoking questions raised by Menzies and his analytical approach are sure to make this book instructive reading for historians of natural history."

"There is no comparable study in English. Menzies makes a real contribution to the growing field of history of science in modern China."

"An amazing and unique work. This story of botany is the story of the development of modern China writ large."

"A pioneering work whose audience includes historians of science, technology, and medicine, and environmental historians and anthropologists."

"Traditional Latin binomials of global applicability have been applied to plants over less than three centuries. Here Nick Menzies describes in detail their relationship to traditional Chinese names and their application to Chinese plants. This is a fascinating study from biological, linguistic, and philosophical points of view, and in relation to human views of the natural world."