Fellows, Scholars, & Interns 2015

His dissertation, The Epistemic Foundations of German Biology, 1790–1802, proposes that the concepts of organism and Bildungstrieb (formative drive), developed by philosophers and scientists such as Immanuel Kant, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others, were essential to demarcating the domain of knowledge that is now defined as biology. More generally, Feigenbaum’s research investigates the meaning of biology’s most basic concepts (organism, animal, plant), as they contribute to the contemporary understanding of nature and the environment.

Feigenbaum’s most recent publication demonstrates this approach by connecting an analysis of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s discovery of the intermaxillary bone to questions of anthropocentrism and moral thought in environmental philosophy. Using the Mertz Library Collections, his current research on Lyrical Botany, undertaken at the Humanities Institute of The New York Botanical Garden, is inspired by the late 18th-century movement of transforming the science of botany into poetry. This movement is exemplified by “The Botanic Garden” (1791), a two-part poem by Erasmus Darwin (great-grandfather to Charles) that puts plant physiology and Linnaean taxonomy into verse.

She works on the influence of global trade on English natural history and natural philosophy in the 17th century, and is particularly interested in the intercultural exchange that accompanied the sourcing and acquisition of animals, vegetables, and minerals. Previously, she was a research associate at the Making and Knowing Project at Columbia University, New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, assisting in the reconstruction of vernacular knowledge and material practices of early modern European artisans. She is also interested in contemporary science education and its uses and abuses of the history of science. While a Fellow at the Botanical Garden, she will research the reception history of Hans Sloane’s (1660–1753) studies of Jamaica, focusing particularly on his documentation of the medical knowledge of the island’s enslaved inhabitants.

He graduated in 2012 with a major in Classics and History from Boston University and spent two years in the Post-Baccalaureate program in Classics at the University of Pennsylvania. His current interests within the history of medieval studies include medieval cuisine, as well as Anglo-Saxon and Norse Literature. As the Gladys Krieble Delmas Junior Fellow at the Humanities Institute of The New York Botanical Garden, David is researching several medieval manuscripts and books of simples and related early botanical literature. Focusing on the Circa Instans, originally attributed to Matthaeus Platearius of the Medical School at Salerno, he studies the interwoven relationships between dietetics, medicine, and cuisine as attested in the unique manuscript tradition of the Middle Ages.