Natural Objects of the Old World

Chapter 4 focuses on naturalia from Europe. The naming of natural objects from the so-called Old World presented early modern natural scientists with major challenges. While European scholars at the beginning of the sixteenth century were primarily concerned with the identification of minerals, plants, and animals mentioned in ancient texts, knowledge soon increased dramatically through systematic observation of nature, requiring new forms of description, cataloguing, systematisation, and naming. The chapter charts this development with a focus on naming and highlights specific processes through three case studies: the controversy between Fuchs and Mattioli over the identification of ancient plant names, the incorporation of German mining terminology into Latin scholarly discourse, and the role of misunderstanding and chance in the formation of technical terms.