@ARTICLE{10.21494/ISTE.OP.2020.0574, 

TITLE={Facing roots}, 
  
AUTHOR={Ruth Scheps, }, 
	
JOURNAL={Art and Science}, 
	
VOLUME={4}, 

NUMBER={Issue 4}, 
	
YEAR={2020}, 

URL={http://openscience.fr/Facing-roots}, 
	
DOI={10.21494/ISTE.OP.2020.0574}, 
	
ISSN={2515-8767}, 
	
ABSTRACT={Until the middle of the 20th century, plant roots were of very little interest to the arts and sciences: just like painters, botanists focused on the visible parts of plants. From the beginning of the 19th century, however (at least in France), writers showed a real fascination for roots - more horrified than admiring. In the first half of the 20th century, no doubt influenced by the birth of abstract art, visual artists began to approach them less as forms to be tamed than as processes to be deciphered or transposed. Some of these processes, which nowadays arouse immense interest among many botanists and philosophers, are examined here from both a scientific and an artistic point of view: rooting; the transition in a tree between the unicity of the trunk and the multiplicity of roots; the interconnection of roots among themselves and with various symbionts. The last part is devoted to the relationship between roots and various modalities of thought: on the one hand, the dreams that roots inspire to artists and poets, and on the other hand, the theories and reflections that they arouse today in certain scientists, writers and philosophers.}}