Scientific Tasting. Flavors in the Investigation of Plants and Medicines from Aristotle to Albert the Great

Among the most controversial terms that were translated in the context of medical pharmacology during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are, without doubt, those related to the classification of flavors. This is especially true from the perspective of the history of knowledge transmission. Although initial attempts to categorize flavors were made during Antiquity by Aristotle and Galen, a thorough categorization was completed only during the Middle Ages, in the field of Arabic medicine.1 This categorization was then translated into Latin and transmitted to the Latin West.2 The transmission of knowledge regarding sensory data— such as flavors— faces some particular linguistic and epistemic obstacles, since such data are closely linked to direct experience. In addition, a precise categorization of flavors required a systematic approach to the experience of natural elements such as plants. I investigate the development of the doctrine of flavors during the Middle Ages, in terms of two questions: What role did the doctrine of flavors play in the development of medical and philosophical knowledge in the period? And how did the translation of terms for flavor from Greek to Arabic to Latin and the classification of flavors facilitate the transmission of scientific teachings on flavor across linguistic borders? The most important value that flavors carried for the premodern natural philosopher was not their phenomenology, but their expressive properties. For different scientists, the different flavors could express anything from the substantial qualities of plants, to the pharmacological properties of simple medicines (simplicia), to the states of maturation of food, to the operations of drugs. How could the same flavors, with the same phenomenological properties, be expressive of such a wide range of different scientific ideas?