Aquarium of Vulcan: Julie Curl

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Monday, September 16, 2024

Doctor Browne and the elephant

Elephants are mentioned in each of Sir Thomas Browne's major literary works. A little-known notebook description highlights his zoological interest in elephants, while his proto-archaeological speculations on bones in Urn-Burial along with his notebook entry on Fossil remains in Norfolk casts new light on the skeleton of a prehistoric elephant excavated at West Runton in 1995.

The newly qualified physician first declared an admiration of elephants in his spiritual testament Religio Medici (1643) remarking - 'ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, Whales, Elephants, Dromedaries and Camels; these I confess are the Colossus and Majestick pieces of her hand'. Elsewhere the animal-loving doctor defends the elephant's appearance, objecting, 'I cannot tell by what Logick we call a Toad, a Bear, or an Elephant ugly'. [1]

In his subsequent publication, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) Browne methodically refutes numerous folk-lore beliefs and superstitions, including the misapprehension that the elephant has no joints. Browne's encyclopaedic work of scientific journalism consists of seven books in total. Many of its individual chapters, in particular those on animals in book three, are among the most readable and entertaining of all the learned doctor's writings. Indeed, the Argentinean author Jorge Louis Borges (1899-1986) consulted book three of Pseudodoxia Epidemica extensively with its at turns erudite, pedantic and witty discussion on whether creatures such as the basilisk, salamander, unicorn, phoenix, gryphon and mermaid truly exist, when compiling his Book of Imaginary Creatures (1967).

Book three Of divers popular and received Tenents concerning Animals, which examined, prove either false or dubious opens with a refutation of the false belief that the elephant has no joints. Doctor Browne first calls upon his capacious and retentive memory, referencing the Roman historian Suetonius to inform his reader that-

‘Elephants have been instructed to walk on ropes, in public shows before the people’, as well as the historian's recording of 'that memorable show of Grammaticus wherein twelve Elephants danced unto the sound of music'.

Following discussion of the mechanics of motion in two and four legged creatures, introducing the words 'cylindrical' and 'locomotion' into English language while doing so, and having argued of the necessity of joints from his anatomical studies, Browne credulously notes that, 'some Elephants have not only written whole sentences,... but have also spoken' and then proposes that because elephants possess the necessary organs for speech, namely lips, teeth and chops, whether they, ‘might not be taught to speak, or become imitators of speech like Birds’. [2]

A detail from Peter Rodulfo's As the elephant laughed

Finally, and perhaps frustratingly to impatient readers, having consulted at great length two of his three determiners to acquire truth, namely, past authority and reason, Browne calls upon the primary source of his empirically-based science, 'occular observation', and remembers having seen an elephant in real life-

‘whereof not many years past, we have had the advantage in England, by an Elephant shewn in many parts thereof, not only in the posture of standing, but kneeling and lying down'. [3]

Browne's zoology, the study of animals, is exemplified in his little-known notebook description of an elephant in which he references his favourite zoologist of antiquity, Aristotle and with an precise and extensive vocabulary notes an elephant's anatomy, age, emotions, welfare and diet. Relying on the sense of touch to describe its skin, the size and roundness of elephant dung reminds him of his favourite pastime, the game of bowls. Browne's notebook entry on the elephant is worthy of full quotation.

'The trunck is lithe, tortil, flexible, extensible, contractile, butt when hee shrinks it up as in Anger, it becommeth short and as stiff and hard as a stake.

The 2 nostrills are plaine, and there is a hard tip at the upper end of the extremity of his trunck which helps to hold the faster.

Hee sleepes not with his trunck extended and hanging at length, butt bended & somewhat rolled about or neere his mouth, for the better security thereof from flies or anything that might gett into it. His tongue is short not large, & seemes as it were tongue tyed, so that hee cannot putt out the tongue. However when yong it makes a shift to suck, for it sucketh with the mouth not with the trunck. Hath very thinne & ill decernible lipps.

The teeth are very large 4 in number. The two large teeth somewhat reflecting upward: these are for his armes of defense and offence and help him, when hee kneeles or ariseth. The females as Aristotle sayeth, have them straight or bending downward, which afford them the better help and support when they are great with yongue.

Hayres under his chinne like a beard, some long black hayres about the ridge of his head and neck; about the bottom of his tayle which are bigge and harsh & stiffe like sticks. 2 Bunches like papps in the forepart of the breast by the arm pitts, and as Aristotle sayeth juxta pectus potius quam in pectore. Five kind of hoofes in each foot exceeding hard, but they pare them not. Hee riseth like a horse with his foreleggs first, not like a cowe.

Hee breakes wind often backward; coughs sometimes, snorts not, vomits not, sweates much about the pappes upon travell. Sleepes about 5 howers in a night: hee lyeth upon strawe and in very cold wether they cover him up with it at night. Being butt 8 yeares old they allowed him a pecke & a quarter of oates every morning and evening besides haye and bread when they showed him, wch came to 3 or 4 penny loaves a daye. Dungs in roundish lumps about the bignesse of bowlls.

He will take water sometimes & swimme, whereby hee refreseth and suppeyth his hard drye skinne and will suck up water in his trunck and spirt it about his body, and so moystens his skinne, wch is rugged and hard and as it were channel'd, and feels like rough tanned hides. [4]

Elephants are mentioned in Browne's discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Appropriate to its themes of Time and Death allusion is made in Urn-Burial to the elephant's graveyard and it ability for 'sepulture'. In The Garden of Cyrus such is the potency of the Quincunx pattern when employed in brick-wise formation (2:1:2) in ancient military strategy that the archetypal configuration effectively, 'defeated the mischief intended by the elephants'. And as such the elephant may be considered as a 'conjoyning' symbols uniting the two discourses which are highly polarised in theme, imagery and truth.

Just as Urn-Burial features Browne's interest in archaeology and The Garden of Cyrus with its mention of bees and butterflies, fish, birds, snakes and whales his interest in zoology, so too his study of elephants was both zoological and archaeological, reflecting his enquiries in the divided worlds of the living and the dead.

The philosophical discourse Urn-Burial (1658) was initially inspired by an archaeological find, as its author informs his reader -

'In a Field of old Walsingham, not many months past, were digged up between forty and fifty Urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, nor far from one another'.

Its however bones which are alluded to most in Urn-Burial (over fifty times) including a remarkable passage which anticipates and influences archaeological interpretative insights to the present day.

'It is no impossible Physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy appendencies; and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistences. A full spread Cariola shews a well-shaped horse behind, handsome formed sculls, give some analogie of fleshy resemblance. A criticall view of bones makes a good distinction of sexes....... Other parts make out their comproportions, and inferences upon whole or parts. And since the dimensions of the head measure the whole body, and the figure thereof gives conjecture of the principall faculties; Physiognomy outlives our selves, and ends not in our graves'. [5]

Browne's advocation of a forensic-like analysis of bones, of how they can be indicative of 'fleshy resemblance' in gender, ancestry and proportion, anticipates modern-day osteology (the study of bones) as well as modern-day illustrative realization of archaeological sites and artefacts. His proto-archaeological speculations acquire significance in light of the discovery and subsequent excavation of a near complete mammoth skeleton at West Runton on the Norfolk coast in 1995.

Its worthwhile remembering that much of the Norfolk coastline was once part of a prehistoric forest bed which was formed between 780,000 to 450,000 years ago. Known as the geological era of the Cromerian Stage, during the last ice-age or Pleistocene, the Cromerian Interglacial is the benchmark that all European countries use when studying their own geological deposits.

Browne's early account of coastal erosion and speculative analysis in Fossil Remains in Norfolk is significant in relation to archaeological discovery at West Runton. His description of 'one side of a lower jaw containing very large teeth petrified, far exceeding the teeth of the biggest ox' could be any number of prehistoric creatures including the Auroch, an extinct species of cattle, the last of which died in the early 17th century.

'This bone was found, about 2 year past by Winterton, on the sea shore in Norfolk. The cliff had been much broken by high tides & the rage of the sea, many hundred loads falling down as it often doth upon this coast, the cliffs being not rock butt earth. Upon the same coast, butt at some miles distance, divers great bones are said to have been found, & I have seen one side of a lower jaw containing very large teeth petrified, far exceeding the teeth of the biggest ox. It was found after a great flood near to the cliff, some thousand loads of earth being broken down by the rage of the sea. That it came not out of the sea it might bee conjectured because it was found so far from it, & from the colour, for if out of the sea it would have been whiter. When the outward crust is taken of, it answers the graine of the bones of whales & other cetaceous animals, comparing it with a piece of whales scull which I have by mee'. [6]

The West Runton skeleton is part of the elephantidae family, which includes both elephants and mammoths. The expert ostologist and archaeological illustrator Ms. J. Curl helpfully explains the sometimes complicated classification which exists between elephants and mammoths thus -

"The West Runton Mammoth (c.800,000 BCE) was called an elephant originally, and was an ancestor to the Woolly Mammoth (c.50,000 BCE to 15,000 BCE here in UK). Both terms are correct and confusing, especially for those working on them. The West Runton Mammoth was mainly a warm phase beast and more likely to be like an elephant, but that individual was close to a colder phase, so he was probably much hairier than most elephants today". [8]

Ms. J. Curl cleaning the molar teeth of the West Runton mammoth 1995

The West Runton mammoth skeleton is the best example of the species Mammuthus trogontherii to be unearthed so far, being 85% complete. Previous finds include two partial skeletons found in Germany and Russia, both of which were only about 10 to 15% complete. The mammoth was male, stood some 4 metres (13 ft) at the shoulder and would have weighed about 10 tonnes (11 short tons). This is twice the weight of the modern African elephant Loxodonta africana. [7]

Its recorded that at sometime or another Browne acquired an elephant's leg-bone for his anatomical studies and the largest of all land animals continued to interest him late in his life. His solitary work of fiction, Museum Clausum (circa 1673) a bizarre catalogue of imaginary, rumoured and lost books, pictures and rarities includes the landscape painting of -

'A Snow Piece, of Land and Trees covered with Snow and Ice, and Mountains of Ice floating in the Sea, with Bears, Seals, Foxes and variety of rare Fowls upon them'.

Also in Browne's surreal inventory Museum Clausum (the Closed Museum) inspired perhaps from an antique coin once in his collector's cabinet, there's the amusing thumb-nail sketch of-

'An Elephant dancing upon the Ropes with a Negro Dwarf upon his Back'. [9]

Julius Caesar's coin issued in 49 BCE to commemorate his victory over Pompey.

Saturday, June 01, 2024

'the Mathematicks of the neatest Retiary Spider'

Recent media coverage on how the combination of climate warming and global air-traffic are encouraging new, exotic species of spider to inhabit Britain reminded me that observations on spiders are woven through the literary works of the philosopher-physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82). [1]

A family portrait shows the infant Thomas on his mother's knee with a pet rabbit in his lap, and abundant evidence suggests that as an adult Browne possessed a rare empathy towards all living creatures, including his patients. His introduction of the word 'Veterinarian' into English language commemorates his love of animals.

Thomas Browne first declared an interest in spiders in his spiritual testament Religio Medici (1643) -

'indeed, what reason may not go to School to the wisdom of Bees, Ants, and Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us ?......in these narrow Engines there is more curious Mathematicks, and the civilitie of these little Citizens, more neatly set forth the wisdom of their Maker'. [2]

Browne's curiosity about spiders typifies his interest in the small in nature. Assisted by the gift of sharp eyesight he jotted observations in his notebooks which were later worked into future publications, such as-

'Concerning Spiders much wonder is made how they fasten their webbe, to opposite parts'.

and - 'How some spiders lay a white egg bigger then their bodies, & though that kind bee but shorter legged, runneth about with it fastened unto their belly'. [3]

A recent publication notes-

'Spiders are dominant predators in virtually every terrestrial ecosystem. A marvel of evolution with species numbering in the tens of thousands, they have been walking the earth since before the dinosaurs. Spiders manipulate the silk strands of their webs to act as a sensory field, which vibrates across wide frequencies that they can read in detail. Young spiders spin silk lines that interact with the electrical fields in the atmosphere, enabling them to balloon across huge distances. Some spiders even gather in groups to impersonate ants in astonishing displays of collective mimicry'. [4]

In Browne's day the most comprehensive survey of insects along with their predatory hunter, the spider, was Thomas Muffett’s Theatre of Tiny Animals. Thomas Muffett (1553-1604) was an English naturalist and physician who supplemented the material he'd inherited from Edward Wooton and the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner for his book which was ready for publication by 1590. However, due to the expense of its wood-cut illustrations and a lack of interest in natural science in England at the time, it was not published until many years after Muffett's death, in 1634.

Muffett was also an early supporter of the radical physician and alchemist Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541) who encouraged physicians to investigate and experiment with nature’s properties in order to discover new remedies, the dawn of chemical medicine no less. Following Paracelsian teaching, Muffett included in his book a chapter which speculates on the medicinal potential of venom injected by the spider through its fangs into its prey, along with the need for a medical antidote to its poison. (Frontispiece of Muffett's book below) [5]

It was the Romantic poet and literary critic Coleridge (1772-1834) who once remarked that in Sir Thomas Browne there is, 'the humourist constantly mingling with, and flashing across, the philosopher'. A fine example of the poet's psychological observation occurs in Browne's advice to a correspondent desperate for relief from the painful condition of gout to - 'Trie the magnified amulet of Muffetus of spiders leggs worn in a deeres skinne'. [6]

Muffett's book is referenced a number of times in Browne's vast work of encyclopedic scope known as Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-72). Spiders are mentioned in a variety of ways in its compendious pages.

Although often highly critical of artist's representations of mythic creatures such as the basilisk and griffin, Browne does not object to how spiders are portrayed in Heraldry-

'We will not dispute the pictures of Retiary Spiders, and their position in the web, which is commonly made laterall, and regarding the Horizon; although if observed, wee shall commonly find it downward, and their heads respecting the Center' [7]

Giving credence to the eye-witness testimony of the Belgian scientist and mystic Jean van Helmont (1579-1644) a transitional figure in the history of science, who like Browne, subscribed to the doctrine of correspondences and signatures which interpreted the spider as a symbol of ill-omen, he states-

'And Helmont affirmeth he could never find the Spider and the Fly on the same tree; that is the signs of War and Pestilence, which often go together'. [8]

Browne swiftly dismisses the received wisdom that there are no spiders in Ireland - 'Thus most men affirme, and few here will beleeve the contrary, that there are no spiders in Ireland; but we have beheld some in that country'. [9]

And crucially, in a chapter titled 'Concerning other Animals, which examined prove either False or Dubious' he wields his scientific credentials in order to demolish the folk-lore myth of the supposed antipathy between a toad and spider, informing his reader-

'having in a glass included a toad with several spiders, we beheld the spiders without resistance to sit upon his head, and pass all over his body, which at last upon advantage he swallowed down, and that in few hours to the number of seven’.[10]

Browne’s vivarium experiment is exemplary of his scientific journalism, an eyewitness report written in early modern English on the results of a simple experiment; it also evokes a scenario in which the worthy physician is an intrepid hunter and capturer of spiders !

A passage in Pseudodoxia reveals Browne unquestionably agreeing with his near exact contemporary and favourite author, the Jesuit priest, scientist and scholar of comparative religion, Athanasius Kircher (1602-80). In his Ars Magnesia (Art of Magnetism, 1631) Kircher included a chapter on musical cures for those bitten by spiders, such music, he believed, was evidence of the invisible, magnetic forces of attraction within music. Submitting to the authority of 'the learned Kircherus' but perhaps more significantly, not dismissing the possibility that music may possess curative properties, Browne states-

'Some doubt many have of the Tarantula, or poisonous Spider of Calabria, and that magical cure of the bite thereof by Musick. But since we observe that many attest it from experience: Since the learned Kircherus hath positively averred it, and set down the songs and tunes solemnly used for it; Since some also affirm the Tarantula it self will dance upon certain stroaks, whereby they set their instruments against its poison; we shall not at all question it'. [11]

Above - a page from Ars Magnesia [12]

The intricate geometry of the spider's web attracted the attention of natural philosophers throughout the 17th century including the Italian polymath Mario Bettini (1582-1657) whose Beehives of Universal Philosophical Mathematics (1656) like Browne's Pseudodoxia is a compendium of early scientific enquiries. Listed as once in Browne's library, each chapter of Bettini's book is a self-contained 'Beehive' in which a proposition or topic of early modern science is discussed, including Euclidean geometry, mathematics, acoustics, the camera obscura, optics, discussion on the flight of projectiles, the art of navigation, and the measurement of time. In chapter two of Bettini's book the geometry and mathematics of the spider's web are examined (below)[13].

Spiders and their webs are naturally to be found in Browne's Garden discourse, The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Following the sequence of its full running title The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically considered (1658) spiders are first considered artificially in terms of mathematics and geometry, they are next considered naturally, with an eyewitness description of their reproduction, and finally, at the discourse's mystical conclusion in which highly original arachnid imagery occurs.

Exemplary of the discourse's theme - 'how nature Geometrizeth, and observeth order in all things', Browne first describes the spider's web in mathematical detail and is appreciative of its beauty (the adjective 'elegant' is encountered frequently throughout the discourse).

'And no mean Observations hereof there is in the Mathematicks of the neatest Retiary Spider, which concluding in fourty four Circles, from five Semidiameters beginneth that elegant texture'.

The proportional ratio of the spider's legs are also an 'artificial consideration', Browne informing his reader that -'The legs of Spiders are made after a sesqui-tertian proportion'. (sesqui-tertian being the mathematical ratio of one plus one and a third).

Following these 'artificial considerations' spiders are next considered naturally with a superb example of Browne's observational skills-

'And he that shall hatch the little seeds, either found in small webs, or white round Egges, carried under the bellies of some Spiders, and behold how at their first production in boxes, they will presently fill the same with their webbs, may observe the early, and untaught finger of nature, and how they are natively provided with a stock, sufficient for such Texture'. [14]

Illustration courtesy of Silvanus Services

Its not impossible that the word 'incubation' which Browne's credited with introducing into the English language may have derived from his empirical study of spiders' eggs 'at their first production in boxes' as from his ornithological studies.

Not all of Browne's observations on spiders are woven into either Pseudodoxia or Cyrus. His notebook observation on the material used by spiders for example -

'Spiders are presently buisie in their texture upon the little stock of their moysture & soon exhaust themselves, without addition of nutriment, as we have tried in some hudled under the bellie of the damme, in a round folicle bagge wh. sticketh close unto it, by some lentous cement, mostly of the same matter with their webbe.' [15]

Mention of retiary networks occur frequently in The Garden of Cyrus. While the spider's web is nature's network, Browne also names artificial networks, including, 'that famous network of Vulcan, which inclosed Mars and Venus'. His acquisition of Kircher's recently published work of comparative religion Oedipus Egypticus (Rome 1652-54) spurs him to mention the ancient Egyptian god Horus who's depicted in Kircher's reproduction of the Bembine Tablet of Isis, (a syncretic Roman artwork which is alluded to twice in The Garden of Cyrus) - 'Nor is it to be over-looked how Orus, the Hieroglyphick of the world is described in a Net-work covering, from the shoulder to the foot'.

It's also in The Garden of Cyrus that Browne alludes to the goddess of wisdom Minerva and the myth of how spiders originated-

'But this is no law unto the woof of the neat Retiarie Spider, which seems to weave without transversion, and by the union of right lines to make out a continued surface, which is beyond the common art of Textury, and may still nettle Minerva the Goddesse of that mystery'. [16]

The ancient Greek myth of how the goddess Minerva engaged in a weaving contest with the mortal Arachne and its consequences is narrated by the Roman poet Ovid in his epic poem the Metamorphoses. In Ovid's Metamorphoses the myths of ancient Greece are linked by a common theme of transformation. A chaotic universe is subdued into harmonious order, animals turn into stone, men and women are rewarded and punished by gods and goddesses for their deeds to become trees, birds and stars. One of the most influential works in Western culture, Ovid’s Metamorphoses was a valuable source of information and inspiration to poet, painter and scholar throughout the Renaissance. A Latin edition of Ovid’s verse. along with translations in French and Italian, as well as a popular 1626 English translation by George Sandys, are all listed as once in Browne’s library. [17]

Ovid tells how the talented shepherd’s daughter Arachne challenged Athena to a weaving contest. When Athena, the goddess of wisdom couldn't find fault with Arachne’s tapestry she became angry and hit her with a shuttle. Ashamed of her offense, Arachne attempted suicide by hanging herself but instead Athena transformed her into a spider condemning her to create webs for eternity. A cautionary tale of hubris, lack of humility and a warning to those who would challenge the gods, Ovid depicts Athena’s transforming of Arachne thus –

‘You may go on living, you wicked girl, but you must be suspended in the air forever. …Then as she departed, she sprinkled Arachne with the juice of Hecate’s herbs. Immediately, at the touch of this baneful poison, the girl’s hair fell out, her nostrils and her ears went too. And her head shrank to nothing. Her whole body became tiny. Her slender fingers were fastened to her sides, to serve as legs, and all the rest of her was belly; from that belly, she yet spins her thread, and as a spider is busy with her web as of old’. [18]

16th century woodcut

Imagery of the spider spinning its web features in the drowsy, mystical conclusion of The Garden of Cyrus. At the approach of night, sleep and dreams the learned doctor, reluctant to pursue his quincuncial quest any longer, aware of how the day's thoughts and actions are distorted in dreams, poetically declares-

'We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep which often continueth precogitations making Cables of cobwebs and wildernesses of handsome groves'.

Browne's arachnid imagery shares an uncanny affinity to arachnid imagery by the German literary figure Johann Goethe (1749-1830. In the Second Part of the tragic drama Faust its protagonist, doctor Faust, reflects at the approach of night, sleep and dreams -

'How logical and clear/the daylight seems,

Till the night weaves us/ in its web of dreams !' [19]

Both Browne and Goethe allude to the illusionary nature of life through imagery involving the spider's web, a deceptive, near invisible trap of entanglement, not unlike the veil of Maya, or world of appearances in Buddhism. And in fact the two literary figures share a remarkable affinity not only in arachnid imagery but also scientific outlook. A strong case can also be made for Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus and Goethe's Faust Part I and II both utilizing the commonplace Renaissance schemata of Microcosm and Macrocosm as thematic templates in their sequential progression.

In essence, with its fixation on the inter-related symbols of the number five, quincunx pattern and retiary network, The Garden of Cyrus is a literary work which is highly influenced by the humanist scholar Pico della Mirandola (1464-94) who introduced and developed Pythagorean 'philosophizing with number' into mainstream Renaissance thought.

In Pythagorean numerology number acquires a metaphysical symbolism capable of enabling speculation upon theology, cosmology, geometry, mathematics and music. Pythagorean concepts involving number, astronomy and geometry inspired devout early scientists and hermetic philosophers alike throughout the Renaissance. The German astronomer Kepler (1571-1630) as well as Van Helmont, Bettini, Kircher and Thomas Browne all subscribed to the Pythagorean idea that mathematical truths could be discovered through analysis of number, geometry and pattern in Nature. Spiders along with bees were thought to be a Heaven-instructed mathematicians capable of 'geometrical forethought' and in possession of knowledge transcendent to humanity. The eight-legged spider and its ability to construct a complex geometric pattern attracted their attention for possible clues towards discovering hidden mathematical truths.

In Browne's hermetic vision of universal connectivity, The Garden of Cyrus, 'the mathematicks of the neatest retiary spider' and 'the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven' are intrinsically related to each other in microcosm-macrocosm harmony.

Finally, in the age of the world-wide web, itself a complex invention of wonder, not unrelated to illusion, its interesting to note that Browne is credited as introducing the word ‘network’ in its context of an artificial construction into English language. Its amusing to think that the word 'network' used today to describe broadcasting, communication and transport connectivity, originates in no small measure from Thomas Browne's contemplation of one of nature's marvels, the retiary spider and its web.