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| Thomas Browne: religion as passion and pastime, part 7: Vulgar Errors II | Thomas Browne: religion as passion and pastime, part 7: Vulgar Errors II |
| (3 months later) | |
| We all get things wrong. Quite often we get things stupidly wrong and keep getting them wrong for a long time. Many years ago, when I read Thomas Browne for the first time, I misread the alternate title of Urne-Buriall, Hydriotaphia, as Hydrotaphia, in spite of the fact that my limited Greek should have tipped me off that this was wrong and made no sense. | We all get things wrong. Quite often we get things stupidly wrong and keep getting them wrong for a long time. Many years ago, when I read Thomas Browne for the first time, I misread the alternate title of Urne-Buriall, Hydriotaphia, as Hydrotaphia, in spite of the fact that my limited Greek should have tipped me off that this was wrong and made no sense. |
| As often happens, my brain, having misread, misremembered, and went on misremembering right up to the point, two weeks ago, when a commenter on my piece picked me up on it. I could have hidden behind the Guardian's long and honourable history of misprints, but no, I freely confess. What that commenter tried to argue from that, of course, is that I don't understand Browne at all because I misread the title of one of his books – and to maintain that is to make another of the stock mistakes to which we are all prone. | As often happens, my brain, having misread, misremembered, and went on misremembering right up to the point, two weeks ago, when a commenter on my piece picked me up on it. I could have hidden behind the Guardian's long and honourable history of misprints, but no, I freely confess. What that commenter tried to argue from that, of course, is that I don't understand Browne at all because I misread the title of one of his books – and to maintain that is to make another of the stock mistakes to which we are all prone. |
| One of the joys of Browne's work in Pseudodoxia Epidemica is just this – his attempts to dissect not only why commonly held opinions and beliefs were wrong, but how they got believed in the first place and why people maintained them in the face of reason. A good example is the belief that bear cubs are born as a lump of sludge which is formed into a recognisable creature by the tongue and teeth of its mother – a belief which has an afterlife in the phrase "lick into shape". | One of the joys of Browne's work in Pseudodoxia Epidemica is just this – his attempts to dissect not only why commonly held opinions and beliefs were wrong, but how they got believed in the first place and why people maintained them in the face of reason. A good example is the belief that bear cubs are born as a lump of sludge which is formed into a recognisable creature by the tongue and teeth of its mother – a belief which has an afterlife in the phrase "lick into shape". |
| Browne acknowledges that this belief was held by many of the canonical writers of antiquity – not only Aristotle, but Pliny and Ovid – and counters this with various writers who had confounded it from observation, not only of live cubs but of preserved embryos. He argues that the belief was wrong both on theological grounds and scientific ones. God, he argues, has designed life so that it grows by slow and recognisable processes. At the same time, he acknowledges how the mistake might have been made and perpetuated by occasional misobservation – some animals are born with a caul that the mother has to remove. | Browne acknowledges that this belief was held by many of the canonical writers of antiquity – not only Aristotle, but Pliny and Ovid – and counters this with various writers who had confounded it from observation, not only of live cubs but of preserved embryos. He argues that the belief was wrong both on theological grounds and scientific ones. God, he argues, has designed life so that it grows by slow and recognisable processes. At the same time, he acknowledges how the mistake might have been made and perpetuated by occasional misobservation – some animals are born with a caul that the mother has to remove. |
| Similarly, Browne realises that the reason why some people thought that a hunted beaver bit off its testicles to distract its predators is that beavers have scent glands in their hindquarters. He realises that many commonly held mistakes have their origins in mistaken observation – and suggests that a good theory of how things work is a useful corrective to that. He suggests, for example, that bilateral symmetry is a good general rule for understanding how creatures work – and that the nine openings in a lamprey's head are, for the most part, something other than eyes. | Similarly, Browne realises that the reason why some people thought that a hunted beaver bit off its testicles to distract its predators is that beavers have scent glands in their hindquarters. He realises that many commonly held mistakes have their origins in mistaken observation – and suggests that a good theory of how things work is a useful corrective to that. He suggests, for example, that bilateral symmetry is a good general rule for understanding how creatures work – and that the nine openings in a lamprey's head are, for the most part, something other than eyes. |
| Browne wanted to live in a universe which was a manifestation of the will and ingenuity of a divine designer. It was not yet an Enlightenment world, built by a clockmaker with everything having its neat place in the design – it was a world full of things that Browne knew he did not know, but was anxious to find out about; that operated by rules that he and his contemporaries were just starting to work out. He was aware that there was little place in such a world for much that had been thought true, and which was emotionally attractive – his had to become a world without a phoenix, in which swans did not sing before they died and in which the legs of badgers were the same length. | Browne wanted to live in a universe which was a manifestation of the will and ingenuity of a divine designer. It was not yet an Enlightenment world, built by a clockmaker with everything having its neat place in the design – it was a world full of things that Browne knew he did not know, but was anxious to find out about; that operated by rules that he and his contemporaries were just starting to work out. He was aware that there was little place in such a world for much that had been thought true, and which was emotionally attractive – his had to become a world without a phoenix, in which swans did not sing before they died and in which the legs of badgers were the same length. |
| And yet, there was much he did not want to let go of; it's significant that he discards some, but only some, of the virtues ascribed to precious stones and those which affect the human will – the role of diamonda in enforcing fidelity – rather than those which affect health. He went on believing – and remember he was a practicing doctor – that coral was an anti-epileptic and Lapis lazuli a purgative. | And yet, there was much he did not want to let go of; it's significant that he discards some, but only some, of the virtues ascribed to precious stones and those which affect the human will – the role of diamonda in enforcing fidelity – rather than those which affect health. He went on believing – and remember he was a practicing doctor – that coral was an anti-epileptic and Lapis lazuli a purgative. |
| What is interesting about Browne is not that he got things right so much as that he thought getting things right important; not only in matters of theology and governance, like most of his contemporaries, but in small things. He wanted a world that made sense and demonstrated the good sense of his God. Other writers had tried to discredit reason, or Aristotle, by saying that the Greek sage had drowned himself in despair at not understanding the currents and tides of one strait or another. Browne, who so often contradicts him, nonetheless regarded him as a colleague and refused to believe anything of the kind: | What is interesting about Browne is not that he got things right so much as that he thought getting things right important; not only in matters of theology and governance, like most of his contemporaries, but in small things. He wanted a world that made sense and demonstrated the good sense of his God. Other writers had tried to discredit reason, or Aristotle, by saying that the Greek sage had drowned himself in despair at not understanding the currents and tides of one strait or another. Browne, who so often contradicts him, nonetheless regarded him as a colleague and refused to believe anything of the kind: |
| "Who in matters of difficulty, and such which were not without abstrusities, conceived it sufficient to deliver conjecturalities. And surely he that could sometimes sit down with high improbabilities, that could content himself, and think to satisfie others, that the variegation of Birds was from their living in the Sun, or erection made by deliberation of the Testicles; would not have been dejected unto death with this." | "Who in matters of difficulty, and such which were not without abstrusities, conceived it sufficient to deliver conjecturalities. And surely he that could sometimes sit down with high improbabilities, that could content himself, and think to satisfie others, that the variegation of Birds was from their living in the Sun, or erection made by deliberation of the Testicles; would not have been dejected unto death with this." |
| Browne understood that in the end we all share in one folly or another, and that asking questions and looking for answers is our best way out of them. | Browne understood that in the end we all share in one folly or another, and that asking questions and looking for answers is our best way out of them. |
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