Sir Thomas Browne the artist and the scientist

New and old philosophy, arts and sciences, he was a character living in two different worlds leaving us new surprising points of view, casting a different light over known things

by Daniele Bordoni

Sir Thomas Browne (London 1605-Norwich 1682) was an excellent example of a transition character between the old and the new world. He lived in a period of great turmoil, the time of Cromwell Puritan Revolution, a time of great changes. On the intellectual point of view he was one of the major essayists in Europe, despite his writing just four books, in the course of his life: Religio Medici, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (known also as Vulgar Errors), Hydriotaphia (Urn Burial) and the Garden of Cyrus (Christian Morals was published after his death). He was also a founding member of the Royal Society (1660), which also included other famous members of that time Intelligentsia, such as Robert Boyle, John Evelyn, Robert Hooke, William Petty, John Wallis, John Aubrey, John Wilkins, Thomas Willis and Sir Christopher Wren (who rebuilt modern London after the Great Fire in 1666 a ). All of them contributed to change the old world of superstitions and magic and created what it could be could be called the modern science, about one Century before French Encyclopaedists (1751-1772).

A few years later Sir Isaac Newton became president of the Royal Society and we all know how significant in history of sciences he was: he was one of the most important character at his times contributed to the creation of modern sciences. These passage times are also important as they witnessed a shift in human thought, from a global knowledge covering many known sciences and Sir Thomas Browne represented this kind of change quite well, and the specialized knowledge of modern sciences. It was no longer possible to learn everything, as knowledge was growing too fast: it was necessary to make choices, going deep into few subjects.

We certainly lost something during this shift, we lost the possibility of having a wider view on many fields, giving up the general picture, but we acquired a deeper knowledge in all fields. As a physician he considered the human being as a whole, with feelings and problems, as his sensitivity implies compassion, not as “a patient” as the modern medicine says nowadays. The emotional involvement was clear throughout his works and left us a heritage of beautiful prose pieces.

It is interesting to note that, despite the birth of new modern sciences, based on facts and experiments, it was still possible to preserve part of the old intellectual heritage. There was no conflict between arts and sciences yet. Imagination and reality, magic and real world occupied similar spaces in human minds . They well knew, and Sir Thomas Browne among them, that it always difficult to set limits and borders to human thought.

Even the relationship with the world of Nature was extremely interesting. Sir Thomas Browne wrote about the natural world as a well balanced expression of the creative spirit of the Divinity, but also expression of the human work. In The Garden of Cyrus (1658) he was almost obsessed by the idea of order and plant disposition with a Quincunx (b) shape, in ancient orchards. He also saw the same order in Nature, without human intervention as a sign of perfection and balance of forces, a sort of pre–ecological thought .

He studied Nature and described plants admiring the perfection of shapes (The Garden of Cyrus). It offered a picture of an underground world as an archaeologist (Urn Burial), he examined people common knowledge and pointed out scientific mistakes (Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Enquiries into
Very many received Tenets and commonly presumed Truths). Religio Medici was a best seller at its times and was always considered an excellent and unique essay, resisting throughout more than three Centuries and able to reach our times. Sir Thomas Browne was a modern character with an ancient spirit, a sort of bridge between the old and the new, looking at both sides of thought (Arts and Sciences) with an open mind, able to learn by observation of facts, but also to think of things with imagination and transcendence, participation and feelings.

He was able to express poetry through sciences, conjugating feelings and observations without conflicts. Today it often happens that the scientific thought clashes with other intellectual fields of knowledge. We learned to look into the thinnest detail and lost the general picture, it is difficult to find someone with multi disciplinary knowledge: specialization has become indispensable.

Notes

a) Robert Boyle, one of the modern chemistry father, John Evelyn, writer, Robert Hooke, physicist, biologist, geologist , William Petty, economist and politician, John Wallis, mathematician, John Aubrey, antiquarian, John Wilkins, organizer of scientific research at the Royal Society, Thomas Willis, physician, neurologist, psychiatrist and scholar, whose studies in Anatomy were highly considered.

b) “The Quincux derives from quinque-uncia or five twelfths of a weight or measure and was set by the Romans to denote an arrangement of five trees in the form of a rectangle, four occupying the corner, one the center, like the five points in a die, so a massing of quincunxes produces long rows of trees with the effect of a lattice-work”, Jeremiah S. Finch, “Sir Thomas Browne and the Quincunx” , Studies in Philology , Vol. 37, N. 2 (April 1940) pp.274-282, University of North Carolina Press.

The autor
Daniele Bordoni – Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne, Milano, “Summa cum Laude”(graduation with honors), in 1980, with a thesis on XVII Century English Literature including a textual analysis on Sir Thomas Browne’s works, of which he is one the major experts.
He acquired a great experience as a worldwide traveller, as a consequence of his many years’ experience in International Finance, which led him to visit many parts of the world, in a sort of modern Grand Tour. He is also an expert in Economy of Tourism and Traditional Customs, with a particular emphasis on sustainable tourism in mountain areas.