Unicorns, dragons and sea monsters: fantastic animals that inhabited Science
A Renaissance work shows how the knowledge of a certain period can only be analysed in its own context
By Fabiana Dias Klautau
Thinking about the procedures and methods used by contemporary zoology for the study of animals, it would be kind of weird to find a scientist interested in beasts such as unicorns, dragons and sea monsters.
Nevertheless, between the 16th and 17th centuries, nature was seen and studied in a very particular way and the scholars, called natural philosophers, generally polymaths interested in different types of knowledge, did not only describe anatomical characteristics, but also connected the animals to all kinds of subjects: geographical distribution, how the animal was named in different languages, literary citations, usage in medicine, pharmacy and culinary, legends, fables, biblical citations and emblems.
As a matter of fact, authors from those days wanted to present their readers with all sorts of information they could put together, specially compiling descriptions from authorities of the past, such as Pliny, “the Old” (23 A.D. — 79 A.D.) and Aristotle (384 B.C.- 322 B.C). Although this activity may seem insane for people today, as we tend to understand the study of animals in a specialized manner, the works that were developed about the “History of Animals” during Renaissance lead us to serious reflections on the different ways of working with Science, in different periods of time.
One of the most important natural philosophers of the sixteenth century who makes a significant contribution to understanding the importance of thinking science in his own time was Conrad Gesner.
Gesner´s Historia animalium (1551) exercised huge influence in the work of other authors of the same century and the following ones. Together with his Icones animalium (1553), a book dedicated to the images of animals, there are more than four thousand pages describing animals, with more than a thousand illustrations. In this book the images appeared not only as a complement to the text, but also as visual information.
One of the focuses of my research is precisely the analysis of the images and their relationship with the text in these books about animals. Other aspects, also studied, concern the type of language that relates image to concept, collecting elements that are figurative and reflective, known as “emblems”, and the relationship between these works and the images of animals in the Medieval Bestiaries, a type of work that Gesner used as source of information.
Nowadays, there are many meanings that are given to the word “emblematic”, generally related to the idea of something mysterious and/or of huge historical relevance. The thing is if we observe these works from the 16th and 17th centuries, and here I make reference to the works about animals in special, the concept of emblematic may be used to refer to texts in which the content did not get restricted to the description of animals, but which involved a whole network of information that would, eventually, give the reader the “real animal history”, a unique way of looking at the world and nature.
Another element to be considered, which was of fundamental importance to the philosophers of nature, is the religious belief which allowed, through faith, to recognize in nature the divine art and to delight in the wonders created by the “Supreme Architect” impossible for humans to intervene.
In short, one can realise in Gesner's work a daring attempt of the author to envelop simply everything about all animals in the nature, including monsters of uncertain existence, and also his great care when inserting quality images that could represent with fidelity the animal described, in a universe represented by a big net of relationships, where all information could be proven by the “law of moral certainty” (that is, by the simple authority and credibility of the witness who described the beast). What's more, in this universe everything is possible, sea monsters, manticores, satires, sphinxes, lamias and unicorns.
Fabiana Dias Klautau is a biologist. She has a master degree in History of Science and is a PhD student at Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP) Graduate Programme in History of Science. She is also a member of History of Science and Education study group at the same institution.
