No . 133 The Trusty Servant
we might procreate like trees , without conjunction , or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this triviall and vulgar way of coition ’. Empirical evidence would conclude that Browne overcame his shyness several times because Dorothy bore him ten children over 18 years .
He wrote extensively on a wide range of topics , particularly language and his beloved natural philosophy . He spent his life looking for observable evidence for answers to the questions about God ’ s creation which natural philosophy prompted . One obsession he developed was the quincunx – the arrangement of five objects with one at each corner and one in the centre as you would observe on a die , domino or saltire . He saw this pattern everywhere – in the radial symmetry of starfish , flowers , seed pods , insect wings , stars and crystals . Browne interpreted this pattern as evidence of God ’ s wisdom and pointed to intelligent design . He also described the artificial application of the quincunx in architecture and in the classic planting pattern of trees in orchards as described in his book The Garden of Cyrus , which is actually a comprehensive description of the world of quincunxes : Browne thought of the quincunxial lozenge as a celestial fractal that represented God ’ s work in nature . He had quincunxes put on his grave memorial . Browne is not the only person in history to dwell on this formation . The Romans had a battle formation known as the quincunx and Thomas Edison , the great 19 th -century engineer , had a quincunx tattooed on his hand . Victorian polymath Sir Francis Galton built a calculating machine based on the quincunx to demonstrate normal distribution in the central-limit theorem and regression to the mean . The quincunx is a formation which has often held spiritual , mathematical and practical importance .
As a scholar of that time Browne
Application of a Quincunx by Eleanor King , aged 5 believed both in science and superstition . He expanded much on the philosophy of science and religion and his early work Religio Medici ( 1643 ) ( The Religion of a Doctor ) contained many ideas linking the two disciplines .
Browne ’ s most popular work amongst modern scientists is his sceptical look at the bizarre and ludicrous superstitions of the age . His sixvolume work Pseudodoxia Epidemica ( Vulgar Errors ) of 1646 aimed to shoot down some of the ‘ fake news ’ of the day . He used empirical evidence and logical argument to dispel myth and fantasy . Some interesting examples include : the belief that all hares are hermaphrodite ; how garlic interfered with magnetism ; that chameleons only ate air ; the existence of unicorns ; and that children raised uneducated would naturally default to speaking Hebrew as the inherited language of Adam ! It was likely that non-religious superstitions were fair game for scientific annihilation by the likes of Browne and Bacon , but any similar treatment of commonly held religious beliefs might bring you to the gallows or worse on charges of blasphemy , heresy or witchcraft .
Browne firmly believed in witchcraft and the influence of the Devil as most people did in the Puritan zeitgeist of that age . The low point in his career came in 1662 when he was called to a trial in Bury St Edmunds as a ‘ Person of great knowledge ’ where he testified in court that the two elderly women may well have been responsible for local children ‘ swooning about and spitting pins ’ because a similar thing had apparently happened in Denmark the previous year . Both women were convicted and executed on his evidence .
Probably the most lasting contribution that Browne made to civilisation is lexicographical . He has 775 entries in the Oxford English Dictionary , including :
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