Sir Thomas Browne

El Hadji Cheikh Kandji

Description

This essay sheds light on a relatively neglected 17th-century English thinker, Sir Thomas Browne; and rereads his works with modern lenses. It highlights his insightful contribution to modern thought. Browne is a man of the modern age. His legacy to modern thought clearly appears through his works. He raises the issue of the relationship between science and religion, and posits archeology and anthropology as disciplines that help better understand past, present, and future societies.

Sujets

• Religion
• Major religious groups
• Sciences et techniques

Informations

• Publié par: L'Harmattan
• Date de parution: 19 août 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782336879291
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Couverture
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Titre

El Hadji Cheikh K ANDJI






Sir Thomas Browne

The Modernity of a Seventeenth-Century English Thinker



Saudi Arabia
Copyright


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EAN Epub : 978-2-336-87929-1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I should like to thank the following institutions :
– The Library of the University of Vermont (UVM), United States of America
– La Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
– The Library of Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal
– The Library of the College of Science and Arts, Sharurah, Najran University, Saudi Arabia

These four institutions provided me with the documents necessary to carry out my research.

I am also grateful to Dr. Ali bin Hamad Naser Alrayani, Dean of the College of Science and Arts, Sharurah ; Dr. Hadi Alajmi, current of Head of the English Department ; and Dr. Hassan Alfadly, former Coordinator of the English Department for offering me hospitality and many kindnesses.
I finally express my heartfelt gratitude to my friend Malick Guissé and his wife Pounado. They put me in excellent research conditions in their home in Burlington, Vermont, USA.
DEDICATION
To my parents Mamadou and Fatou, “ the earthly authors of my blood ” (W. Shakespeare).
FOREWORD
The purpose of this essay is to bring to light a 17th-century English thinker forgotten in the caves of History, and reread his works with the lens of modernity. Sir Thomas Browne is one those English “night birds” that deserve to be known for their contribution to knowledge, just as the English logician Boole is. Thus, this essay seeks to present “a night bird in broad daylight”, to borrow the title of the essay Boole, l’oiseau de nuit en plein jour (Diagne 1989). The essay highlights the insightful contribution of a 17th-century English thinker to modern thought, for I firmly believe that Sir Thomas Browne is a man of the modern age. Browne stands at the very gates of modern science (Aldersey-Williams 2005 : xix). He also stands for a good intellectual role model for the modern world (Malcom 2015 : 3).
For the Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt, who has coedited, with his wife Ramie Targoff, Browne’s works Religio Medici and Urne Buriall , “[…] Browne is like this kind of wonderful half-open secret that runs through modernism ” (Kennedy 2012 : 3).
Browne can even be labelled a postmodernist before time, as suggested by Kennedy :
Most unusual for a Christian who believed in resurrection, Browne seemed to suggest that individuality itself was a slippery concept, sounding like a meta-fictionist centuries before postmodernism (Kennedy 2012 : 4).
As Kennedy highlights :
To the Romantics, who rediscovered Browne, and to many modern and postmodern writers, his eccentric antirationalism struck a chord, one mostly out of keeping with his time and piety (Kennedy 2012 : 4).
The present book revisits various aspects of a 17th-century thinker, Sir Thomas Browne, a multifaceted writer, a medical doctor, a botanist and a theologian. Besides, his writings clearly deal with various anthropological perspectives of research, notably funerary rites and customs in ancient civilizations ; as well as the historiography of inhumation and cremation. Definitely a writer who should be better known.
The book is a compilation of articles I wrote and published in various scholarly journals. Those articles have been updated and enriched with new content on Sir Thomas Browne. The essay revisits Browne’s thought through modernist and interdisciplinary perspectives. It connects Browne’s ideas to those of prominent thinkers of the modern era such as Popper and Bachelard. Browne’s ideas even pave the way for postmodernism.
Browne’s life was rather uneventful. Born in London in 1605 from a “ moderately prosperous silk merchant ”, he attended Oxford University, and was afterwards trained as a physician on the continent, more precisely at Montpellier, Padua, and Leiden. That experience gave him the opportunity to speak several languages and acquire much cosmopolitan knowledge in the process. Browne spoke Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He was a man of broad and deep scholarship (Malcom 2015 : 2). The scope of Browne’s knowledge is wide and appear in his writings :
In his writings he shows an acquaintance with physics, chemistry, mineralogy, zoology, botany, geography, cosmography, astronomy, meteorology, philology, medicine, and anatomy, besides an insight into historical research and an enormous reading knowledge of the classics, the medievals, and the writers of his own time. He was a collector of the rare and curious art, in nature, and even in the realms of superstition and error (Howell 1925 : 61).
When he returned to England, he was around 30. He then married and settled down in the city of Norwich – in “ remote and marshy Norfolk ” – where he practiced medicine and “ spent the four-plus decades of his life engrossed in his dilettantish naturalistic and antiquarian investigations ” (Holtjuly 2015 : 3). When the English civil war broke out, Browne did not join any faction. He died in 1682. According to Holtjuly, Browne did not probably meet any of his great coevals like Milton, Boyle, Hobbes, Newton or Locke (Holtjuly 2015 : 3). However, he was in contact with some important intellectual figures of his time (Malcom 2015 : 2).
In September 1671, King Charles II, who went to Norwich, knighted Dr. Browne with pleasure, favour and respect. Browne practiced his profession and kept on improving his mind by studying carefully until he died in 1682 at the age of seventy-seven.

The author
INTRODUCTION
My decision to write an essay on Sir Thomas Browne springs from the strong interest that has been boiling within me for some years now, and from the intense feeling of “ bromance ” that has been prevailing over the world these past years. In his book In Search of Sir Thomas Browne : The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century’s Most Inquiring Man (2015), Hugh Aldersey-Williams lets his fancy run free and imagines having a strolling conversation about faith and skepticism in modern life with Browne who has resuscitated from his statue erected in the old Norwich town square, and stepped down from the plinth. The make-believe Browne asks his admirer Aldersey-Williams, who uses a pastiche of the Brownean style to report his hero’s question : “ So, is this some kind of bromance ? ” (Holtjuly 2015 : 3).
Aldersey-Williams makes of Browne his obsession. His decision to write the essay In Search of Sir Thomas Browne came from a frustration, that of realizing that only few people from Norwich, where both Browne and himself live, know the 17th-century English physician and writer. Furthermore, Aldersey-Williams is dismayed that Browne’s meadow has been transformed into a car park. It was specifically in that very meadow that the Renaissance scientist used to study wild plants. In addition, a branch of Prêt-à-Manger has been built on the site of Browne’s house (Malcom 2015 : 2).
With the variety of topics that characterizes his writings, it is not easy at all to classify this 17th-century English physician and man of letters. As Spencer Lenfield states it : “ Nowadays, we’d call him an essayist – but the name just barely fits the bewildering range of topics touched by his pen ” (Lenfield 2015 : 1-2). For Mr. Greenblatt working on Browne’s texts was like “ going down a magical rabbit hole ” (Kennedy 2012 : 5). Religio Medici is about a profession of faith, The Garden of Cyrus is about gardening and mathematics, Hydriotaphia is an exploration of funerary practices through the ages. Pseudodoxia Epidemica invites credulous people to revise their foolish beliefs. It is a proto-encyclopedia revisiting popular misconceptions. The different range of topics that he explores in his books expresses “ his omnivorous curiosity ” (Lenfield 2015 : 2).
Lenfield considers that even though Browne released no single masterpiece and made no major discoveries, it can be said :
[…] his prose was sumptuous and his sensibility simultaneously wry, warm, and skeptical – and these qualities make him still delightful to read. He revealed in the natural world and was one of the first great English writers to drape nature in the fabric of beauty and awe (Lenfield 2015 : 2).
Jim Holtjuly pinpoints two tendencies in dialectical struggle in the history of English prose : a plain style versus a grand style. The plain style aims at ease and lucidity, and runs the risk of being flat. It is characterized by simply structured sentences, short