'A Great or Wonderful Thing'

“Too greedy of Magnalities, we are apt to make but favourable experiments concerning welcome Truths.”

Sir Thomas Browne in Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), also known as Vulgar Errors, dismisses such notions as the existence of unicorns and the impact of garlic on magnetism. In the sentence above, from Book 2, Chapter III, he rejects the misuse of logic we know as confirmation bias – seeking evidence confirming our hypothesis while ignoring contrary evidence. It’s a common human failing, a reminder that some of us substantiate our prejudices by treating truth like Play-Doh, a malleable substance. Thus, newspapers still publish horoscopes.

 

Browne’s most interesting choice of words is “Magnalities,” which he apparently coined.  Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary defines it as “a great thing; something above the common rate,” and the OED is even terser: “a great or wonderful thing.”

 

In Chapter III of Browne’s Garden of Cyrus (1658), two centuries before Darwin, he asks why some plants produce prodigious quantities of seeds or other modes of reproduction: “The exiguity and smallnesse of some Seeds extending to large productions is one of the Magnalities of nature, somewhat illustrating the work of the Creation, and vast production from nothing.”

 

With no knowledge of genetics or evolutionary adaptation, Browne concedes his ignorance and accepts that creation is “a great or wonderful thing.” After the glories of his prose, what I most admire about Browne is his questioning nature, the way he mingles science, skepticism and faith. He is not “scientific” by twenty-first-century standards – no experiments with repeatable findings are involved -- but neither is he uncritically credulous. He applies reason to some of his day’s more farfetched notions, something we don’t always do.