Sir Thomas Browne's vast work refuting the common errors and superstitions of his age, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, first appeared in 1646 and went through five subsequent editions, the last revision occurring in 1672. Also known as Vulgar Errors, derived from its full title, Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Enquries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths.
Pseudodoxia Epidemica includes evidence of Browne's adherence to the Baconian method of empirical observation of nature and was in the vanguard of work-in-progress scientific journalism in the 17th century scientific revolution. Throughout its pages frequent examples of Browne's subtle humour can also be found.
Although often overlooked as an example of the genre of encyclopaedia, the preface to Enquiries into presumed Truths, specifically defines this work as an encyclopaedia Browne stating,
and therefore in this Encyclopaedie and round of knowledge, like the two great and exemplary wheeles of heaven, we must observe two circles.
Browne's three determinants for obtaining truth were firstly, the authority of past authors, secondly, the act of reason and lastly, empirical experience. Each of these determinants are employed upon subjects ranging from the cosmological to common folklore. Subjects covered in Pseudodoxia are arranged in the time-honoured Renaissance scale of creation, the learned doctor assaying to dispel errors and fallacies concerning the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms before moving to errors pictorial, to those of man, geography, astronomy and finally of the cosmos.
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Pseudodoxia Epidemica has been ridiculed for its own errors, often by those who have not perused its pages; nevertheless it was a valuable source of information which found itself upon the shelves of many English libraries throughout the seventeenth century. In fact Browne's encyclopaedic work was in the vanguard of the scientific writing paving the way for future popular scientific journalism. Indeed many pages of Pseudodoxia are evidence of Browne's 'at-first-hand' empiricism and early examples of the formulation of scientific hypothesis.
The second of its seven books which is entitled Tenets concerning Mineral and Vegetable Bodies includes Browne's experiments with static electricity and magnetism — the word electricity being one of many neologisms along with words such as medical, pathology, hallucination, literary, and computer, which Browne's vigorous inventiveness of scientific words introduced into the English language.
Throughout this vast work Browne's prodigious learning is evident. His sources included both the ancient Greeks and Romans as well as contemporary sources. He expressed a wholesome skepticism about Pliny's dependability in his Naturalis Historia:[1]
The popularity of Pseudodoxia in its day is confirmed by the fact that it went through no fewer than six editions; the first edition appearing upon the eve of the English Civil War, during the reign of Charles I in 1646. No less than a further five editions followed; four times during the Commonwealth era of Oliver Cromwell in 1650, twice in 1658, and in 1659. One final edition appeared in (1672) during the reign of King Charles II when the English scientific revolution was well in progress, culminating in Isaac Newton's discoveries. Pseudodoxia was subsequently translated and published in French, Dutch, Latin and German throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Today there is considerable confusion as how best to define Sir Thomas Browne's scientific methodology, described by E.J. Merton thus:
The eclecticism so characteristic of Browne... Browne does not cry from the house tops, as did Francis Bacon, the liberating power of experience in opposition to the sterilizing influence of reason. Nor does he guarantee as did Descartes, the intuitive truth of reason as opposed to the falsity of the senses. Unlike either, he follows both sense experience and a priori, reason in his quest for truth. He uses what comes to him from tradition and from contemporary Science, often perhaps without too precise a formulation.
E.S. Merton summarised the ambiguities of Browne's scientific view-point thus
"Here is Browne's scientific point of view in a nutshell. One lobe of his brain wants to study facts and test hypotheses on the basis of them, the other is fascinated by mystic symbols and analogies."
The author Robert Sencourt succinctly defined Browne's relationship to scientific enquiry as "an instance of a scientific reason, lit up by mysticism, in the Church of England."
The 1651 book Arcana Microcosmi, by Alexander Rosse, attempted to rebut many of Browne's claims.
A detailed edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica in 2 volumes was published by Oxford University Press in 1986, edited and comprehensively annotated by Robin Robbins.
   | Online edition - Sir Thomas Browne: Pseudodoxia, or Vulgar Errors |
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