In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century's Most Inquiring Mind, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
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In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century's Most Inquiring Mind, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
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The extraordinary life and ideas of one of the greatest―and most neglected―minds in history.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) was an English writer, physician, and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure like Sarah Bakewell's book about Montaigne, How to Live, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind.
Mixing botany, etymology, medicine, and literary history, Aldersey-Williams journeys in his hero's footsteps to introduce us to witches, zealots, natural wonders, and fabulous creatures of Browne's time and ours. We meet Browne the master prose stylist, responsible for introducing hundreds of words into English, including electricity, hallucination, and suicide. Aldersey-Williams reveals how Browne’s preoccupations―how to disabuse the credulous of their foolish beliefs, what to make of order in nature, how to unite science and religion―are relevant today.
In Search of Sir Thomas Browne is more than just a biography―it is a cabinet of wonders and an argument that Browne, standing at the very gates of modern science, remains an inquiring mind for our own time. As Stephen Greenblatt has written, Browne is "unnervingly one of our most adventurous contemporaries."
60 illustrations In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century's Most Inquiring Mind, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams- Amazon Sales Rank: #972082 in Books
- Brand: Aldersey-Williams, Hugh
- Published on: 2015-06-15
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.60" h x 1.20" w x 6.70" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 352 pages
Review “A delightful portrait.” (Jim Holt - New York Times Book Review)“[F]ascinating…. [A] cleverly constructed and amusing book, on a subject deserving of fresh attention.” (Jeffrey Collins - Wall Street Journal)“A triumph. With humour, humility and intelligent generosity, Aldersey-Williams brings Sir Thomas Browne splendidly to life, urns and all.” (Financial Times (UK))“Engaging and thoughtful…. Like some of the most compelling biographers, Aldersey-Williams partly inhabits his subject.” (Literary Review (UK))“Superb…. Aldersey-Williams has produced not a standard biography but a fascinating genre-bending melange of life story, medicine, science and human culture…. With luck this fine tribute will bring Browne the wider readership he richly deserves.” (Sunday Herald (UK))“This is just the kind of celebration Sir Thomas Browne needs and deserves: not a conventional biography but a meditation filled with intellectual curiosity, tolerance, humane observation, and gentle wit. It shows Browne as a man caught in the currents of his times while musing on timeless questions―and, like Aldersey-Williams, determined to weigh up the evidence without dogmatism, and to enjoy the richness of the world.” (Philip Ball)“A wonderfully erratic, promenading book, in which we see how different, yet how similar we still are today to that most serene, most enigmatic science pioneer and literary master, Sir Thomas Browne, whose prose style is one of the highest peaks in English literature, according to Borges and to my humble self.” (Javier Marías)“[T]he intellectual equivalent of a buddy road trip.” (Shelf Awareness, Starred Review)
About the Author Hugh Aldersey-Williams is the author of many books, including Anatomies, Periodic Tales, and The Most Beautiful Molecule, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He lives in Norfolk, England.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Thomas Browne's adventures in the 21st century By aile.verte If you've lived with a favorite author for a while, read him or her until the writer's voice in your ear became almost an alter ego, you can imagine what prompted Hugh Aldersey-Williams to write this book. As he says himself, this may not be the most innovative study on Thomas Browne, it does not bring to light any new manuscripts, lost letters, or describe newly uncovered material objects that were in Browne's possession and that might give us new insight into his everyday life. What it does, however, is, I think, much better: it brings Thomas Browne to life -- not as a historical figure of academic interest, but as an erudite person possessed of infectious curiosity who might have something to say about our own everyday life. Thomas Browne emerges as both a familiar, a progressive thinker we might relate to, and as a foreign visitor to our timeline who allows us to see 21st-century problems with a fresh pair of eyes and also show us that, well, nihil novi sub sole, our 21st-century problems aren't all that new or unique.Browne captures the reader's interest with his surprising (yet often invisible) innovations (such as a host of neologisms that have become part of common vocabulary, like the adjectives "medical" or "deductive") and as an unacknowledged (almost-)pioneer of numerous branches of science, such as archaeology or ... marine biology. The main lesson that Aldersey-Williams draws from this Norwich "Renaissance man" is his ability to remain critical of both science and religion, his methodical approach to empirically testing even the most unlikely popular belief and superstition without removing the mystery and wonder from the world around us. The sections in which Aldersey-Williams "channels" Browne's comments on 21st-century failure of science and religion to find some common ground and dialogue are perhaps a bit drawn out, but he raises important points: for example, he keeps returning to the question of the tone of scientific discourse - why is it so antagonistic, a-priori condescending towards religion or any other form of non-scientific thinking? Might this not contribute to some [fundamentalist] religious rejection of science? And is science really so antithetical to beliefs, don't scientists believe in science? At the least, doesn't proving a hypothesis require the belief that it holds true? Isn't it also possible that some of what science views today as axioms might be modified, or even overturned by science of the future? Examples often come from Browne's professional domain, medicine: modern medicine's belief in the power of antibiotics, for instance, is being undermined by studies showing that over-prescribing antibiotics does more harm than good, and that actually traditional (e.g. herbal) remedies might be more effective with fewer side effects.This is the first piece by Aldersey-Williams I've read, and I look forward to reading more: in some sense, I feel I've found a "kin spirit" -- a non-militant atheist who desires dialogue & tolerance among cultures (be it different religions or science and religion) in a non-abstract sense, who cares about the fate of the world (environment, social welfare...) and is able to envision how different world views (religious / scientific) might find common ground in desiring the same good. In a world where many people feel that their only option is to stake out an inflexible position, it is refreshing to hear a reconciliatory tone without a note of condescension. And Thomas Browne is indeed a great model for such an approach: a non-partisan medical professional not confined to his own discipline, willing to admit that there might be a grain of truth even behind seemingly the most absurd belief -- and openminded enough to go and look for it.****Finally, a short note on the title of the book: I bought the UK edition because I found the title given by American publisher rather condescending towards the reader, never mind clunky and repetitive: "In Search of Sir Thomas Browne: The Life and Afterlife of the Seventeenth Century's Most Inquiring Mind" ... Oh, my! By comparison, the title of the original UK edition is playful and inventive (as is the dust jacket design by the way): "The Adventures of Thomas Browne in the 21st Century". The American publisher seems to be afraid that we Americans have no clue who Thomas Browne was, will buy the book not realizing that he's actually dead and his adventures are only those of the mind and ideas, that we need not only to be told that Thomas Browne did not really live in the 21st Century but that he was knighted, as if the title of Sir would render him more attractive to those readers pining for tales of British aristocracy. With my book recommendation, I also recommend the British edition.
16 of 21 people found the following review helpful. Excavating a Seventeenth Century Prose Writer of Genius By Steve Harvy Sittenreich The charm and skill of this book cleverly leads the willing reader into a profound and wonderful discussion of the eminent seventeenth century author Sir Thomas Browne who fascinated such later writers as Dr Johnson, the English Romantics, and, above all, Luis Jorge Borges.IN SEARCH OF SIR THOMAS BROWNE also probes deeply into Sir Thomas' knowledge of plants. The pages on "The Garden of Cyrus" are powerful because they show an understanding of what the essayist was trying to tell us about mathematical structure in the natural world. Browne's brief essay on the quincunx is the supreme tour de force of seventeenth century prose. In this work we learn that not only are crosses deeply embedded in the world but also astrological signs and perhaps even pentagrams. The palpable immediacy of Sir Thomas' experience of plants and artifacts lends a solid foundation to soaring magical and Platonic speculations. The Garden of Cyrus is rivaled in power and genius in seventeenth century prose only by the Hydriotaphia and the Religio Medeci (both also by SirThomas Browne) and perhaps by certain passages in Donne's sermons and devotional writings.Browne's stunning encyclopedia of fantastic facts and odd creatures, the PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA, is squarely in the grand tradition of fantastic beasts that runs from Aristotle and Pliny the Elder to Borges' Book of Imaginery Beings and J K Rowlings' menagerie of strange beasts in her Harry Potter series.Aldersey-Williams has rendered the great service of bringing back Sir Thomas Browne from obscurity and he has brilliantly excavated the context of these supremely great essays. Aldersey-Williams is himself a magnificent writer who has given us eye opening studies of things like the Buckyball molecule, the Periodic Table, and human anatomy. It is precisely because of this earlier work, that he is so uniquely qualified to take on Sir Thomas Browne.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Big letdown! By Gotta Tellya I returned this book after listening to the first two chapters plus a bit more. I hung in there as long as I could, but I found the author's work--mainly consisting of his opinions--to be dull, scattered, confusing, and a real buzz-killer for any interest I might have had in the 1600's or Thomas Browne. Part of the reason I ordered this book was the narration by Simon Vance, one of my favorite Audible narrators. I used to think that Mr. Vance could give voice to the listings in a phone book and make the experience worthwhile. In this case, the talents of Mr. Vance could not compensate for the boring and muddled content. Many of the reviews for this work were quite positive, so clearly the book has appeal for certain persons. In my case, the book not only didn't hold my interest, it drove me away.
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