TRANS Nr. 17: 5.1. - Otilia Pacea: Ignotum per Ignotius or If Curiosity Killed the Cat

Ignotum per Ignotius or If Curiosity Killed the Cat: An Insight into the Wonders of Europe*

A handful of Greeks in wonder had been tutoring the world on wonder, a word with a history as salient as that of its spiritual coiners. Plato was the second of the great ancient trio and yet the first to conceptually locate wonder; he would put it, however, in the mouth of Socrates at Theaetetus 155d: “I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.”(1) Aristotle came third yet the first to echo the Theaetetus passage at 982b12 of his Metaphysics: “For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.” (2) More than two thousand years later mankind still needs tutoring on the first of all passions, as we are as always in doubt what to choose as objects of wonder: attitudes of the mind or more or less physical phenomena of contemplation.

It is historically indisputable fact that curiosity has shifted from a lexical into a supralexical unit over time in the sense that we can detect traces of curiosity in the emergence of other lexical units which are closely related in meaning. It all started indeed in wonder. The Old English wundor takes us back as early as 900AD “marvellous thing, marvel, the object of astonishment” (3), of Proto-Germanic unknown origin wundran [object-oriented]. It also accounts for the Middle English wundor, akin to German Wunder, “the emotion associated with such a sight” [subject-oriented].

Historical evidence invites the word miracle next into seminal discussion. Its origins belong to 12th century, 1125-75 to assign a specific period; it was the Middle English miracle or miracul that came from Old French miracle and even earlier than that, from Latin mÄ«rÄculum - in Church Latin, “marvellous event caused by God”, from mÄ«rÄrÄ« “to wonder”, from mirus “wonderful”. In relation to the object-oriented semantics of “wonder”, it is etymologically certified that, starting with the 12th century, the Old English wundortacen, wundorweorc had been replaced by the newborn miracle.

In 13th century, roughly 1250-1300, the multifarious strand detected in the semantics of wonder is illustrated by the emergence of two more lexical units that were recorded in the English language at that period: marvel and awe. The former (4) is easily recognizable as “object of wonder” (againâ¦), from Middle English marvel to originate in Old French merveil(l)e, even earlier from Vulgar Latin miribilia, as alteration of Latin mÄ«rÄbilia “wonderful things”, from neuter plural of mÄ«rÄbilis “wonderful”, one step back to mÄ«rÄrÄ« “to wonder”, all thriving on mirus “wonderful”. The latter (5) is peremptorily subject-oriented as a divine mixture of wonder and fear, “a mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might”. The Middle English aghe relates to Old Norse agi “fear”, akin to Old English ege “awe” and the earliest Greek Ã¡chos “pain”.

Last but not least, curiosity itself refines our etymological search and establishes, by norm of usage, two unquestionable viewpoints. It is not sooner than the 14th century that desire to know pushed curiosity (6) into the English language (ME curiosite) from Old French that originates in, what else than, Latin cÅ«riÅsitÄs, from cÅ«riÅsus, akin to cura “care”.

The object-oriented strand (by chronological virtue wonder, miracle, marvel, awe, curiosity) is thus recorded first and therefore extensively used. Its subjective sense is but later to surface. With the helping hands of etymology, we have dug our way out of the linguistic and extra-linguistic complexities of such an avant la lettre family of words denoting curiosity in early modern Europe.

Faith and science epitomize the conceptual trajectory on which curiosity and its relatives proceeded into the semiosphere. In the early Middle Ages, it was wonder in all respects, in the world at large or scarcely touched by human envisagement and then it was wonder plus plenty of fear in the humble attitude of Man towards God’s inscrutable creation, monsters or regular anomalies included. The latter were considered dire messengers from God. In a militant reading of wonders, prodigies were divine signs revealing God’s will and things to come(7), similar to portents, therefore didactically exposed, at the disposal of the whole community. Miracles, on the other hand, would be experienced in private by virtue of grace, however objectively tailored to the human hunger for evidence.

Bridging over centuries, marvel and awe would go hand in hand in as much as monsters gave rise to revulsion and horror as socially disruptive not because they broke God’s laws but because they were disruptive of the social/religious order when considered by religious enthusiasts as divine portents. Prodigies were turned from signs to nonsignifying facts and miracles became irrefutable evidence. Such particulars were new only by approach within the transfer to natural philosophy, being handpicked precisely because of their disruptive nature(8). In the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, they fuelled Bacon-like drives to swing from almost-supernatural extreme of portents to the almost-natural extreme of facts. It was not about fearful ignorance or humble awe that resulted naturally in ignorant credulity. It was the absolutely privileged site of curiosity which points to the origin and motive for scientific inquiry. At the turn of the 17th century, fashionable curiosity (read: greed) was linked with commerce, the desire for novelties (objects of curiosity) being postulated as stimulus for trade. Early modern curiosity has thus shifted from inquiry to a wonderful mixture of greed, vanity and opulence: from the scientist and his interest in the link between datum of experience and the conclusions that may be based on it to the collector and his consumerist pursuit of trinkets and baubles.

It is not wonder that European ancient traditions believed that as below, so above, that the laws of the microcosmos, of the human realm would give insight into the working of the greater cosmos. It is by all means wonder how the so-called Wunderkammern or cabinets of curiosities came into being in the mid 1500s as a European cultural phenomenon that developed into a craze at the turn of the 17th century. These collections of objects explore the relationship between macrocosmos and microcosmos in the form and fashion of the universal made particular as reflected in naturalia or biofacts along with artificialia or artefacts.(9)

The encyclopaedic embrace of the material world in its entirety is not at all an early Renaissance drive: we can locate it as far as back in the 37-volume encyclopaedia of the material world, Historia Naturalis, written in the first century AD by Pliny the Elder. That was the first taxonomic attempt ever made. A more elaborate encyclopaedic classification would emerge in the 16th century as compiled by the Flemish Samuel Quiccheberg within the earliest treaty of such interest we learn of today. Encyclopaedic classification was cherished at that time, due to its virtues of generating knowledge through the disciplined and systematic arrangement of objects.(10)

Quiccheberg, in his position as the artistic consultant to Duke Albrecht V in Munich, becomes thus the first theoretician of such collecting practices. He is also the first to put Wunderkammern into scholarly context as early as 1565. His Inscriptiones vel tituli theatre amplissimi (Rich theatres of objects of the whole universe) offered a detailed classification of nature in all diversity.(11) He reviews the different groups of objects which ought to be included in Wunderkammern, separates them into classes or categories in the fashion of the modern how-to books to instruct on arranging princely collections.

Quiccheberg’s classification, albeit the first, is not the least consistent and it can still be made extensive use of today. The first class includes religious art and history, the genealogy of the founder and portraits of the ruling house, as well as topographical representations of the country, of military operations and ceremonies, of architecture, together with models of machinery. Another class is responsible for sculptures and numismatica, and art forms related thereto. Thirdly, natural specimens, natural historical collections, art objects and ethnographica are members within the same class. Scientific and mechanical instruments are then contrasted with paintings and graphic works, precious stones, games and entertainment, heraldry, textiles and objects from the local region.

Wunderkammern or cabinets of curiosities provided the popular visual alternative to philosophical tenets of European early modern thought. They were, however, private by nature and usage as prestige markers for principality, as indeed the beneficiary would be a member of the Renaissance elite: princes, dukes, merchants and cardinals.

Francis Bacon’s voice or at least echoes of its age in Gesta Grayorum (1594) is to be heard at this point.

According to such endeavour to promote human invention and demonstration over pure observation, nature had to be reconstructed within a microcosmos (in Baconian sequence, library â garden â cabinetâ still-house) creating an artificial world of knowledge. Knowledge tangible is held dear: evidence triumphs over authority and the cabinet of curiosity is the visual representation of such evidence.

At the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, here we have the European collector ignorant of the narrative in his princely possession, hands in pockets, pockets full of fossils, shells, minerals and instruments to be later displayed in his cabinet, less in wonder and more irremediably curious. Four centuries later, amid a High-Tech Revolution, here we have the global villager ignorant of his online possessions, hands on the keyboard, eyes on the screen, still wondering and sharing, stroke by stroke, curiosities with the world. S/He is, first and foremost, the blogger,(13) the editor of weblogs, the latest mode of computer-mediated communication, in our working definition, a frequently updated, reverse-chronological Internet publication of personal thoughts and Web links. From JÃ¸rn Barger, an American online legend and a pioneer of the blogosphere, who coined the term itself, to more than 100 million web-savvy Internet users, creators and maintainers of weblogs, it is but the same passion that underpins universal collecting practices. The emergence of blogs as collections of thoughts made public, viz. readable as texts freely published online, points to the early history of museums,(14) in particular to Wunderkammern or cabinets of curiosities.(15)

The key site of early modern curiosity is the cabinet of curiosities.(16) The privileged site of postmodern culture is the weblog. Such particulars as objects of desire were collected objects, removed from economic circulation and redefined as semiophores (17) “collected not because of their practical value but because of their significance as representative of the invisible”. In both readings, early modern and postmodern, their function is to communicate beyond verba and res, by means of both verba and res, “that of which we speak and that which we see, between the universe of discourse and the world of visual perception”.(18)

Consistent with other empirical analysis of web genres,(19) we employed methods of content analysis to identify paradigms of curiosity and quantify linguistic properties of the most popular European/British or Irish and American weblogs over a span of seven years. Instrumental was The Weblog Awards or The Bloggies (20) - a nonprofit Internet project created in 2001 by Nikolai Nolan (“publicly-chosen awards given to weblog writers and those related to weblogs for 30 categories”). Proposals and decisions have been made by Internet users exclusively and the winner weblogs are in general granted prestige within the community.(21) Our analysis is based on a random sample of fifty-two postings from the most popular European/British or Irish and American weblogs from 2001 to 2007.

Diction 5.0 is a content analysis software programme, extensively utilized for its reliability, validity and popularity among communication researchers. This lexically based software programme searches blog postings for five semantic features and thirty-three sub-features. The five main semantic features included in Diction 5.0 are activity, optimism, certainty, realism and commonality. The programme assumes that these five master variables best capture the major tonal features of a text.(22) Each semantic feature is scored on the basis of the 33 sub-features (dictionaries) according to a series of formulas incorporated into the software. The blog postings are compared with 33 standard dictionaries and word lists in segments of 500 words. For postings exceeding 500 words, the scores are the average of the individual 500 word segments. In postings not evenly divisible into 500 word units, the scores for the uneven segments are weighted proportionally to their word count.

Two factors make Diction 5.0 unique: its dictionaries and its norms. Thirty-one dictionaries lie at the heart of Diction 5.0 and they vary in size from 10 words to 745 words, with individual words only (vs. phrases) and no duplication (homographs are treated via statistical weighing procedures thereby partially corrected for the context). Simply put, Diction counts the words of a text and compares them with thirty-three built-in dictionaries to create a standard set of scores based on those lists of words. Let us consider standard personal pronouns such as “he”, “she”, “they” â their use represents a yardstick for measuring how strong the human interest elements are in a text. They fall under human interest dictionary and scores are generated for the number of occurrences.

Our general hypothesis is that there lies a collector in each of us, global villagers (hence our insight into the historical evidence of such practices hereinabove) of strong Renaissance heritage, fluent in the language of curiosity. With an eye on language context as well as word calculation, the content analysis programme suits our research objectives as it follows individual language scores which are used to calculate language variables.

Recurrent linguistic features construct paradigms of curiosity at the level of lexical choice. The highest scores on human interest additive variable connote an inclination for explicit and worldly ways. Building on R. Flesch - the enthusiast Austrian Ã©migrÃ© who spent most of his life in a frustrating quest to persuade of the tragic flaw in favouring look-say over phonics in learning new vocabulary with native English speakers â life-like qualities of texts that betray passionate interest in people and their activities result from recurrent usage of standard personal pronouns (he, his, ourselves, them), family members and relations (cousin, wife, grandchild, uncle) and generic terms (friend, baby, human, person). The frequency in usage fuels the subject-oriented strand that constitutes the basic, nude paradigm of curiosity.

Data recorded scores above the normal range for concreteness variable that consists of a large dictionary, if not the largest compiled, with no thematic unity other than tangibility and materiality. Numerous lexical units categorize for body parts, articles of clothing, household animals, foodstuff, and general elements of nature â are they nothing but salient ingredients of late Renaissance cabinets. All this contributes to an object-oriented strand that already adds substance and completes our paradigm.

Subject and object are woven together to make an intricate whole with the consistent support of two other language variables: temporal awareness and present concern. Mean language scores were above the normal range for temporal awareness which accounts for an exclusively barefaced orientation towards concrete and practical matters. The dictionary for temporal awareness includes in particular terms that fix a person, an idea or event, why not objects in general as well, within a specific time interval. It involves literal time (century, instant, mid-morning) along with metaphorical designations (lingering, seniority, nowadays); above all calendrical terms (autumn, year-round, weekend), elliptical terms (spontaneously, postpone, transitional) and judgement terms (premature, obsolete, punctual).

Fairly high scores were recorded for present concern variable to locate curiosity in time and equal it to a generic passion for tangible and easily recognizable actions. Present tense verbs have been handpicked and included within an extrapolated list from C.K.Ogden’s original catalogue of general and picturable terms. Criterion for selection was the high rate of frequency in contemporary usage. No topic-specific dictionary is aimed at: instead highlighted are general physical activities (cough, taste, sing, take), social (canvass, touch, govern, meet) and task-performance operations (make, cook, print, paint). All these high scores add to realism variable which involves, all in all, language describing tangible, immediate, recognizable matters that affect people’s everyday lives.

By way of contrast, the lowest scores that were recorded for inspiration language variable (1.41 mean score, usually individual scores below the normal range) indicate an absolute disinterest if not reluctance to acknowledge abstract virtues deserving of universal respect. Preoccupation with the particular defines the microcosmos within that is captured in language by semantic contentedness. Remarkable mean language scores for insistence (33.71 mean language scores, usually individual language scores above the normal range) speak for themselves. Repetition of key words reflects a preference for a limited, ordered world.

In conclusion, the corpus of the most popular blogs in Europe and the United States brought to light a linguistic pattern outlined by an uncommonly, I daresay, full-fledged appetite for such personals and detailed occurrences â that we define as paradigms of curiosity.

Recurrent linguistic patterns are visually assisted by extra-linguistic elements to complete the collection.

Take for instance the visual aggressive opulence in the collecting practices of a postmodern practitioner whose naÃ¯ve conglomerate of animal snapshots reached the target of mainstream media: a link to the weblog winner of Best American Weblog 2007 pops up on the homepage of CNN (23) or CNN news headline quoting on Best American Weblog 2007 for a story on baby tigers.(24)

Data collected at the level of pictorial representation in the most popular weblogs recorded parallel visual paradigms of curiosity, European/ British or Irish vs. American. Indeed, at the textual level, the content analysis methods we used introduced neither major thematic differences nor significant idiosyncratic frequency of usage of certain lexical units belonging to other dictionaries than those surveyed or outstanding from the very dictionaries surveyed. Coherent language patterns were by and large expected to surface in European/British or Irish as well as American weblogs: all hypotheses confirmed. Typical for American blogs, however, are the rich visual elements in abundance that assist textual input and complete the message. European/British or Irish bloggers generally verbalise their experience and explore curiosity by word choice rather than by visual aids. If allowed, the latter are complimentary on the mastery of texts. By way of contrast, the most popular American weblogs support the textual with the visual (hence the exclusively cuteness in all its diversity as available in nature or made possible by human touch: Cute Overload). Textual and visual paradigms of curiosity reconcile eventually within the latest most popular Weblog of the Year, leaving thus no room for speculation.

It is not a secret to anyone, Renaissance collector and blogger alike, that curiosity in its naked form as desire to know has indeed eluded social norms and regulations and offered billions of beneficiaries, cabinet and blog visitors alike, a glimpse into the authentic visible, exotically out of reach. The archetypal lust of the eye is by definition quenched by a stunningly generous display of objects. It is not, though, the ordinary eye but the eye of the merry few, Renaissance princes and computer literates alike. Consumption of curiosity through objects has always denoted connoisseurship. Curiosity focus has shifted from the material to the immaterial, from object to subject, pertaining still the interdependency in the relationship. Weblogs today zigzag between object and subject, from the object to the subject, from what you can see/link to what you can think.

Weblogs are now everywhere as postmodern extensions of Renaissance cabinets. There have been award ceremonies (that researchers take good advantage from) to designate the best of them. Out of the closet, we can no longer ignore them: from a cast member of Star Trek: The Next Generation â Best American Weblog as well as Best Weblog of the Year 2001, 2002 (25) to a London based (homosexual) blogger combining personal writing with commentary and links of a futurist, politicised and millennial nature â Best European Weblog 2001,2002, Best British or Irish Weblog 2004, 2005;(26) from a representative of the Asian-American community, a San Francisco blogger- Best American Weblog 2003 (27) to a graphic designer living in the south of France, former editor of the Best European Weblog 2003, 2004, now retooling (28) or to a former zine (29), a directory of wonderful (sic) things co-editored by cyberpunk subculture celebrities- Best American Weblog 2004, Best Weblog of the year 2004, 2005 (30); from an American female blogger residing in Salt Lake City, Utah, under the pseudonym of Dooce (31), web designer and graphic artist or upon the history of a new word (dooce, to be dooced “to lose one’s job as a result of something one wrote on the Internet)- Best American Weblog 2005 over to another female blogger, of British origin now living in Belgium, single mother of three, trying to cope with both children and boyfriend who is a twat- Best European Weblog for three years running 2005, 2006, 2007 (32) or to the non-sexist, non-passive, progressive female perspective on sexuality of an assistant director in the film industry â Best British or Irish Weblog 2006, 2007 (33) and, last but not least, to another female web designer in her thirties, collecting pictures of adorable animals and character toys seasoned with funny commentary- Best American Weblog 2007 (34).

For the last two years, Weblog of the Year was awarded to PostSecret, a community art project initiated by Frank Warren that invites volunteers, viz. Renaissance princes and contemporary computer literates alike, to contribute secrets and share them with the world in the form of a virtual postcard, within a generalised Procrustean format - anonymously contribute your secrets on a 4x6 inch postcard. From two or three outcasts visiting the site at the beginning, millions have surrendered to the passion so that we now have national online versions, French or Romanian platforms for sending secrets into the air as well as the old traditional form: no less than four books have been published.(35) It seems successful blogging does not at all preclude successful publishing. On the contrary, many blog postings would leave the virtual space and go public in print form (36) against all odds within a postmodern reiteration of the Battle of the Books â the ancient (traditional publishing) vs. the modern (online publishing) â as indeed readers have always used formats to their specific purpose. Curiosity has thus come full circle: the first of all passions is now objectified online, still feeding our wonderfully insatiable hunger for curios.

4 “marvel”. The American HeritageÂ® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 13 Nov. 2007. Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/marvel

5 “awe”. The American HeritageÂ® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 13 Nov. 2007. Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/awe

10 Schulz, E., “Notes on the history of collecting and of museums” in Susan M. Pearce, (Ed.) Interpreting Objects and Collections, Routledge, 1994: 175-187

13 Language usage has conquered another battle in the eternal war against linguistic norms and regulations: a simple, almost naÃ¯ve search in the inviting global village is ultimately complimentary on blog and blogger as preferred lexical units over weblog and weblogger: no less than 1,770,000,000 search results for blog mirrored by 207,000,000 for blogger vs. no more than 127,000,000 for weblog and 1,950,000 for weblogger in November 2007.

14 Wunderkammern as such did not evolve into the modern museum but it was rather dispersed in the sense that items in former collections ended up in different museum departments of natural history, ethnography, decorative arts. Douglas Crimp, On the Museum’s Ruins (1993). MIT Press.

15 Commentary on the comparison between Wunderkammern and weblogs is scarce , albeit consistent. Dibbell, Julian.“Portrait of the blogger as a young man”. First published in FEED online magazine, May 3, 2000. Reprinted in We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture, edited by Rebecca Blood Perseus, 2002. Parnell, Korny. 2004. Wiki as Wunderkammer. Retrieved November 10, 2007 (http://blogs.msdn.com/korbyp/archive/2004/03/14/89417.aspx) Barnhard, Vincent. 2005. Weblog modern equivalent of a Wunderkammer. Retrieved November 10, 2007 (http://barnhard.nl/2005/09/21/weblogs_equivalent_of_a_modern_wunderkammern/) Nilsson, S. (2003). The function of language to facilitate and maintain social network in research weblogs. Dissertation, Umea Universitet, Engelska lingvistik

16 Kenny’s distinctive culture of curiosities rules over Pomian’s culture of curiosity and furthermore implies the object-oriented usage of the curiosity cultural family of terms. Kenny, N. 2006: 43

21 In response to Simon Waldman, director of digital publishing at Guardian Unlimited who launched a competition in 2002 “to promote and reward the cream of Britain’s blogger” whose wit, imagination and flair in abundance had made blogging one of the wonders of the web (q.e.d.): And the Bloggies? They're incomparable. It's a tiny event that no one takes seriously, with negligable prizes, and which has little interest to anyone outside weblogging. But most importantly, it's an award in which every participant, every judge and every voter is a weblogger or weblog reader (and an equal) rather than an inexpert "real-life big name", whose qualifications and ability to judge remain totally suspect. http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,765160,00.html

29 Abbr. fanzine, magazine: small circulation, noncommercial publication of original or appropriated texts and images. According to technorati.com, the recognized authority in live monitoring blogs and other forms of independent, user-generated content, all under the umbrella of “citizen media”, “of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies”

35 Frank Warren, Ed., HarperCollins/Regan Books. 2005. Post Secret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives; 2006. My Secret: A PostSecret Book; 2007. The Secret Lives of Men and Women: A PostSecret Book; 2007. A Lifetime of Secrets

36 Zoe MacCarthy, My boyfriend is a Twat: A Guide to Recognizing, Dealing, and Living with an Utter Twat. The Friday Project, 2007. Abby Lee, Girl with A One-Track Mind: Confessions of the Seductress Next Door. Ebury Press, 2006; Idem, Diary of a Sex Fiend: Girl with a One-Track Mind. Skyhorse Publishing, 2007

For quotation purposes:
Otilia Pacea: Ignotum per Ignotius or If Curiosity Killed the Cat: An Insight into the Wonders of Europe- In: TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften. No. 17/2008. WWW: http://www.inst.at/trans/17Nr/5-1/5-1_pacea17.htm

	Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften	17. Nr.	Dezember 2011

Sektion 5.1.	A common place: national cultures, European heritage Sektionsleiterin \| Section Chair: Adina Ciugureanu (Ovidius University Constanta, Romania) Dokumentation \| Documentation \| Documentation

Human Interest	23.91
Concreteness	15.71
Temporal Terms	17.69
Present Concern	11.86