Lusus naturae

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The Latin expression Lusus naturae (from Latin lūsus, -ūs m, Mz. Lūsūs 'game') denotes a “miracle of nature”, a “nature game” or a “whim of nature” in medieval and early modern natural research . It was understood to be a living being or an object that could not be classified in the conventional classification schemes. It was believed that nature had allowed itself a kind of exception to the rule through divine design. Conceptually, Empedocles ' free eyes, stomachs, feet, etc. (accidentally created by attraction and repulsion) could be classified here as well as misunderstood fossils ( e.g. ammonites and "thunderbolts" ), which according to the biblical story of creation are the remains of real living beings could not give, or also fantastically reinterpreted stone concretions (for example as " basilisk ").

As lusus naturae were so fabulous animals such as unicorns or dragons, but actually existent, malformed creatures such as calves with five legs or two heads. In the case of the objects, for example, strikingly shaped minerals or parts of plants belong to the Lusus naturae. Often these seemed to imitate a completely different shape, such as ice flowers or human outlines in rock forms.

In the early modern chambers of curiosities , such Lusus naturae were preferred exhibits. The museum of Athanasius Kircher housed a number of natural wonders, including a collection of stones on which Kircher found a sign of the cross.

In the course of the 17th century, the idea of ​​Lusus naturae had to give way to the beginnings of modern natural science and its new order ( taxonomy ).

In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault describes this epistemological change using the example of Ulisse Aldrovandi's understanding of nature , in whose works a number of natural wonders were included, while with Linné's taxonomy all wonder animals had finally disappeared.

literature

  • Lorraine Daston, Katharine Park: Miracles and the Order of Nature 1150–1750. Eichborn, Frankfurt a. M. 2003.
  • Christoph Heyl: Lusus Naturae and Lusus Scientiae in the oldest publicly accessible cabinet of curiosities in England. In: Cardanus . Yearbook for the history of science. Volume 6, Heidelberg 2006.
  • Yvonne Wübben: Lusus naturae and imagination play. Considerations for the transformation of a semantic field with Johann Heinrich Zedler, Christoph Martin Wieland and Abbé Pluche. In: Cardanus . Yearbook for the history of science. Volume 6, Heidelberg 2006.