Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe*

Abstract

During The Sixteenth And Seventeenth centuries natural history, and to a certain extent science in general, rediscovered its capacity for playfulness in the form of the scientific joke. By scientific joke, I mean thelusus naturae, or joke of nature, and the lusus scientiae, or joke of knowledge, that populated the museums and scientific texts of the period. The relation between the natural paradox of lusus and the scientific demonstrations and experiments that were also lusus points to the way in which the dynamic between art and nature and between collector and audience unfolded in the spectacle of science.