The species that resembles the human heart, and for that reason is
named Anthropocardite . . . is worthy of particular attention. Its sub-
stance is flint inside. The form of a heart is imitated as perfectly as
possible. One can distinguish in it the stump of the vena cava,
together with a portion of its two cross-sections. One can also see the
stump of the great artery emerging from the left ventricle, together
with its lower or descending branch.59
The fossil, with its mixed animal and mineral nature, is the privileged locus of a resemblance required by the historian of the continuum, whereas the space of the taxinomia decomposed it with rigour.
The fossil, with its mixed animal and mineral nature, is the privileged locus of a resemblance required by the historian of the continuum, whereas the space of the taxinomia decomposed it with rigour.
The monster and the fossil both play a very precise role in this
configuration. On the basis of the power of the continuum held by
nature, the monster ensures the emergence of difference. This differ-
ence is still without law and without any well-defined structure; the
monster is the root-stock of specification, but it is only a sub-species
itself in the stubbornly slow stream of history. The fossil is what per-
mits resemblances to subsist throughout all the deviations traversed by
nature; it functions as a distant and approximative form of identity; it
marks a quasi-character in the shift of time. And this is because the
monster and the fossil are merely the backward projection of those
differences and those identities that provide taxinomia first with struc-
ture, then with character. Between table and continuum they form a
shady, mobile, wavering region in which what analysis is to define as
identity is still only mute analogy; and what it will define as assignable
and constant difference is still only free and random variation. But, in
truth, it is so impossible for natural history to conceive of the history of
nature, the epistemological arrangement delineated by the table and the
continuum is so fundamental, that becoming can occupy nothing but
an intermediary place measured out for it solely by the requirements of
the whole. This is why it occurs only in order to bring about the
necessary passage from one to the other – either as a totality of destruc-
tive events alien to living beings and occurring only from outside
them, or as a movement ceaselessly being outlined, then halted as soon
as sketched, and perceptible only on the fringes of the table, in its
unconsidered margins. Thus, against the background of the con-
tinuum, the monster provides an account, as though in caricature, of
the genesis of differences, and the fossil recalls, in the uncertainty of its
resemblances, the first buddings of identity.
Foucault / Order of Things / 170-171-
There is no limit to this line of curiosities. All sorts of subjects may be found — calves' heads, which are quite common, and eyes, birds, fishes, detached hands, feet, and ears, and human profiles. A large flint was kept for a long time at Mendon, on which everybody recognized the bust of Louis XIV. To such accidents M. J. B. Robinet, in 1778, devoted a part of his ingenious Considerations on the Efforts of Nature in trying to make Man (Considerations sur les essais de la Nature qui apprend à faire homme). As we turn the leaves of this curious work we see described, in distinct paragraphs, anthropocardites, representing the heart of man; encephalites, or brains; cranoïdes, or skulls; otites, or ear-stones; leucophthalmos, or white eyes; chirites, or hands; stones representing a muscle, and even the olfactory nerve, etc.
The drawing of the distinction between fortuitous resemblances and true fossils was protracted and made difficult by the fact that the two forms are often mingled, sometimes associated in the same specimen or originating in beds having the most essential characteristics in common.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_41/May_1892/Dendrites
Foucault / Order of Things / 170-171-
There is no limit to this line of curiosities. All sorts of subjects may be found — calves' heads, which are quite common, and eyes, birds, fishes, detached hands, feet, and ears, and human profiles. A large flint was kept for a long time at Mendon, on which everybody recognized the bust of Louis XIV. To such accidents M. J. B. Robinet, in 1778, devoted a part of his ingenious Considerations on the Efforts of Nature in trying to make Man (Considerations sur les essais de la Nature qui apprend à faire homme). As we turn the leaves of this curious work we see described, in distinct paragraphs, anthropocardites, representing the heart of man; encephalites, or brains; cranoïdes, or skulls; otites, or ear-stones; leucophthalmos, or white eyes; chirites, or hands; stones representing a muscle, and even the olfactory nerve, etc.
The drawing of the distinction between fortuitous resemblances and true fossils was protracted and made difficult by the fact that the two forms are often mingled, sometimes associated in the same specimen or originating in beds having the most essential characteristics in common.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_41/May_1892/Dendrites
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