Certain Fakes and Uncertain Facts: Jan Jonston and The
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IX Certain Fakes and Uncertain Facts Jan Jonston and the Question of Truth in Religion and Natural History $%&'() *+,-./01* “Kutya nehéz úgy hazudni, ha az ember nem ösmeri az igazságot”1 odern scienti2c knowledge is expected to be based on trustworthy Mand authenticated facts. As historians have frequently reminded us, our understanding of trust and authenticity has changed substantially over the last few hundred years.2 3rough history, di4erent social, experi- mental, and rhetorical conventions have been developed and employed to achieve consensus over what constitutes an undeniable fact.3 Forgers quickly adopted and exploited these conventions to produce fakes that could be * 3is article was written while the author was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Schol- ars and Writers, the New York Public Library. I would like to thank Marco Beretta and Maria Conforti, Alex Marr, Mario Biagioli, Ann Blair, Isabelle Charmantier, Caroline Duroselle-Melish, Howard Hotson, Elidor Mehilli, Bill Rankin, Simon Scha4er, Claudia Swan, Iryna Vushko, Alan Stewart and the audience of the Columbia University Semi- nar for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, as well as the participants of the F for Fakes conference. 1 “It is deucedly di5cult to lie when you don’t know the truth.” Péter Esterházy. Caelestial Harmonies (New York: HarperCollins, 6##7), !. 2 Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century Eng- land (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, !""7). 3 See, for instance, Steven Shapin and Simon Scha4er, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, !"87); 3eodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: !e Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Lie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, !""9); Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, 6##:). !"# ch09_6455.indd 190 4/16/14 1:47 PM Certain Fakes and Uncertain Facts !"! mistaken for such facts. Yet in what circumstances does science need (or need not) to have recourse to authenticated, trustworthy knowledge and facts? Both in the past and in the present, trust and authenticity have often been a non-issue for scienti2c conversation and debates. Regimes of trust not only change with the passage of time, as historical epistemology teaches us. 4 Sometimes they are simply not needed. When discussing scienti2c facts in the pub, for example, you do not provide all the experimental results to convince your drinking partners.5 You might mention the name of the journal (or, these days, the random blog post) where you have read about the latest tidbit on climate change, evolution, the decimation of gorillas, but this is only done in passing. Your interest lies in keeping the conversa- tion going, on entertaining and surprising your friends. You do not neces- sarily want to convince them. Wonder, mirth and lively conversation do not require an object that has been truly veri2ed. In this chapter, I argue that such a relaxed attitude to authenticated knowledge might not only be found in public houses, but also in works associated with the mainstream of scienti2c activity. Oftentimes, science can be done perfectly well with- out knowledge that we hold to be securely veri2ed. Trust and truth do not always matter. As a case study, I present seventeenth-century natural history as a mode of inquiry where authentication and trustworthy knowledge were not neces- sarily the prime features of the discipline. Many naturalists in this period were interested in collecting uncertain facts: potentially true bits and pieces of knowledge, whose origins and validity they could not (or did not even bother to) ascertain.6 Knowledge claims in natural history did not need to 4 On historical epistemology, see Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, On Historicizing Epistemology: An Essay (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 6#!#); Uljana Feest and 3omas Sturm. “What (good) is Historical Epistemology? Editors’ Introduction.“ Erkenntnis, :7 (6#!#):687–;#6. 5 3is hypothetical example is obviously di4erent from the scenario described in Anne Secord. “Science in the Pub: Artisan Botanists in Early Nineteenth-Century Lancashire.” History of Science, ;6 (!""<):69"–;!7. 6 For the related concept of factoids, see Ann Blair. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: 3e Commonplace Book,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 7; (!""6): 7<!–77!, 7<7. See also Fabian Krämer. “Faktoid und Fallgeschichte: Medizinische Fallgeschich- ten im Lichte frühneuzeitlicher Lese- und Aufzeichnungstechniken.” in: Frauke Bernd and Daniel Fulda, eds. Die Sachen der Aufklärung: Beiträge zur DGEJ-Jahrestagung "#$# in Halle a. d. Saale (= Studien zum achtzehnten Jahrhundert ;<). (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 6#!6), pp. 767–7;9. ch09_6455.indd 191 4/16/14 1:47 PM !"6 >?@ABCD be authenticated, and no one worried if they were fake or untrue. 3e focus is on the Scottish-Polish physician Jan Jonston, the mid-century author of the last major Renaissance encyclopedia of natural history. Little discussed today, Jonston o4ers a fascinating entry into the natural history of possible facts. His aversion to certain knowledge in natural history did not stem from his ignorance of contemporary regimes of piecemeal authentication. In fact, he could write in both registers: he could discuss uncertain facts without bothering about their truth value, but on occasion he could also make claims to to certainty, establishing the authenticity of his facts with the help of complex rhetorical strategies. Both in his religious writings and in his medical practice, he presented his knowledge claims as if they had been based on bulletproof evidence. 3is should not be surprising. Religion was a matter of life and death for Jonston, whose active years coincided with the calamitous era of the 3irty Years’ War. Church was not the topic of light banter in the pub. AEicted by a variety of illnesses, his aristocratic patron similarly wanted bulletproof remedies, not uncertain speculation. In these two 2elds, authenticated knowledge was crucial. Yet authenticity always brings its double with itself: the possibility and the fear that it is buttressed by fake proofs. Indeed, both in religion and in medicine, Jon- ston resorted to ruses and distortions to present his case in a better light; and some of his contemporaries would eventually accuse him of twisting the truth. I argue that, for Jonston, natural history was di4erent. In this 2eld, certain evidence was not all that important. Unstable (and potentially false) facts were absolutely acceptable, and Jonston felt free to ignore the issue of establishing the truth value of his claims. As a result, the problem of faking proofs did not raise its ugly head. If authenticity did not matter, there was no incentive to falsely boost your evidence. If you decided to make no strong truth claims about natural history, no one would worry about accusing you of falsifying data. 3e rest of this paper compares these two di4erent regimes of evidence, anxious authenticity and relaxed uncertainty, in Jonston’s oeuvre. ?FGH(&G'/+G'&- + I,JKH(G '& GH( L'M( JN O+, How do you make a scienti2c career in the midst of war? Sometimes you fake and twist the truth, sometimes you do not care about the truth, but you most certainly have to rely on patrons, publish a lot, and do your best to sur- vive. 3is is, at least, the answer that the life and works of Jan Jonston seem ch09_6455.indd 192 4/16/14 1:47 PM Certain Fakes and Uncertain Facts !"; to suggest. He was born into a Scottish immigrant family that belonged to the small, religious group of Moravian brethren in Poland, and lost his parents just before he he turned !7.7 In the same year, the 3irty Years’ War broke out, turning the whole of Central Europe into a battle2eld for the following three decades. Life was not easy in Poland during these days, but Jonston managed to thrive. Despite his 2nancial hardships, he was able to travel widely in Europe, taking degrees at St Andrews, Cambridge and Leiden. He acquired a stable 2nancial position by his thirties, enjoying the support of a well-endowed patron. His medical practice at the court of Rafał and Bogusław Leszczyński brought in a steady source of income, which was supplemented by dowry from two strategic marriages within the scope of a single year. His 2rst wife died within weeks of their mar- riage. Without skipping a beat, Jonston married the Polish royal physician Matthaeus Vechner’s daughter, which brought him the money to consider himself established. As he wrote, “so large a dowry has fallen to my lot that the income from it for just a single year may amply su5ce both to feed the family and increase our wealth, even if I neglect my practice.”8 3e happy constellation of strong patronage and kinship networks might explain why Jonston decided to remain Poland for the rest of his life. On several occasions, he refused to accept professorships abroad, despite invitations from a variety of German and Dutch universities. To satisfy local patrons and to communicate with a broader audience abroad, Jonston engaged in a proli2c, and diversi2ed, publication project from his early twenties onwards. His books include a report of a local prophetess of the Moravian brethren, a guidebook for tutors of noblemen, theological trea- tises, and textbooks on medicine, civil history, natural history. In all these publications, he carefully crafted his texts to the requirements of the audi- ences. Accordingly, he couched his presentation of facts and information in a variety of rhetorical styles. As it happens, he laid the most emphasis 7 Elias 3omae, Lampas perenni-luca (Brieg: Johann Christoph Jacob, !9:7), p. 7!. Jon- ston’s best and exquisitely researched biography is Tadeusz Bilikiewicz, Jan Jonston: Żyvot i działalność lekarza (Warsaw: Mianowski, !";!). See also Jan Jonston: Lekarz i uczony XVII wieku.