The Lying Stones of Marrakech by Stephen Jay Gould Page B

implicit inclusion of a third great dichotomy—top and bottom—in Pliny’s definition, for hysteroliths are composed of two distinct and opposite halves, a stunning representation, literally set in stone, of our strongest mental idol, expressed geometrically. Moreover, all three dichotomies carry great emotional weight both in their archetypal ideological status and in their embodiment of conventional rankings (by worth and moral status) in a hierarchical and xenophobic society: male, white, and top versus female, black, and bottom. A modern perspective that we view as far more valid, in both factual and moral terms, can only cause us to shiver when we grasp the full implication of such a multiply dichotomized classification.
    In his De natura fossilium of 1546, the first published treatise on paleontology (although the term fossil then designated any object found in the ground—a broad usage consistent with its status as past participle of the Latin verb fodere ,“to dig up”—so this work treated all varieties of rocks, minerals, and the remains of organisms now exclusively called fossils), Georgius Agricola unearthed Pliny’s one-liner, probably for the first time since antiquity, and applied the name diphyes to some fossils found near the fortress ofEhrenbreitstein. A generation later, in his De rerum fossilium (On fossil objects) of 1565, Conrad Gesner first connected Pliny’s name and Agricola’s objects with the folk designations and Latin moniker— hysterolith —that would then denote this group of fossils until their status as brachiopod molds became clear two hundred years later.
    Sixteenth-century paleontology proceeded no further with hysteroliths, but we should not undervalue the achievements of Agricola and Gesner in terms of their own expressed aims. As men of the Renaissance, they wished to unite modern observations to classical wisdom—and the application of Pliny’s forgotten and undocumented name to a clear category of appropriate objects seemed, to them, an achievement worth celebrating.
    Moreover, when we note Gesner’s placement of hysteroliths within his general taxonomy of fossils, we can peek through this window into the different intellectual domain of sixteenth-century explanation, and also begin to appreciate the general shifts in worldview that would have to occur before hysteroliths could be recognized as brachiopod molds. Gesner established fifteen categories, mostly based on presumed resemblances to more familiar parts of nature, and descending in a line of worth from the most heavenly, regular, and ethereal to the roughest and lowest. The first category included geometric forms (fossils of circular or spherical shape, for example); the second brought together all fossils that recalled heavenly bodies (including star-shaped elements of crinoid columns); while the third held stones that supposedly fell from the sky. At the other end, the disparaged fossils of class 15 resembled insects and serpents. Gesner placed hysteroliths into category 12, not at the bottom but not very near the honored pinnacle either, for “those that have some resemblance to men or quadrupedal animals, or are found within them.” As his first illustration in category 12, Gesner drew a specimen of native silver that looked like a mat of human hair.
    2. Idols of the Theater in the Seventeenth Century . Animal or mineral; useful symbol or meaningless accident?
    If classic tribal idols played a founding role in setting the very name and definition of hysteroliths—their designation for some particularly salient features of female anatomy, and their description, by Pliny himself, in terms of three basic dichotomies that build the framework of our mental architecture—then some equally important theatrical idols (that is, constraints imposed by older, traditional systems of thought) underlay the major debate about the origin and meaning of hysteroliths