Thus, I have shown you the connection between the Segreti, Della porta and modern science. But how about between dirty jokes and science? The title of this essay says from dirty jokes to science. I happened to obtain a copy of Della Porta's 1589 edition of Magia naturalis. Like the first, it is potpourri of the sensible and questionable: cosmetics, alchemy, farming, metallurgy, cookery, the loadstone, glasses, music. Although the thrust of Della Porta's ideas was to question the ancients, this book contains a lot of hooey derived from them.

Does it contain dirty jokes too? In Book 2 is a section on the generation of animals. Let me quote Della Porta. In this, as in all passages, I have modernized the spelling for easier reading.

"I am much ashamed to speak of it, that man being the chief of all living creatures, should so foully disparage himself, as to couple with brute beasts and procreate so many half-savage monsters as are often seen: wherein man shows himself to be worse than a beast. I will relate some few examples hereof, thereby to make such wicked wretches a obloquy to the world, and their names odious to others."

To Della Porta, I must confess, this was probably not a dirty joke. While I get the feeling people of the 16th Century were even more ribald than people of our own, not in the case of man-beast coupling they weren't. It was beyond the sexual pale. I gather the Spanish Inquisition punished this worse than even heresy. And heretics were burnt at the stake.

Also, Della Porta had another motive besides sensationalism. He wanted to prove the half-human half-beasts of the classics were not totally myth. And thus show his respect for the classics. It is true at one point he gives Galen's opinion that man-ass coupling is not possible because a man's penis, 'privities' in my 17th Century translation, is not long enough to reach an ass' womb and it is impossible the sperm could commingle with an ass' egg. Also, there would be a problem of how the child would be fed after birth.Basically, the modern position that the coupling of diverse species like this is impossible. But Della Porta presents Galen's view only to cut it down. He raises the fact of differences in individuals to defend man-beast coupling. Some men's 'privities' are large enough and some ass' wombs are shallow enough. Also, he brings in the influence of the stars, which might make it propitious for the egg and sperm of different species to commingle. However, he never answers how the child would be fed after birth.

Della Porta is not the only writer of this period who asserts the possibility of man interbreeding with beast either. Ambroise Paré (1510-90) the famous French surgeon also goes to great lengths to assert the possibility of half-human half-beasts. He probably also did this for the same reason, his respect for the classics -- and an eye toward sensationalizing his book.

However, to us moderns, this view sounds like a dirty joke. For me in particular, it has to be. If it is not, I cannot present the supreme irony of science, our most serious pursuit, deriving from dirty jokes, our most frivolous pursuit.

Here is one 'dirty joke.' Della Porta attributes it to Plutarch.

"A shepherd brought into the house of Periander a babe engendered of man and mare, which had the hands, and neck, and head of a man, but otherwise it was like a horse; and it cried like a young child. Thales, as soon as he saw it, told Periander, that he did not esteem it as a strange and monstrous thing, which the gods had sent to portend and betoken the seditions and commotions likely to ensue, as Diocles thought of it; but rather as a natural thing; and therefore his advice was, that either they should have no horse-keepers; or if they had, they should have wives of their own."

"That Fulvius Stella loathing the company of a woman, coupled himself with a mare, of whom he begat a very beautiful maiden-child; and she was called by a fit name, Epona."

"A maiden that was of a man and ass; for Aristonymus Ephesius, the Son of Demonstratus, could not away with a woman's company, but made choice of an ass to lie with; and she brought forth after a certain time, a very comely maiden, and in show exceedingly beautiful: she was called Onoscelis, that is to say, one having ass' thighs."

"There was a certain young man in Sybaris, who was called Crachis, a luster after goats; and, being overruled by his lust, coupled himself with a fair goat, the fairest he could light upon, and lived with her as his love and concubine, bestowing many gifts upon, as ivy and rushes to eat; and kept her mouth very sweet, that he might kiss her; and laid under her soft grass that she might lie easy and sleep the better. The he-goat, the ringleader of the herd, espying this, watched his time when the young man was in sleep, and fell upon him and spoiled him. But the she-goat, when her time was come, brought forth an infant that had the face of a man, but the thighs of a goat."

Here Della Porta may actually be telling a dirty joke. Jealousy is the basis of many Mediterranean dirty jokes, and animal jealousy must be triply ridiculous.

There you have it: Della Porta, the harbinger of science was also the harbinger of dirty jokes. So there is a connection through Della Porta, Galileo and the Segreti that ties the development of science -- to dirty jokes.

Continued