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Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

ncregister.com

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Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#51

The first use of the word “android” comes from the discussion of a legendary mechanical talking head invented by Albertus Magnus. Thomas Aquinas couldn’t bear its babble and so he smashed it to bits. So, maybe he’s a patron saint of the anti-AI crowd? https://archive.org/details/b30337161

That link just goes to the whole book. For anyone curious: the relevant bit is on page 249, though some pages before and after provide interesting context.

"The same thing is affirmed by [long list] of Albertus Magnus; who, as the most expert, had made an entire man of the same metal[1], and had spent 30 years without any interruption in forming him under several Aspects and Constellations. [...] and being put and fastened together in the form of a Man, had the faculty to reveal to the said Albertus the solutions of all his principal difficulties. To which they add (that nothing be lost of the story of the Statue) that it was battered to pieces by St Thomas, merely because he could not bear its excess of prating. But to give a more rational account of this Androides of Albertus, as also of the miraculous heads, [...]"

[1] i.e., brass ("brazen heads" are mentioned earlier in the paragraph).

(I've modernized the spellings.)

So I think the Androides (I think this is intended as a Greek-looking singular title, not as an English plural; it's a translation of French "Androide") is meant to be a whole person, not just a talking head, although the book talks about it in the context of other things that were just talking heads.

The author declines to believe that Albertus actually made a statue that was able to talk rationally. The specific reasons he gives aren't super-convincing to a modern reader, but I suspect they're mostly rationalizations and his real reason for being unconvinced is just that the story doesn't sound plausible. (Plus, he wants to acquit Albertus of the charge of doing magic in the treating-with-the-powers-of-evil sense.)

He does say that statues able to make vaguely speech-like noises are surely possible "by the help of that part of Natural Magick which depends on the Mathematicks" :-).

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#52
post #51

The first use of the word “android” comes from the discussion of a legendary mechanical talking head invented by Albertus Magnus. Thomas Aquinas couldn’t bear its babble and so he smashed it to bits. So, maybe he’s a patron saint of the anti-AI crowd? https://archive.org/details/b30337161

That link just goes to the whole book. For anyone curious: the relevant bit is on page 249, though some pages before and after provide interesting context. "The same thing is affirmed by [long list] of Albertus Magnus ; who, as the most expert, had made an entire man of the same metal[1], and had spent 30 years without any interruption in forming him under several Aspects and Constellations. [...] and being put and f…

Thanks for pulling that out! And apologies for my quick post.

Another book you might like is “Mathematical Magick” by John Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society [1]. In those days, quite a bit of scientific inspiration came from previous works on “natural magick.” There are many books like this at the Embassy of the Free Mind in Amsterdam! [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_Magick

[2] https://embassyofthefreemind.com/en

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#54
post #51

The first use of the word “android” comes from the discussion of a legendary mechanical talking head invented by Albertus Magnus. Thomas Aquinas couldn’t bear its babble and so he smashed it to bits. So, maybe he’s a patron saint of the anti-AI crowd? https://archive.org/details/b30337161

That link just goes to the whole book. For anyone curious: the relevant bit is on page 249, though some pages before and after provide interesting context. "The same thing is affirmed by [long list] of Albertus Magnus ; who, as the most expert, had made an entire man of the same metal[1], and had spent 30 years without any interruption in forming him under several Aspects and Constellations. [...] and being put and f…

This reminds me of an ancient Chinese story from the Liezi, where a craftsman presents a robot to King Mu that can sing and dance. After the robot beckons to the kind's concubines, he orders the craftsman to be killed. The craftsman is terrified and deconstructs the robot, demonstrating to the king that it is simply a collection of inanimate items. The king is impressed and says "can it be that the skill of a man can be equal to that of the creator?" It's a great story that I discovered because it's an early instance comparing creativity and invention to divine power. Not sure if it has been translated but the text is here: https://ctext.org/dictionary.pl?if=en&id=37480

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#55
post #51

The first use of the word “android” comes from the discussion of a legendary mechanical talking head invented by Albertus Magnus. Thomas Aquinas couldn’t bear its babble and so he smashed it to bits. So, maybe he’s a patron saint of the anti-AI crowd? https://archive.org/details/b30337161

That link just goes to the whole book. For anyone curious: the relevant bit is on page 249, though some pages before and after provide interesting context. "The same thing is affirmed by [long list] of Albertus Magnus ; who, as the most expert, had made an entire man of the same metal[1], and had spent 30 years without any interruption in forming him under several Aspects and Constellations. [...] and being put and f…

It may be possible to come up with something like an analog version of Markov chains. As you turn a crank words keep sounding out based on probability.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#56

The first use of the word “android” comes from the discussion of a legendary mechanical talking head invented by Albertus Magnus. Thomas Aquinas couldn’t bear its babble and so he smashed it to bits. So, maybe he’s a patron saint of the anti-AI crowd? https://archive.org/details/b30337161

Link to the actual page: https://archive.org/details/b30337161/page/249/mode/1up

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#57

Isn't this reconstruction a bit on the slim side? Aquinas was reportedly, let's say, a man of portly presence. I can't find a scholarly source on the matter, at the moment, but here are two quotes I found on the website of a nun[1] (no less, so probably written in good faith): > St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the…

The idea that St. Thomas Aquinas was "portly" or even obese is likely an exaggeration that occurred over time due to overemphasis of certain aspects of his appearance. Early accounts depict him as being both very tall and strong having a big head, often with a build closer to a wrestler or football player than that of an obese man. As far as I can tell, St. Thomas was certainly an imposing figure but people have decided to engage in exaggerations based on some accounts of his appearance to the detriment of others.

For example, one of the earliest works covering St. Thomas' life was written by William de Tocco in the early 14th century, St. Thomas is described as "showing himself a robust and virile man" during manual labor. Contrary to the extremely exaggerated accusations of extreme gluttony by people like Shibley, William de Tocco emphasizes that the physical stature of St. Thomas was in accord with moderate and virtuous conduct which would preclude severe gluttony, "[I]t seems that God had fashioned his body as the noblest of instruments, which St. Thomas always held subservient to acts of virtue and which he never permitted to contravene the judgement of reason."

The iconographic tradition is also not uniform, with large variation across the centuries. I'll link some early depictions of St. Thomas Aquinas from the 14th and 15th century that don't match the "morbidly obese" claims:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Lippo_Me...

https://www.kressfoundation.org/kress-collection/artwork/498...

https://catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/saint-thomas-aq...

https://catholicclassicalict.wordpress.com/wp-content/upload...

https://www.wikiart.org/en/fra-angelico/st-thomas-aquinas-14...

There is another source I recall reading recently that gave credence to the thinner depictions, but unfortunately I haven't been able to dig it up.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#58

Isn't this reconstruction a bit on the slim side? Aquinas was reportedly, let's say, a man of portly presence. I can't find a scholarly source on the matter, at the moment, but here are two quotes I found on the website of a nun[1] (no less, so probably written in good faith): > St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the…

It’s been awhile since I saw reference to Sister Mary Martha.

SMM is (was — inactive for 10 years now) an online persona and it’s not clear if the blogger was actually a religious sister. The blog’s content seems intended mainly as entertainment.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#59
post #23

[flagged]

What are you actually talking about here?

The worship of saints.

TFA:

> He recounted that he reacted with “gratitude and emotion because Aquinas is someone that I’ve not only studied for a long time and taken as a teacher, but also someone I’ve grown to know and love as a saint — and as a spiritual master.”

> “When I saw the reconstruction of his face, it was easier for me to imagine him as a real person who I can have a living relationship with; as a patron saint and as a guide,” he added.

Re: Thomas Aquinas' skull reveals appearance and cause of death

#60

Isn't this reconstruction a bit on the slim side? Aquinas was reportedly, let's say, a man of portly presence. I can't find a scholarly source on the matter, at the moment, but here are two quotes I found on the website of a nun[1] (no less, so probably written in good faith): > St. Thomas was a huge heavy bull of a man, fat and slow and quiet; very mild and magnanimous but not very sociable; shy, even apart from the…

The article discusses this. The researchers admit they can't know for sure if they got that part right. On the other hand, standards for body size were very different 750 years ago than today, so that's certainly part of it. Legends tend to get more exaggerated over time, and the legend of Thomas Aquinas has had plenty of time for exaggeration to build up.

It's crazy how standards for body size can change over even shorter time periods.

I was watching an old game show with Bob Barker and one of the competitions was for people to guess stats about the "average" man, and then run around Hollywood looking for a man who matched that description. So each competitor would guess the average age, height, number of kids, etc. One woman guessed that the average man weighed 180 pounds and Bob Barker mocked her mercilessly for thinking that the average man is such a fatso.

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