05

[for larger image]

Animal: Grey fox
Museum of Systematics and Ecology, Biological Sciences

Vegetable: Jeffrey Pine cone (Pinus jeffreyi)
collected at San Rafael Peak
Museum of Systematics and Ecology, Biological Sciences

Vegetable: Pine cone from Walden Pond
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, Davidson Library

Mineral: Gypsum
C. D. Woodhouse Collection,
Geology

Artificial: Hard disk drive, 1988
Physics Electronics Shop

A curiosity cabinet served to reproduce the world in miniature, both through the objects it contained and the rubrics, or headings, under which they were organized. In the center of our curiosity cabinet a group of pedestals present the visitor with an ordering of the universe familiar from the childhood game of "animal, vegetable, mineral." The lowest pedestals are devoted to minerals (gypsum crystals; the metal and silicone computer hard drive); the next highest show the animal and vegetable kingdoms (fox, mouse, pine cones).

The computer hard drive expands the game to include the fundamental sixteenth-century interest in the division between artifice and nature.

[for larger image]

Fox hunting a mouse eating seeds from a pine cone.

This seemingly whimsical grouping, while showing the animal and vegetable division, also represents the natural hierarchy of the food chain.