16
Reproduction of an Elizabethan Costume
Dramatic Art
Cast of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull
(the original is in LA County Museum of Natural History)
Paleontology Collection, Geology
The strange and accidental juxtapositions that occur in the curiosity cabinet generate new associations and unexpected connections. The bizarre figure created by the combination of the dress and the skull was unplanned by us, but the fact that even accidental combinations can produce seemingly meaningful associations formed the basis of the sixteenth-century episteme. The sixteenth-century collector viewed divisions and distinctions as mere conveniences, not hard and fast categories. Knowledge was founded on the chain of relationships and similarities that appeared to unify the material world, rather than on the differences which divided it.
