The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science

by Armand Marie Leroi

The way in which Aristotle deals with the last of these questions – the talking heads – is instructive. Many people, he says, believe that a struck-off head can talk, and they cite Homer in support. Also, he says, there is an apparently credible description of just such a case. In Caria (Anatolia) a priest belonging to the cult of Zeus Hoplosmios was decapitated. The grounded head named its murderer as one Cerides. A Cerides was accordingly found and put on trial. Aristotle does not comment on the fate of the man, nor even on the possible miscarriage of justice, but he dismisses the story on the grounds that: (i) when barbarians chop people’s heads off the heads don’t speak; (ii) when animals get their heads chopped off, their heads don’t make any sounds, and given that, why should human heads be able to do so?; (iii) speech requires breath from the lungs via the windpipe, which it can hardly supply to a severed head. All of this is admirably sane. We should never take such sanity for granted.