Animal Imitation, Tight Corsets, and Perdition: Physiognomy, 1873

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 658  Blog Bookstore

The fabulouslessness and learned foolishness of J. Simm's horribly-named Animalimitationality and Mentimitativeness; or Animal and Mental Imitation and their Tendencies and Influences on Society, a Lecture, seems a poor-man's ramble in a polysyllabic scribble.  At it base, J. Simms (listed as "M.D"., and who was also the author of A New Physiognomical Chart of Character) presents a two-paragraph idea and published it over twelve pages that seem twelve pages too many.  The idea is basically so:   humans at time resemble animals because animals imitate what they see, as do humans.  That is principally the entire deal, though it evidently was the cause of numerous lecture bookings for Mr. Simms.  And what Mr. Simms talks about are the problems of imitation, the results of which are found in tight shoes, tight corsets, big hats, and bad walking, all leading to debauched society and wrecked personal dreams. 

There are many things the Simms work is not.  It is not a work that encompasses the social geometry found by other people later in the century--those who came across the study of people and immitation and the like legitimately, such as Gebriel Tardem Emile Durkheim, Scipio Sighele and Gustave Le Bon, for example.  These folks worked with capable data and reasonable assumptions in looking at how the transmission of data and knowledge takes place between people, and sought to explain the construction of the social membrane in logical and scientific ways.  They were trying to address what Marcel Proust would call (somewhat later) "a new distance between ourselves and things". 

Simms was interested in did this too, but did so in terms of how people imitated animals, and how that imitation spread to imitating people, and then fashions, and then resulting in too-tight corsets and too-tight shoes, and wanton neediness, all eading to advanced imitation and, finally, to perdition.  The man had an odd vision which obviously appealed to some. And so it goes.  There's not that much difference in the set of assumptions of Simms and those of Dr. Freud, is there?

Comments

[peacay]

Oh, I don't know, I think there's something to be said for a nearly unpronounceable pseudoscientific neologism-as-title approach, and particularly so when the contents are sparse and wanting.

One can't dance quickly past that cover; the polysyllabic mouthful teases the observer: "Ha! pronounce me if you can!!". I would be persuaded to open that publication if I saw it, after grappling with the cover title, and I might just buy the thing despite discovering that the contents was pure tripe. That's successful marketing for my (admittedly twisted, curious and quirky) demographic.

[John PTak]

Yes, Peacay, all true. Tripe is tripe, and tripe ain't pretty. Sometimes sitting down to an ancient and pretty Norman delicacy is just a bowl of mushy stomach linings, muscular or not; sometimes its the only thing available to eat. But nowadays, astrology and creationism and other bumpkiss doesn't *have* to be consumed; its just there and comfy so people consume it...just like in the old days, where tripe pots would be left on the fire for ever and ever, ancient in themselves, cause someone's always eatin' it, and there's always a little cow belly that can be added to the mix.

[Solar Lau]

Hello,this is my first visit.
I am interested in this book.
I wonder where i can buy a copy of this?

[Jeff]

Hi, John. I'm back after ten days in the northern New Mexico wilderness. 'Twas lovely. We'll discuss it someday. Just a note worth less than the book in question: I could not help but parse that first word in the title as "Anima-Limitationality," and I actually spent a few moments trying to make sense of it before moving on. I prefer my reading of it, whatever it might mean.

[John Ptak]

I like your reading better, too. Welcome back to the non-wilderness, even though you're very close to being there all the time anyway. Less culture shock this way.