96A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICONConvenient things shared an aesthetic continuity when juxtaposed—they
seemed, in a sense, naturally hinged to each other.^75 Other objects were
more pronouncedly linked by aemulatio, a natural kinship existing in
things distant from each other. Analogy, which incorporated traits of
convenientia and aemulatio, enabled knowledge to weave connections
between extremely different objects.^76 And ultimately, the mobility prin-
ciple of sympathy, with its free associative powers, was mostly responsi-
ble for the ontological equalization of naturalia and artificialia in the
cabinet of curiosities.^77 The blurring of boundaries between the wonders
of art and the wonders of nature caused astonishment and admiration,
augmenting the power of the owner of the cabinet.^78 However, at the same
time, it consolidated the growing objectification of nature within the dis-
courses and practices of European culture—an objectification that would
indelibly define human/animal relations for centuries to come.
In human/animal studies, Cartesian philosophy has been frequently
positioned as the originator of animal objectification. In “The Animal
That Therefore I Am,” Derrida argues that “the mechanicism of the
animal machine nevertheless belongs to the filiation of the Cartesian
cogito.”^79 Derrida highlights the persistency of the foundation of Carte-
sian metaphysics as reliant on the unquestionable sovereign centrality of
man in continental philosophy, especially when animal otherness began
to newly emerge in philosophical discourses.^80 Positioning itself at the
core of the positivistic discourses of the Enlightenment, the engendering
of man as cogitant being resulted in a relentless and convenient mecha-
nization and reduction of nature as a resource to be exploited and
dominated.
Descartes’s metaphysics of rationalism advocated animal inferiority
on the grounds that animals cannot produce reasoned speech—a sign
demonstrating the lack of rational souls.^81 Theologically structured Car-
tesian arguments on animal loquens proposed a fundamental parallelism
with the discourses of positivism that shaped the zoological field in the
early eighteenth century, something that strongly contributed to its suc-
cess.^82 Denying the existence of animal souls simultaneously negated the
depth of cognition and self-reflexivity, resulting in a metaphorical flatten-
ing of animals.^83 Written across the epistemes of the Renaissance and the
classical age, Descartes’s philosophical statements were substantially de-
fined by the epistemic parameters of these milieus. Thus, discursive and