The Statue Of The Thinker

 No, not Rodin's masterpiece, but this guy, Sir Thomas Browne [1605-1682] who spent the last 45 years of his life in Norwich.

He was a scientist, a trained doctor, and a great polymath. 

His statue stands on Hay Hill, Norwich - erected in 1905, on the 300th anniversary of his birth - close by St Peter Mancroft Church where he was buried.Beside it, since 2007 some modern statues bearing the names of his books.

Although he had a few quite strange beliefs himself, he researched the ideas of others in depth. He wrote a book called Pseudodoxica Epodemica, which outlined the vulgar errors of others. For instance, Browne applied observation and reasoning to such beliefs in the existence of unicorns, the notions that chameleons ate only air, and that garlic disrupted magnetism.

And next to all this there is a huge brain - over three feet high

At the moment there is a lot of controversy, as the City Council want to move the books and the brain elsewhere, and re-lay the steps on the hill to make it a more open area suitable for seating, and events etc. The Thomas Browne Society are not happy, saying more should be made of this important Norwich resident. The Norwich Society do not like the statues at all. 

I can see both sides of the argument - the space would be much more accessible if these large blocks of marble were elsewhere, but I also think that many people are unaware of the genius of this guy. 

There was much more to him than the study of unicorns, chameleons and garlic. Apart from anything else, he contributed a phenomenal number of neologisms [new words] to our language during the 17th century which we still use today, The Oxford English Dictionary [Susie Dent and her colleagues] estimates at least 788. And I bet you use have used some, if not all of them in the past few weeks. It fascinates me that these words below were first written down in Norwich, and we are still using them today. Words like

misconception,exhaustion, coma, ambidextrous, carnivorous, medical, follicle, hallucination,  illustrative, participating,  ruminating selection, transgressive, undulation, variegation, vitreous, flammability, biped, gypsum, ferocious, electricity ,  compensate, prairie, coexistence, suicide, and finally...migrant

But please don't ask me where his brain should be relocated - I have no idea...