Ithaca College

Nancy Menning (Philosophy/Religion) recently presented a paper at the annual meetings of the Eastern International Region of the American Academy of Religion. Her paper, "Wunderkammern as more than iconic: Watts's model of scriptures and the Book of Nature," was written for the first annual meeting of the recently-formed Society for Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts (SCRIPT).  

The phrase "The Book of Nature" refers to nature itself, with a particular focus on nature as a source of divine revelation; the Book of Nature was considered to be a complementary text to the Book of Scripture in late antique, medieval, and early modern Christianity. Menning argued that the Book of Nature, as ritualized by late renaissance and early modern Europeans in the Wunderkammern (also known as "curiosity cabinets," i.e. collections of marvels or unusual objects; these collections pre-date the rise of museums), attains the status of "scripture" as defined by James Watts in his article, "The Three Dimensions of Scripture" (Postscripts 2 [2006]: 135-159). According to the model proposed by Watts, ritualizations of scripture  convey claims for social power; according to Menning, this is evident as well when nature is elevated to the status of scripture.