THE BRUNELLUS PROBLEM Jerry Harkins 

 There is a certain kind of one-upmanship practiced by intellectuals in which the object is to demonstrate a mastery of obscure information. This differs from Trivial Pursuits in several important respects. For one thing, it is a blood sport and for another it never intrudes into anything that might remotely be confused with popular culture. A pundit who compares Pat Buchanan to the Docetist heretics is marking his intellectual turf in much the same way a dog marks a hydrant but without the dog’s sense of play. 

 The master of the form is, of course, Umberto Eco whose 1980 novel, “The Name of the Rose,” is a tour de force of arcana, so much so that three classicists published what became a best selling guide to the book for American readers. Their “Key” is almost as good as the novel. For example, a minor character, the obscure French philosopher John Buridan (c.1290-c.1360), is identified only as, “an important figure in the Nominalist debates.” You are expected to know what nominalism is, how it relates to the realist philosophy of William of Baskerville, the (fictional) hero of the novel, and his friend, the (historical) moderate nominalist William of Occam, and how it resonates in Twentieth Century logical positivism and contemporary deconstructionism. It is further understood that your interest is purely scholarly. The authors will not waste your time with gossip about one of the most interesting figures of the dark ages. Of course you are not even aware such assumptions are being made about you unless you exhausted the mystery genre at an early age, so score two points for the authors of the “Key.” 

Still, “Key” does not approach the subtlety of “The Name.” You can read the entire novel several times and never realize that the author supposes you are as familiar with the works of Jorge Luis Borges as he is. In this instance, you have lost several points without even knowing the ball was in play even if you cover Borges in the graduate seminar you teach every two or three years. 

The most irritating thing about Eco, however, is not that he knows more than you do or that he is always right but that he has a bad habit of hinting at knowledge so outré that you, dear reader, have no hope of looking it up. Such is the case with Brunellus. Early in the novel, William and his apprentice, Adso, arrive at a Benedictine monastery and are greeted by a group of monks outside its walls. Adso reports this conversation: 

“I thank you, Brother Cellarer,” my master replied politely, “and I appreciate your courtesy all the more since, in order to greet me, you have interrupted your search. But don’t worry. The horse came this way and took the path to the right. He will not get far because he will have to stop when he reaches the dungheap. He is too intelligent to plunge down that precipitous slope…” 

“When did you see him?” the Cellarer asked. 

“We haven’t seen him at all, have we Adso?... But if you are hunting for Brunellus, the horse can be only where I have said.” 

Subsequently we learn how William has deduced the nature of the Cellarer’s mission and the location of the horse. But how has he learned the animal’s name. When Adso asks, William says only, “May the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind, son! What other name could he possibly have? Why even the great Buridan, who is about to become Rector in Paris, when he wants to use a horse in one of his logical examples, always calls it Brunellus.” 

And may the Holy Ghost sharpen your mind also, reader! Everybody except you knows why a monk’s horse must be named Brunellus. It is so obvious Eco will not insult you by explaining it. 

As it turns out, the present writer is not exactly chopped liver when it comes to horse arcana. For one thing, he knows the “Key” is wrong to translate Brunellus as Brownie. Naturally, he knows about Buridan’s ass Brunellus, the metaphorical intellectual who starves to death between two equidistant bales of hay. (Buridan may be obscure but his ass is famous.) And like anyone else familiar with Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale, he is aware of Nigel Wireker’s “Speculum Stultorum.” This is a fable of another Brunellus, also an ass, who desperately wants a longer tail and, not finding it through drugs or graduate study at the University of Paris, returns to England to found a new monastic order. 

So has Eco erred? Might it be that a monk would consider Brunellus a perfect name for an ass but not necessarily for a horse? To assume an error on Eco’s part would be a fool’s bet. He’s good at this. Better than you and even better than I. Maybe as good as my friend Gerry Sircus. 

I can live, I suppose, with my own ignorance. I can even live without knowing how to Google my way out of it. But it’s hard to accept that someone else besides Eco knows the answer and it is not I. 

Somewhere there is the entomologist who named a rare Hawaiian butterfly Rhyncopalpus brunellus (Little Bruno the brown nose). What other name could it possibly have? Worst of all is my certain knowledge that Eco knows about that damn butterfly and is just waiting for me to mention it casually. Einstein said that God is subtle but not malicious. Would we could say the same of Umberto Eco.

Subsequently

Fifteen years after publishing this essay, I read the brilliant book Life Is Simple:  How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe by Johnjoe McFadden, (Basic Books, 2021).  As it turns out, I need to recant my description of John Buridan as "...a minor character, [and an] obscure French philosopher."  I must have slept through Dr. Javier's class on nominalism (as I slept through most of his classes).  At least the Holy Ghost sharpened my mind enough so that I figured out that William of Baskerville is Eco's surrogate for William of Occam.