Physiology of the Impossible - continued...

Exner's text is confusing because of its ambivalent heuristics: The author cannot ignore the completely fictitious nature of floating bodies in art; nevertheless he treats them as if they should obey the authority of physics and physiology. It seems that even mythology cannot escape the laws of nature. Exner continues to use the language of proof and causality even when it comes to fiction, even when he faces the impossible.

Monsters

Exner imagined what a "realistic artist" who aims to depict "a meticulously exact imitation of nature" would have to paint in order to present a physiologically correct flying body. In the case of a sparrow the ratio of the weight of its muscles was to the total weight of its body as 1 was to 6. Thus, Exner calculated what a real flying man - given a weight of 60 kg - would look like. He would have wings and their supplementary muscles would weight 10 kg: "The result would be an enormous hump, whose dimensions would exceed everything we have seen so far, moreover, it would be located in the front. Our artist certainly would have constructed something which was able to fly but something which would not resemble a human being any more. It would be a monstrum, something from the workshop of a hellish Breughel".