Marco Polo and the Unicorn

Often, when faced with an unknown phenomenon, we react by approximation: we seek that scrap of content, already present in our encyclopedia, which for better or worse seems to account for the new fact.

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A classic example of this process is to be found in Marco Polo, who saw what we now realize were rhinoceroses on Java.

Although he had never seen such animals before, by analogy with other known animals he was able to distinguish the body, the four feet, and the horn. Since his culture provided him with the notion of a unicorn—a quadruped with a horn on its forehead, to be precise—he designated those animals as unicorns.

Umberto Eco, din Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition.

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