Brazen head

In the seventeenth century, Thomas Browne considered them to be misunderstanding of the scholars' alchemical work,[1] while in modern times, Borlik argues that they came to serve as "a metonymy for the hubris of Renaissance intellectuals and artists".

[2] The heads were then ascribed to several of the major figures of the 12th- and 13th-century Renaissance, who introduced Europe to Arabian editions of Aristotelian logic and science, as well as the Muslims' own work on mathematics, optics, and astronomy.

[13] Grosseteste was said to have constructed "an hed of bras to... make it for to telle of suche thinges as befelle" over the course of seven years but then lost it through 30 seconds' neglect.

[14] Reports that Albertus Magnus had a head with a human voice and breath and "a certain reasoning process" bestowed by a cacodemon[15] eventually gave way to stories that he had built an entire automaton who was so overly talkative that his student Thomas Aquinas destroyed it for continually interrupting his train of thought.

[4][14] Bacon, with the help of a Friar Bungy[14] or Bungay,[16] was said to have spent seven years building one of the devices in order to discover whether it would be possible to render Britain impregnable by ringing it with a wall of brass.

Additionally, there are bars named The Brazen Head in Brooklyn, New York; in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and pubs in Omaha, Nebraska; in Marylebone in London; in Glasgow; in Bloemfontein, South Africa; and in Napier, New Zealand.