Early Modern Science and the Creation of Knowledge through Images

Ed. Brian S. Baigrie (1996) Baigrie introduction Rationality vs visualizing Language vs imagery Text vs illustration

De humani corporis fabrica (1543), Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (1543), Michelangelo, Studies for the Libyan Sibyl 1508-12, Met NY

Looking at scientific and technical images How did images come to have authority in science? How did images come to be accepted as bearers of authentic information? What do scientific images do?

Diagrams vs naturalism Bert S. Hall, ‘The Didactic and the Elegant’, in Picturing Knowledge, pp. 3-39 ‘All images … are crowded with features arising from expectations that the image-maker brings to the subject; every portrayal is a type of encoding that demands, at a minimum, a certain set of conventions common to both the individual doing the act of representation and the viewer of the representation’.

From the Salomon Glossaries, Prüfening, Germany, 1158 and 1165, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Clm. 13002

Guido da Vigevano, Anatomy, 1345

Jacob Frohlich, 1544 (Boston Medical Library) http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/video/conservation-focus-anatomical-flap-prints

Italian military engineer Agostino Ramelli’s Crankshaft well windlass, out of his 1588 Diverse and Artifactitious Machines.

Wang Cheng Collected Diagrams and Explanations of the Wonderful Machines of the Far West, 1627

Ramelli’s book wheel, out of his 1588 Diverse and Artifactitious Machines. To ensure that the books remained at a constant angle, Ramelli incorporated an epicyclic gearing arrangement, a complex device that had only previously been used in astronomical clocks. Ramelli undoubtedly understood that gravity could have worked just as effectively (as it does with a Ferris wheel), but the gearing system allowed him to display his mathematical prowess.

Antonello da Messina, St Jerome in his Study 1474-75 National Gallery, London

Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1543, Nuremberg

Vesalius, De humani corporis fabbrica libri vii (Basel, 1555)

Joan Bleu, Geographia, vol1 Amsterdam 1662 Tycho Brahe’s observatory

Kepler, Rudolphine Tables 1627

John Wilkins, A Discourse Concerning a New World, London 1640