Collection, Laboratory, Theater: Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century (Theatrum Scientiarum: English Edition) (Theatrum Scientiarum: English Edition)

Collection ⫺ Laboratory ⫺ Theater

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Theatrum Scientiarum English Edition Edited by Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte, Jan Lazardzig Scientific Advisory Board Hartmut Böhme, Olaf Breidbach, Georges Didi-Huberman, Peter Galison, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann, and Barbara Maria Stafford

Volume 1

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

Collection ⫺ Laboratory ⫺ Theater Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century Edited by Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte, Jan Lazardzig

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne. English. Collection, laboratory, theater : scenes of knowledge in the 17th century / edited by Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte, Jan Lazardzig. p. cm. ⫺ (Theatrum scientiarum: English edition ; v. 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-017736-6 (alk. paper) 1. Architecture and science ⫺ Europe ⫺ History ⫺ 17th century. 2. Communication in learning and scholarship ⫺ Europe ⫺ History ⫺ 17th century. 3. Space (Architecture) 4. Cabinets of curiosities. I. Schramm, Helmar. II. Schwarte, Ludger. III. Lazardzig, Jan. IV. Title. V. Series. NA2543.S35K8613 2005 7201.110509032⫺dc22 2005010608

ISBN 3-11-017736-6 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at ⬍http://dnb.ddb.de⬎. 쑔 Copyright 2005 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Editors’ Preface

This volume constitutes the first part of a series called Theatrum Scientiarum, which sets out to examine the fundamental crossover of art and science in a new way. The project is based on the assumption that in the course of the reconstitution of science in the seventeenth century practices of presentation, observation, and medial competence emerge, whose productive force can only be adequately described within an interdisciplinary perspective. These practices are in no way confined to the processes of the legitimization and implementation of knowledge; rather, through the experimental methods used for modelling and handling the world, a dynamic structure of creative approaches to observation and presentation is developed. The questions we would like to address in the series Theatrum Scientarium emerge from the cultural upheavals of our times. They are carried by the conviction that an appropriate understanding of the interaction of today’s medial configurations of scientific programs and artistic practice is only possible in the awareness of this long-term historical process. It is due to the international character of the questions discussed that this volume, which appeared in German in 2003 after a conference in Berlin, now also appears in English. As a result of the success of the conference it seemed extremely desirable to make the conference contributions available to a wider public. Therefore we are highly indebted to the chief editor of literary studies of Walter de Gruyter publishers, Dr. Heiko Hartmann, who, from the very beginning, emphatically supported this endeavour. The realization of this long-term research project would not have been possible without the generous support of the Free University of Berlin, the German Research Foundation (DFG), as well as the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The Medical History Museum Berlin, namely Professor Thomas Schnalke, with the loan of the historical lecture hall made an essential contribution to the success of the conference. The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the FU Berlin, generously made the anatomical theatre, constructed in 1790 by Carl Gotthard Langhans, available to us.

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We would like to thank the translators of this volume (they are named at the end of each contribution) for their outstanding work. We are also grateful to Michael Lorber for his conscientious editorial supervision of this volume. With the English publication, we would like to make a pragmatic plea for the plurality of scientific languages. The clear outweighing of German literature in the notes, repeatedly presented the translators with difficulties. When no appropriate English translation was available, the quotations were, without renewed quotation of the German (or Italian, French, Spanish, Czech, etc.) translated from the original. Only with quotations from unpublished sources (e.g. archives) is, as a rule, also the original quotation recorded in the footnotes. The Editors

Contents Preface of the Editors .................................................................................

V

Contents ...................................................................................................... VII Helmar Schramm Introduction: Place and Trace in Theatrum Scientiarum ............................

XI

Andrew Pickering Space: The Final Frontier ...........................................................................

1

Helmar Schramm Kunstkammer – Laboratory – Theater in the ‘Theatrum Europaeum’: On the Transformation of Performative Space in the 17th Century ............

9

James W. McAllister The Virtual Laboratory: Thought Experiments in Seventeenth-Century Mechanics ...................................................................................................

35

Wolfgang Schäffner The Point: The Smallest Venue of Knowledge in the 17th Century (1585-1665) ................................................................................................

57

Ludger Schwarte Anatomical Theatre as Experimental Space ...............................................

75

Hans-Christian von Herrmann Scenes of Writing: The Florentine Uffizi as Kunstkammer, Laboratory, and Stage .................................................................................................... 103 Werner Oechslin “Mentalmente architettato” – Thoughts in Physical Form: Immutable or Dynamic? The Case of the Library ............................................................ 122 Clemens Risi The Operatic Stage as an Experimental Space for Affections: About the Concepts of Affections Asserted by Athanasius Kircher and Claudio Monteverdi .................................................................................... 146

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Doris Kolesch The Cartography of Emotions: Power, Play, and the Politics of Love in 17th Century France .................................................................................... 162 Jan Lazardzig Universality and Territoriality: On the Architectonic of Academic Social Life Exemplified by the Brandenburg Universität der Völker, Wissenschaften und Künste (1666/67) ........................................................ 176 Beket Bukovinská The Known and Unknown Kunstkammer of Rudolf II .............................. 199 Robert Felfe Collections and the Surface of the Image: Pictorial Strategies in EarlyModern Wunderkammern ........................................................................... 228 Horst Bredekamp Kunstkammer, Play-Palace, Shadow Theatre: Three Thought Loci by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ......................................................................... 266 Olaf Breidbach On the Representation of Knowledge in Athanasius Kircher .................... 283 Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann Pythagorean Musical Theater: Space, Time, and Numerical Speculation in the Ancient Metaphysical Fashion ......................................................... 303 Florian Nelle Eucharist and Experiment: Spaces of Certainty in the 17th Century .......... 316 Barbara Maria Stafford Artificial Intensity: Images, Instruments, and the Technology of Amplification .............................................................................................. 338 Hartmut Böhme The Metaphysics of Phenomena: Telescope and Microscope in the Works of Goethe, Leeuwenhoek and Hooke .............................................. 355 Samuel Y. Edgerton The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Missionary Convent as “Theatre of Conversion” ................................................................................................ 394 Timothy Lenoir/Henry Lowood Theaters of War: The Military-Entertainment Complex ............................ 427 Harry Collins Science in its Social Space ......................................................................... 457

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Rainer Gruber The Adventurous Relationship between Physics and Geometry: Newton’s Space Viewed by Present-Day Physics ...................................... 467 Peter Galison Material Culture, Theoretical Culture, and Delocalization ........................ 490 Karsten Harries World-Picture and World-Theater: Wonder, Vision, Knowledge .............. 507 About the Authors ...................................................................................... 527 Image Credits .............................................................................................. 533 Bibliography ............................................................................................... 541 Index of Names ........................................................................................... 571 Index of Subjects ........................................................................................ 577

HELMAR SCHRAMM

Introduction: Place and Trace in Theatrum Scientiarum

I. On December 2nd, 1696, Robert Hooke addressed an unusual speech to the Royal Society (that honourable London society whose weekly meetings had, since the middle of the seventeenth century, aimed to serve the progress of science through practical experimentation). The object of his contemplation was a wonderful sea-dweller, a hard-shelled fish named Nautilus, whose conical shell, in its day, found frequent use as a gilded tumbler. Hooke described the scurrilous form of the animal in a manner as enthusiastic as it was pithy; he had indeed personally opened the mussel shell of a particularly splendid specimen and submitted the revealed structures to thorough inspection. He was particularily impressed by the architecture of individual chambers and cells, which seemed to be connected by a complex system of tiny canals and perforations.1 Hooke’s main question now focused on the mobility of the hermetically sealed-off creature. According to all reports which had been available since antiquity, not only was the shellfish able to explore the depths of the darkest oceans, it could also rise to the sparkling sun-lit surfaces and was capable of moving in all possible directions. But how could it do all this without fins or wings? Hooke found an explanation which was as surprising as it was logical: he showed the interplay of membranes, valves and siphons beneath the hard calcium shell (which was required to resist the tremendous pressure of the water) as a system

1

Robert Hooke. “Hookes Conjectures about the odd Phaenomena observable in the Shell-Fish called Nautilus.” Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the Late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke and other Eminent Virtuoso’s in his Time. Ed. William Derham. London, 1726. 304-06.

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of high pressure air-pumps, whose purpose, according to the situation, was to provoke a high quantity of different kinds of motional impulses. Such an interpretation should be understood in the spirit of an experimental practice which had been in vogue for over thirty years, and whose excessive diversity often bordered on madness and yet, nonetheless, retained method. Hooke frequently commented quite explicitly on the experimental method.2 Here, a particularly important methodical principle seems to be the transference of models. While on the one hand, it is about discovering useful procedures, techniques, and modes of function within the marvels of nature, conversely, the discoveries, techniques and experimental design create an original framework for the interpretation of nature itself. In the latter sense, the air-pump for instance, became, during the second half of the 17th century, the central reference point of a wide-ranging sphere of experimental curiosity, whose field of vision extended as much to the said Nautilus as to astronomical observations or the heavy breathing in the ingeniously opened chest of dying dogs. The development of such an overlap of highly divergent perspectives of inquiry, observation, interpretation and invention is not least to be explained as arising from the fact that, since Bacon’s time, the methodological principles of experimentation had included above all the most detailed bookkeeping, recording, transcribing and illustrating. Only through the excessive collecting, sorting and cataloguing of material were systematic comparisons, discoveries and further developments at all possible. The specific material method of saving and categorising the data alone created an immeasurable wealth of intentional as well as unintentional associations and demarcations. In any case, the collecting itself undoubtedly embodies a practical form of spatially organised knowledge.3 Furthermore, the development of the new sciences joined with a network – as labyrinthine as it was extensive – of specific centres for the production, storage and distribution of knowledge.

2

3

Cf. idem. “Dr. Hooke’s Method of Making Experiments.” Hookes Conjectures. 26-28. Fundamental material on the explication and defence of experiments also in Thomas Sprat. The History of the Royal Society of London, For the Improving of Natural Knowledge. 4th ed. London, 1734. 321-23. Anke te Heesen and Emma C. Spary convincingly demonstrate the specific importance of this form of knowledge in a recent publication. Cf. Anke te Heesen and Emma C. Spary. “Sammeln als Wissen.” Sammeln als Wissen. Das Sammeln und seine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung. Ed. Anke te Heesen and Emma C. Spary. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001. 7-21.

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In recent years, culturally oriented approaches to the history of science have shown an increasing interest in such specific local circumstances and have produced impressive evidence that the gradual development of modern sciences in the 17th century can by no means be conceptualized simply as an onward process of demystification, rationalisation, regulation, functionalisation and instrumentalisation. Such a universalist perspective is rather apt to conceal and eliminate the specific traces of a culture of knowledge that deserve particular attention from a contemporary point of view. If ones interest, however, focuses quite purposefully on the precise positioning of scenes of knowledge in the dynamic structure of the architectonics of cultural boundaries, thereby highlighting the respective connection of processes of theory formation, practical experimentation, and technical invention, or the interplay between observational and performing arts against the backdrop of media-defined conditions; then illuminating connections emerge all at once which can be of primary importance in the understanding of current developments.4 Collection – or more precisely, “Wunderkammer,” Cabinet of Wonders, – laboratory and theater exemplify such local settings for the production of knowledge and thus the title of our book already suggests a conceptual connection with similar approaches to cultural-historically oriented investigations of the history of science. And still the project, launched with the present volume, is distinguished by a special quality, marking a clear difference to the aforementioned direction taken by the history of science. Our trailseeking focuses quite explicitly on interferences between art and science. In this sense, the title of the series Theatrum Scientiarum is thoroughly programmatic. The inquiries arise on the one hand from changes in contemporary culture, on the other hand from aesthetic or theatrical implications of the history of science. From the intersection of those perspectives, the interrelations between science and art will be illuminated in snap-shots of specific historical incidents. This relation merits special attention, coming as it does – since the beginning of the 20th century at the latest – under influences which concern not only the concepts of theater and art, but also the very status of knowledge itself. The extent to which theater itself can be attributed an important role within the arts will be very briefly outlined here. Stimulated by the 4

Cf. Jan Golinski. “The Place of Production.” Making Knowledge. Constructivism and the History of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 79102.

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obfuscation of defining boundaries of “theater” (a process which may be widely experienced, and whose roots are not actually to be found in dramatic theater, but rather in a media-intensified expansion of the techniques of theatrical effect into the fields of politics, sports, music, culture and leisure-time consumption) from the seventies on an international discussion developed around the differentiation of a concept of theatricality as it could be defined by cultural studies. The efficiency of this concept as an element for interdisciplinary discourse soon became evident in the most divergent subjects. This in turn gave rise to multitudinous impulses to investigate historical theatrical forms. Thus, with the culturally determined connection between theatricality and representation moving ever closer to the limelight, the essential relationship between theater and the history of science inevitably came to be seen from a completely new perspective.5 At the same time, one should consider that the development of the historical constitution of knowledge, or the associated formalisation of thinking, is linked with the stylisation of three cultural factors: perception, movement and language. It is right here that a remarkable relationship between the histories of theater and science makes itself felt. The skillfully stylised interplay between perception, movement and language is integral to no other traditional cultural phenomenon as it is to the theater. Some very revealing relations are to be found between the positioning of the observer in the representational space of science and the spatio-temporal organisation of seeing, speaking, and acting in the canon of European theater forms. The legitimation of such a procedure is based on the theory that the constitution of modern knowledge is linked in many ways with dimensions of staging and construction. If at the beginning of our project, we first direct our attention in the current volume to very specific connections between knowledge and space (or place), this is a result of the outstanding importance of this constellation in constituting the beginnings of early modern sciences in the 17th century.6 But it is exactly at those moments when specific locations and scenes are concerned, that conceptual instruments gain a deci-

5 6

Cf. Erika Fischer-Lichte, ed. Theatralität und die Krisen der Repräsentation. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001. In addition, however, there is also an internal interplay with those dimensions in which Martin Heidegger positioned the relationship between art and space. Cf. Martin Heidegger. Die Kunst und der Raum. L’art et l’espace. St. Gallen, 1969. – Published in English as: “Art and Space.” Trans. Charles H. Seibert. Man and World. An International Philosophical Review 6 (1973): 3-8.

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sive epistemological function. The concepts I would like to emphasize here are border, trace and play (or game). With regard to the very material forms of back-tracing undertaken in Theatrum Scientiarum, a concept of border should be called to mind which Jacques Derrida was able to achieve in his subtle reading of Artaud. In Le Théatre et son double he saw with all its ramifications “more a system of critiques shaking the entirety of Occidental history than a treatise on theatrical practise.”7 Decisive for him was Artaud’s pointed problematisation of “all the limits furrowing classical theatricality (represented/representer, signified/signifier, author/ director/ actors/spectators, stage/audience, text/interpretation, etc.).”8 The basic structure of these demarcations were to be found not only in art, but in all areas of western culture; in its religion, philosophies, and political systems. In the light of the concept of border, understood in this way, the structuring and action-directing power of spaces and the marking of specific localities of knowledge-production can be understood in an especially illuminating manner. But above all, we should accord special consideration to that concept of space whose necessary radicalisation was at one time strongly advised by Derrida with allusion to Freud’s “Wunderblock” (Mystic Writing-Pad)9 – a concept whose productivity has been tried and tested by Carlo Ginzburg since the eighties, recently being condensed into an image of a “science searching for itself.”10 While the demarcated concept of the border was associated with scenes of knowledge in which gestures of revealing and hiding mutually condition one another, the concept of the trace was directed at the very material evidence, indications, symptoms, and impressions of something absent, hidden, excluded. In this context it is important to be aware of the discussion of “Medium als Spur und Apparat” (medium as trace and apparatus) as it was recently introduced by Sybille Krämer.11 7

8 9

10 11

Jacques Derrida. “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation.” Writing and Difference. Trans. with intro. and notes Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. 235. Ibid. 244. Idem. “Freud and the Scene of Writing.” Writing and Difference. 200. Cf. Sigmund Freud. “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’.” The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. Vol. XIX. London: Hogarth, 1953, 227-35. Cf. Carlo Ginzburg. Spurensicherung, Die Wissenschaft auf der Suche nach sich selbst. Trans. Gisela Bonz and Karl F. Hauber. Berlin: Wagenbach, 2002. Cf. Sybille Krämer. “Das Medium als Spur und als Apparat.” Medien, Computer,

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The concept of play is not only indispensable for questions of aesthetics, arts and especially of theater. It furthermore affects decisive tendencies in the development of science – namely those based on methodological abstraction, calculation, and rules and those based on perceptible experiments; the whole cultural history of experimentation could undoubtedly be written as a history of play. It is not a coincidence that many recently issued publications also emphasize the relevance of play for the natural sciences. Conversely, ever since Gustav Theodor Fechner’s foundation of an “experimental aesthetic” in 1871, there has been an unbroken chain of attempts to describe and analyse aesthetical dimensions of art and play using the criteria of natural science. Finally it’s worth recalling here the epistemological value which Leibniz once afforded to the concept of play, owing to just that dual affinity it possesses with both mathematics and an immeasurable variety of daily actions.12 Time and again different facets of play make their appearances in the contributions in this volume and this tendency will undoubtedly be continued and further differentiated in two forthcoming publications of our research project, Instrumente in Kunst und Wissenschaft and Spektakuläre Experimente. The texts in this book revolve around the cabinet of wonders, the laboratory and the stage as localised settings of knowledge in the 17th century – and they do this from varying distances. A number of detailed case studies are complemented by several contributions more related to theoretical questions concerning the research of the history of science and others that are fully concerned with current upheavals of what we normally understand as knowledge. Nonetheless, all the essays collected here are intricately connected to one another, forming a dense intertextual network. The readers are invited to immerse themselves in this textual space and will find appropriate orientation in the key concepts of border, trace and play that I briefly outlined above. At the same time it is also, as it were, about acknowledging each individual text as a specific locality, and this encompasses the demanding challenge of dealing with the question of each of these text’s specific localisation in the overall text.13

12 13

Realität: Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen und neue Medien. Ed. Sybille Krämer. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998. 73-94. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand. Trans. with intro. and notes Ernst Cassirer. Hamburg, 1996. 515. In this sense, it’s really worth noting the extensive person and subject index, which should not merely be understood as a simple appendage, but as offering a real opportunity to explore the texts in their spatial interrelatedness.

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The way in which the question of locality and universality not only concerns the pragmatic anchoring of scenes of knowledge in particular material contexts, but also a fundamental metamorphosis of scientific knowledge becomes clear in a particularly emphatic way in Rainer Gruber’s contribution. This essay provides a fascinating view of Newton’s idea of space from the perspective of modern physics; a way of thinking in relation to ever new localities is revealed, whose connection with basic questions of knowledge can be sensed in the explicit reference to Wittgenstein’s concept of intersubjective language games. Barbara Maria Stafford builds a cultural-historical bridge in introducing the question of what knowledge really is and how it combines with dimensions of phantasm and desire. We are referred to an exhibition in the Getty museum essentially conceived and to a large part coarranged by the author. Entitled Devices of Wonder: From the world in a box to images on a screen, the exhibition offered a perspective on old and new “eye machines” and aimed to allow the visitor to experience the way in which different forms of devices combine with a respective formation of perspective; device-mediated conditions for viewing and constructing the world are presented here in a way which is both playful and fundamental. The problematic nature of the scientific world-view in Heidegger’s sense is sharpened by Karsten Harries into an appropriate relation between scientific research and ethic principles. In some senses this contribution is related to Olaf Breidbach’s essay which also revolves around the question of what knowledge today really is or can be. Using Athanasius Kircher, he illuminates a historic “test-case” in order to better understand new developments in all their significance and limitedness. In the contributions mentioned so far, the question of forms of production, storage and spread of knowledge, of what knowledge is or can be, proves to be a distribution pivotal issue. And this very fundamental point of reference remains crucial to all the other texts – this being also and especially the case when the interest is focused on detailed analyses of defined localities, on concrete places of the production of knowledge.

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II. The earth appears in 1575 in Valentin Weigel’s text On the Place of the World “divided into Asia, Europa, Aphrica and America, Europa for its part into Hispania, Anglia, Germania, etc. Germania for its part into other places/ as there are forests there/ towns/ castles, villages/ and the towns for their part into lanes/ houses etc. The houses into rooms/ chambers/ kitchens/ cellars etc. These are all places and positions and yield a distance from one to the next.” 14 An awareness of the problematic nature of traditional world views and spatial experiences, which is merely intimated here, acquires a new quality in the 17th century under the influence of mechanical experiments, astronomical observations and mathematical calculations. If space, on the one hand, can be ever more accurately devised as a geometrical system of space, on the other hand, it appears not uncommonly as a paradoxical experiential space.15 Against this background of tension, Wunderkammer, laboratory and stage obtain their respective local hallmark as exposed localities of new observational or performing arts. Over long periods of time, this leads to peculiar transition zones in which traditional concepts of space continue to exert a powerful aftereffect, collaborating with the newest instruments, theories, observation and data in the creation of “facts,” or respectively, in the gradual birthing, construction and production of new scientific objects.16 Aesthetic perspectives play a considerable role in the design and assessment of 14

15

16

“getheilet in Asiam, Europam, Aphricam und Americum, Europa wiederumb in Hispaniam, Angliam, Galliam, Germaniam, etc. Germania wiederumb in andere Oerter/ als da sind Wälde/ Städte/ Schlösser, Dörffer/ und wiederumb die Städte in Gassen/ Häusser etc. Die Häuser in Stuben/ Kammern/ Küchen/ Keller etc. Das sind alles Oerter und Stellen/ und geben eine Weite von einem zum andern.” Valentin Weigel. “Vom Ort der Welt” Sämtliche Schriften. Ed. Will Erich Peuckert and Winfried Zellner. Vol. 1. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1962. 37. Our Translation. The text has recently become available in English in Valentin Weigel. Selected Spiritual Writings. Trans. Andrew Weeks. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. The importance of an altered mode of perception for the constitution of spatial ideas becomes totally clear with Martin Burckhardt, who links the metamorphosis of time and space back to a history of perception. Cf. Martin Burckhardt. Metamorphosen von Raum und Zeit. Eine Geschichte der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 1994. Cf. Mary Poovey. A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 816. Important also: Lorraine Daston. “Introduction. The Coming into Being of Scientific Objects.” Biographies of Scientific Objects. Ed. Lorraine Daston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 1-14.

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local conditions so that one could speak in Gaston Bachelard’s words of a “poetics of space.”17 In a contribution as profound as it is illuminating, Wilhelm SchmidtBiggemann pursues, literally step by step, those speculations on time and space which permeate the 17th century as a powerful echo of the Pythagorean cosmic music-theater, and within which the inner interweaving of mathematical and aesthetic aspects are lucidly revealed. Decisive moments of dynamism, productivity, and potency, as well as concepts of appearance, beauty, and play cannot be understood at all without a specific concept of world-theater. Theater and music are conceived of as instruments whose potential and potency are realized in the play – in the light, the sound, the form, the rhythm – as materials of an all-embracing world harmony: unplayed instruments were promises unkept, the author remarks quite aptly. The way in which local conditions create connections between modes of thinking and forms of perception, how thought itself even requires particular optic and haptic impulses is illustrated by Horst Bredekamp when he turns with Wunderkammer, play-palace and shadow theater to three of Leibniz’s “thought localities.” We are dealing in the best sense of the word with a successful cultural-historical miniature, which awaits further disclosure. It’s worth noting that the category of play appears here in all its importance concerning the understanding of fundamental developments in the 17th century. Proceeding from a sketch of Galileo’s experiment-concept, James W. McAllister develops features of the experiment of thought and in doing so also refers to a form of the “virtual laboratory.” It is thereby emphasised that the retreat of experimental activities into the realm of thought is explained through the necessity of protecting observations from coincidental influences and excluding all disturbances and contingency as operating factors, so that secure knowledge may be acquired in such purified artificial spaces, where similarly conceived (“polished”) apparatus and instruments are used. In this context, the tension between universality and locality is quite fundamentally related to certain paradoxes in the new science of mechanics, which on the one hand attempts to advance valid laws for the universe as a whole, but in practice, however, is always deeply rooted in specific localities. Analysing the “most minimalist setting of knowledge” in the 17th century, Wolfgang Schäffner, using the point as both a geometric-math17

Gaston Bachelard. The Poetics of Space. Trans. Maria Jolas. New York: Orion Press, 1964.

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ematical constituent as well as a graphical creation, succinctly illuminates questions of the control of space. At the same time, he plausibly shows to what extent we are likely to be dealing with the elementary scenario of modern experimentation. When one observes the graphical point under the microscope, precise, to the point precision actually proves to be dependent on technical media dispositives and material givens. Thus the location of the point reveals a paradoxical collaboration between phantasms and precision. In many senses, Hartmut Böhme’s study on the instrumentality of telescope and microscope is a natural follow-up here. He too comes to the conclusion – if from quite a different perspective – that the new technical instruments or media of perception in the 17th century not only evoke the disclosure of new facts but also the massive production of densely structured phantasms. The contributions of Robert Felfe and Beket Bukovinská complement one another in that they both turn to the Wunderkammer as a collection of the space of knowledge from completely different perspectives. In the local architectonic space of the Hradschin, Beket Bukovinská pursues traces of the lost cabinet of wonders of Rudolf II, a king whose court was an extremely important place for the meetings of artists, experimenters, artisans, collectors and gamblers. Robert Felfe, on the other hand, consults two different kinds of traditional visual materials in order to put a typology of the Wunderkammer to the test. He first examines a set of images which suggest or stage-manage insights into the collection rooms; then he looks at copperplate engravings of collected objects which in the course of time gave rise to something like a paradigm of the Wunderkammer in book-form. The role of the theater in the 17th century is thematized quite explicitly in Clemens Risi and Florian Nelle’s contributions. Clemens Risi is concerned on the one hand with the integration of emotional affects within a new form of theater, namely the opera, on the other hand with Athanasius Kircher’s practical experimental investigation of these affects. Florian Nelle highlights the clever deployment of theatrical techniques in generating illusions in two settings, apparently very distant from one another, namely those of the eucharist and the experiment. In both cases, according to his thesis, all kinds of theatrical devices are employed in order to create artificial spaces of certainty. Scenes of knowledge would be unthinkable without a whole system of libraries, which is what Werner Oechslin turns his attention to. Decisive developments are presented in playful sovereignty and a flourish of high erudition which is most appropriate to the subject under consid-

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eration. Time and again profound correlations are found between systematic order in the books themselves and in the shelves, rooms, and buildings which accommodate them. The dynamic quality of spatial configurations leads Ludger Schwarte to an extensive architectonically grounded theory of action and thus effects a relationship with a topic which has been intensively discussed for some time.18 Using the Theatrum anatomicum as a paradigmatic case, a dynamic spatial structure is thrown up for discussion which extends from the virtuality of imaginary space conceptions, through the space of the (opened) body, and into the public space of the publication, presenting a whole typology of observational spaces as a densely packed system of settings of knowledge. The extent to which the scope for action in the production and accumulation of knowledge is ever more associated with institutionalised forms of social interactions is elucidated by Jan Lazardzig as he goes through Bengt Skytte’s plans for a Brandenburg academy. Looking at the superimposition of symbolic qualities with those of functionality in the concrete architectural plans, the author derives a working hypothesis which highlights the dynamic structure of the culture of knowledge in the 17th century in an exemplary way. The principle of the border, as previously elucidated, is particularly important for the complicated functioning of quite precise settings of knowledge; paradoxically, the claim to the production and accumulation of knowledge – that is in fact essentially intended for unlimited distribution in the public sphere – can only be installed by way of seclusion, enclosure and fortification, even though the openness of this public sphere certainly represents one of the phantasms that accompanied the rise of science in the 17th century. Hans-Christian von Herrmann investigates a completely different kind of structure of action, in which the accumulation of power and knowledge coincide as it were; he focuses his attention on the Uffizi in Florence and thereby on the first highly complex administrative building of European Modernism. In his analysis, whose inner organisation corresponds to the sequencing, stacking, linking-up and networking of office spaces, archives, and theatrical and experimental rooms, he shows how procedures of ordering and collecting become the basis of the most diverse kinds of acts of power. Admittedly, the whole dynamic of the physical-spatial power unfurled here would be unthinkable 18

Cf. Hajo Greif. “Versuche, die Welt zurückzugewinnen. Die Kontroverse über die ‘Handlungsfähigkeit der Dinge’ in den Science und Technology Studies.” Wissen und soziale Konstruktion. Ed. Claus Zittel. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002. 27-45.

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without a corresponding medial basis, which consists first and foremost in a system of transcription, as excessive as it is ingenious. The connection between intentional actions in physical spaces and action-directing graphical records becomes especially evident in the interrelation between maps and landscapes. Doris Kolesch dedicates her investigation to a very special kind of action-directing map-work. Using the example of the Carte de Tendre from Mademoiselle de Scudérys novel Clélie, a cartography of emotions is unfolded whose localisable point of reference is found in the salon as a social space. Alongside the revealing disclosure of multitudinous allusions to military tactics, medicine, the status of femaleness in the framework of courtly structures of power as well as the way in which social competence was connected in the 17th century to dimensions of the game is once again displayed in exemplary fashion. An alienated perspective – in the truest sense of the word – of the problematic of localisable scenes of knowledge is to be found in Samuel Y. Edgerton’s contribution. His search for evidence is pursued with the passion of a detective within the partially preserved Latin-American Conventos – the former missionary monasteries of the 16th century which served as theaters of conversion at that time. The essay quite brilliantly illustrates certain essential traits of the European culture of knowledge in the process of their encounter with a non-European culture. Innumerable clues are gathered together in a fascinating manner in order to highlight certain techniques of European painting and theater in the framework of missionary aims. III. “A town, a country-place, is from afar a town and a country-place. But, as we draw near, there are houses, trees, tiles, leaves, grass, ants, limbs of ants, in infinity. All this is contained under the name of countryplace.”19 The process of a movement in space brought into focus by Blaise Pascal illustrates how much the respectively given position or the respective distance can change the impression one has of things. Considering the fact that an entirely new concept of movement advanced in the 17th century, it is no surprise that an abundance of differ19

Blaise Pascal. Thoughts (Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets, qui ont été trouvées après sa mort parmi ses papiers). Trans. William Finlayson Trotter. New York, 1909-14. 49.

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ent opinions emerged in this field. One can imagine with what fervour these positions collided, each side accusing the other of error, lying and failure. Galileo’s conflict with the Aristotelians formed in this respect only the tip of the iceberg. One can definitely say that modern science, for a variety of reasons since its emergence in the 17th century has developed under constant conditions of conflict, yes, in fact even of outright war.20 In this context theoretical confrontations are intertwined with the inner entanglement of further fields of research and with questions of weapon technology, fortification, logistics: in short the whole real process of conducting war. The enormous importance of battle and conflict as integral components of the history of science emphasizes once again the relevance of the concept of play in the framework of the Theatrum scientiarum. This is most emphatically elucidated by Timothy Lenoir and Henry Lowood in their investigations on the theater of war. Their richly factual account of the latest developments in the field of military research, as well as in the entertainment industry in the USA, results in the proposition that in the 1990s something like a military-entertainmentcomplex emerged, which is in the process of developing a completely new quality of military computer simulation and high-tech weaponry. Considering the colossal dimensions of the associated activities, both future options of conducting war as well as extensive areas of culture and not the least, scientific research practice, are likely to become subject to fundamental changes. At first glance the essay does not have any direct relationship with the 17th century, but looking more closely, it becomes clear how the functioning of institutionalised game-rules of research, of the playful side of experimentation, and the inseparable interplay of extreme seriousness with highly enjoyable entertainment points in a double sense to the centre of the problem of the cultural historical scenes of knowledge. On the one hand, one can say that forms of the modern theater of war have their origins in the fireworks of the 17th century, which contributed, on the deadly serious side, to reordering the event-space of war, while on the enjoyable entertainment side, to reshaping the culture-forming space of the party. On the other hand, the investigation of the military-entertainment complex marks an important basis which can serve as a point of departure for the exploration of current settings of knowledge and the development of inquiries 20

Thomas F. Gieryn. “Home to Roost: Science Wars as Boundary-Work.” Cultural Boundaries of Science in Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 336-32.

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which are also of great interest in the search for clues in the historical sphere. Other contributions are concerned with basic epistemological discussions rather than concrete investigations of 17th century phenomena. Harry Collins has shown, as hardly anyone else has, that experimental systems must always be seen and acknowledged in their respective individual character. The thesis he develops, namely that distance creates enchantment, is derived from the observation of the phenomenon that the impression of ‘clarity’ grows in proportion to the spatial and temporal distance from the difficulties of highly complex experimental arrangements. Meanwhile, the core group of active participants struggle with continuously arising new doubts which are literally generated as a part of the results being strived for and which must be reacted to with refined concealing tactics. For the connection between art and science, however, his thoughts on new criteria of difference are undoubtedly of importance. In this context, it is worth bearing in mind Bruno Latour’s recent differentiation between difference and demarcation.21 These reflections on the dynamization of the local and the problem of local boundaries find a pithy follow-up in Peter Galison’s concept of “interlanguages,” which turn out to be extremely important in each process of delocalising the local. Certain impulses from anthropological linguistics might offer a solution, namely those which concentrate on the investigation of language in the field of communicative interstitial zones. Also of interest is the author’s proposal for a hermeneutics of material culture and the recognition of differing rhythms in the development of various aspects of the creation of new knowledge. Finally, Andrew Pickering presents for discussion a significant thesis on the relation between border and space in underlining how important it is today to overcome a traditional ontological view of space as a container – a neutral medium for events. In this sense, he pleads for a decentred, non-dualistic and post-humanist direction, which would be capable of demonstrating symmetric interactions between human beings and objects. He basically proposes an idea of a space which we deal with in an open process without falling back on our bodily-centred preconceptions. Both the way we think about the world as space and the way we act within it are extremely closely connected. Not only a

21

Cf. Bruno Latour. “On the Partial Existence of Existing and Non-existing Objects.” Biographies of Scientific Objects. Ed. Lorraine Daston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 247-69.

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theoretical understanding of space, but also the way in which we perform in the world, is at stake in this text. It’s not possible to cover the whole scale of theoretical results and their interlinking in the space of this one volume; however some relevant landmarks – relevant also for the sequel of this publication – should be mentioned at this stage. In one way or another almost all the texts bear important reference to the three main investigation categories of trace, play and border. Additionally, results on the history of culture and science from Wunderkammer, laboratory, and stage as well as further specifiable arenas of knowledge are joined by results from the fields of theories of action, sciences of languages and images, historical anthropology, and media theory. Interesting questions that definitely invite further investigation emerge continuously. Most of them are concerned with the status of instruments and the function of experiments in science and art: therefore the forthcoming two volumes of our series will focus on these as priority issues. Concerning the methodological procedures, it is first of all striking that many investigations refer quite explicitly to visual material, not merely for illustrative purposes but rather more due to a recognition of the special material quality of pictures as opposed to texts. Furthermore, there is a noticeable concentration on case studies. This corresponds with the effort – opposing a universal historical understanding – to do justice to different speeds, rhythms, and movement forms. Above all, however, a principle of back-tracing, sleuthing and abduction should be remarked, which is actually connected with an awareness of the questions of materiality, the epistemological meaning of mediality, and a dimension of the absent which cannot be represented in sign systems.22 The research of the history of science can always be understood in a certain sense as an intensive production of inquiries with the desired results often combining with previously disregarded difficulties and enigmas. Since the 1970s, this has necessarily led to ever-new approaches being experimentally tested, a tendency which shouldn’t simply be written off as a succession of short-lived trends.23 It’s much 22

23

Cf. Thomas A. Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok. “‘Sie kennen ja meine Methode.’ Ein Vergleich von Charles S. Peirce und Sherlock Holmes.” Der Zirkel oder Im Zeichen der Drei. Ed. Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok. Munich: Fink, 1985. 28-88. Of interest on the connection between trace and game is Uwe Wirth’s work: “Die Abduktion als Spiel.” Zeitschrift für Semiotik 23. 3-4 (2001): 379-92. Cf. Nicholas Jardine. “Sammlung, Wissenschaft, Kulturgeschichte.” 199.

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more interesting to take misunderstandings, mistakes, errors and moments of failures seriously, yes, to actually allow them a key-function in securing relevant evidence in the Theatrum scientiarum. However, in this respect an approach whose philosophy was limited to the deceptive accuracy of statistical error-analysis would fall short of expectations.24 Rather more promising may be the behaviour which Hans-Jörg Rheinberger described as an interplay of precision and tinkering in the process of experimenting. In a certain way it is also typical for some experiments in the field of art.25 With this accentuation, however, new aspects of our focus on the interferences between art and sciences come into play from which conceptual lines can be detected, already pointing beyond the intended observation of instruments and experiments towards possibilities of a differentiation of trail-seeking in the Theatrum scientiarum. The failure and the multi-facetted development of the artistic avantgarde in the 20th century is summed up by Karlheinz Barck in a definitive manner.26 If the avant-garde appears there as a closed movement, the very “manageability” of such a closed archive of practically performed experiments makes it an obvious candidate for a new evaluation. We assume that this ‘archive of failure’ can be opened, revealing its precious store of virulent questions which should concentrate on the origins of modern history, the birth of modern science, technology and politics. However, these virulent questions would not emerge simply as words, but rather as archived experiments, machines, sculptures, drugs, pictures and sounds. These are the strange, surprising, provoking, illuminating questions referring to the cultural-historical space of the Theatrum scientiarum and as such in its epistemological mould as Theatrum machinarum, Theatrum anatomicum, Theatrum alchemicum, Theatrum philosophicum and Theatrum politicum. This brief overview may lead to anchoring the reading of this volume in a more comprehensive context. While reading, it should become obvious that the individual contributions probe an extensively diversi24

25

26

Deborah G. Mayo. “Toward an Error-Statistical Philosophy of Science.” Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 442-64. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. “Experiment: Präzision und Bastelei.” Instrument – Experiment. Historische Studien. Ed. Christoph Meinel. Berlin: Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft und Technik, 2000. 52-60. Karlheinz Barck. “Avantgarde.” Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden. Ed. Karlheinz Barck. Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000. 544-77.

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fied field and are not subject to any closed hierarchical order. They each bring very different rhythms into an open process which should not be concluded with the volume at hand, but wich rather just began. This process generates chances and challenges – which also applies to the reading; basically it’s about playfully accepting the different speeds and rhythms inherent in each text. Or in Blaise Pascal’s words: “When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.”27 Translation: Shivaun Conroy

WORKS CITED Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Trans. Maria Jolas. New York: Orion Press, 1964. Barck, Karlheinz. “Avantgarde.” Ästhetische Grundbegriffe. Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden. Ed. Karlheinz Barck. Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000. 544-77. Burckhardt, Martin. Metamorphosen von Raum und Zeit. Eine Geschichte der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 1994. Daston, Lorraine. “Introduction. The Coming into Being of Scientific Objects.” Biographies of Scientific Objects. Ed. Lorraine Daston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 1-14. Derrida, Jacques. “The Theater of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation.” Writing and Difference. Trans. with intro. and notes Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. 232-50. Derrida, Jacques. “Freud and the Scene of Writing.” Writing and Difference. Trans. with intro. and notes Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. 196231. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, ed. Theatralität und die Krisen der Repräsentation. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001. Freud, Sigmund. “A Note upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’.” The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. Vol. XIX. London: Hogarth Press. 1953, 227-35.

27

Pascal. Thoughts. 26.

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Gieryn, Thomas F. “Home to Roost: Science Wars as Boundary-Work.” Cultural Boundaries of Science in Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 336-62. Ginzburg, Carlo. Spurensicherung. Die Wissenschaft auf der Suche nach sich selbst. Trans. Gisela Bonz and Karl F. Hauber. Berlin: Wagenbach, 2002. Golinski, Jan. “The Place of Production.” Making Natural Knowledge. Constructivism and the History of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 72-102. Greif, Hajo. “Versuch, die Welt zurückzugewinnen. Die Kontroverse über die Handlungsfähigkeit der Dinge in den Science und Technology Studies.” Wissen und soziale Konstruktion. Ed. Claus Zittel. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002. 27-45. Heesen, Anke te and Emma C. Spary, eds. “Sammeln als Wissen” Sammeln als Wissen. Das Sammeln und seine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001. 7-21. Heidegger, Martin. Die Kunst und der Raum. L’art et l’espace. St. Gallen, 1969. English Translation: “Art and Space.” Trans. Charles H. Seibert. Man and World. An International Philosophical Review 6 (1973): 3-8. Hooke, Robert. “Dr. Hooke’s Method of Making Experiments.” Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke and other Eminent Virtuoso’s in his Time. Ed. William Derham. London, 1736. 26-28. Hooke, Robert. “Hookes Conjectures about the odd Phaenomena observable in the Shell-Fish called Nautilus.” Philosophical Experiments and Observations of the late Eminent Dr. Robert Hooke and other Eminent Virtuoso’s in his Time. Ed. William Derham. London, 1736. 304-08. Jardine, Nicholas. “Sammlung, Wissenschaft, Kulturgeschichte.” Sammeln als Wissen. Das Sammeln und seine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung. Ed. Anke te Heesen and Emma C. Spary. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001. 199-221. Krämer, Sybille. “Das Medium als Spur und als Apparat.” Medien, Computer, Realität: Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen und neue Medien. Ed. Sybille Krämer. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998. 73-94. Latour, Bruno. “On the Partial Existence of Existing and Non-existing Objects.” Biographies of Scientific Objects. Ed. Lorraine Daston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 247-69. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand. Trans. with intro. and notes Ernst Cassirer. Hamburg: Meiner, 1996. Mayo, Deborah G. “Toward an Error-Statistical Philosophy of Science.” Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 442-64. Pascal, Blaise. Thoughts (Pensées sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets, qui ont été trouvées après sa mort parmi ses papiers).Trans. William Finlayson Trotter. New York, 1909-14. Peirce, Charles Sanders. “Guessing.” The Hound and Horn 2 (1929): 267-82. Poovey, Mary. A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. “Experiment: Präzision und Bastelei.” Instrument – Experiment. Historische Studien. Ed. Christoph Meinel. Berlin: Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft und Technik, 2000. 52-60. Sebeok, Thomas A. and Jean Umiker-Sebeok. “‘Sie kennen ja meine Methode.’ Ein Vergleich von Charles S. Peirce und Sherlock Holmes.” Der Zirkel oder Im Zeichen der Drei. Ed. Umberto Eco and Thomas A. Sebeok. Munich: Fink, 1985. 2888.

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Sprat, Thomas. The History of the Royal Society of London, For the Improving of Natural Knowledge. 4th ed. London, 1734. Weigel, Valentin. “Vom Ort der Welt.” Sämtliche Schriften. Ed. Will Erich Peuckert and Winfried Zellner. Vol.1. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: F. Fromman, 1962. Weigel, Valentin. Selected Spiritual Writings. Trans. Andrew Weeks. New York: Paulist Press, 2003. Wirth, Uwe. “Die Abduktion als Spiel.” Zeitschrift für Semiotik 23. 3-4 (2001): 37992.

ANDREW PICKERING

Space: The Final Frontier

We tend to think of space as a container, the given place where things happen, a neutral medium for events. Those of us with a scientific background readily imagine space as marked out in a Cartesian grid. We can see the snooker (or pool) table mapped out along x- and y-axes and we know that one can write simple algebraic expressions for the trajectory of the white as it rolls in a straight line before being deflected by the black, and of the black as it rolls into the pocket (or not, as the case may be). The coordinate systems remain unchanged by the impact; the space of the table contains the action but is unmoved by it. For many of us, this vision of space is an ontological one. It is not simply a matter of convenience and utility that we consider space as a featureless neutral medium pre- and post-existing material happenings in the world; it is how the world itself is, was, and always will be. But where does this idea come from? And how can we get past it? Should we get past it? One source of our ontological convictions must be the scientific education that most of us receive whether we like it or not. We are taught to think of space this way and to map it with coordinates. Throw in a linear unsituated notion of time plus the mathematics of division and differentiation and there you have a whole apparatus, not just of locations and directions in space but speeds, accelerations and so on. Throw in Newton’s laws of motion and you have both the space and what happens within it. One way to challenge this ontology might therefore be to look within science for other conceptions of space. Physicists no longer believe in the ontology of space as indifferent container. According the theory of general relativity, massive objects bend space around themselves – space is not as indifferent to its contents as physics once imagined. But this does not get those of us living unaccelerated lives on the surface of the planet Earth very far. General relativity here and now reduces to a constant pull towards the centre of the earth and we are

2

Andrew Pickering

otherwise back to the empty featureless space we started with. We can look to general relativity to legitimate the idea that space is not what it seems, but its technical results are useless to us. We could perhaps look to other sciences for inspiration, sciences that have been and are interested in shape and form in themselves. One thinks of work on embryogenesis and morphogenesis in biology, but also the strange and beautiful (and largely forgotten) physics of inkdrops falling through water, of vortex-rings and the like, developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and of this physics and biology as strikingly brought together in D’Arcy Thompson’s masterpiece, On Growth and Form.1 Closer to the present, one might think of the inherent constructed-ness of Mandelbrot’s2 (1983) fractal geometries (in contrast to the ontological given-ness of flat Cartesian space) or of Stephen Wolfram’s New Kind of Science,3 in which the structure of space itself is understood to emerge from the iteration of simpler structures akin to cellular automata. Even within science, then, we can find resources for thinking of space as other than an indifferent container of events. We also have the option of moving to the opposite pole. Instead of thinking of space as a thing in itself, existing prior to any human knowledge of it – as the natural scientists like to do – we could come at it from the other angle, and ask how our experience of space engages with our being in the world. This takes us into the space of the phenomenologists, philosophers and psychologists – Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty – with their insistence that the human body comes first. Our sense of space derives from our necessarily embodied actions in the world, and, as it were, always refers back to our bodies as specific, marked places in the world. Our sense of neutral, unmarked space, the argument goes, is a parasitic construction laid as an organising principle upon that prior sense. Here, then, we find a familiar contrast or contradiction. There are two ways out of the ontology of space as container, but they move in opposite directions. The scientific move is, as I would say, antihumanist – it asserts that a space having certain properties exists, whether we humans are around to recognise it or not. The philosophical move is 1 2 3

D’Arcy W. Thompson. On Growth and Form. 1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Benoit Mandelbrot. “Towards a Second Stage of Indeterminism in Science.” Interdisciplinary Science Review 12 (1987): 117-27. Stephen Wolfram. A New Kind of Science. Champaign: Wolfram Media, 2002.

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humanist, in that it refers everything back to our bodies and minds. Strictly we can say nothing ontological about space itself; we can only get a handle on how we construct ideas of space from our embodied experience of being in the world. On the one hand, the world itself; on the other hand, people. We escape from a Cartesian ontology of space, but find ourselves still saddled with an ontological duality of people and things which Descartes also had a lot to answer for. In The Mangle of Practice4 I argued that this dualism of people and things gets in the way of understanding scientific and technological practice and of understanding being in the world in general. On the basis of detailed case studies, I argued for a decentred, post-humanist, analysis in which neither people nor the things run the show at the centre of history. I argued that we need to pay attention to interfaces, especially to what emerges in the interaction of people and things, to the coupled becomings of the human and the nonhuman. But I said nothing about space (or time). Nothing I wrote in The Mangle challenges the ontology of the flat container. The invitation to contribute to this volume has precipitated the following preliminary thoughts on how one might remedy this lack. We could start with science itself. One can argue, I believe, that the history of science is one of the discovery that space is not a neutral container. One cannot, it turns out, demonstrate the truths of Newton’s laws just anywhere. One can only demonstrate them in a special, controlled, space, a laboratory. And this was not a one-off discovery, settled some time in the 17th century. It goes on all the time. In the quarksearch experiments conducted by Giacomo Morpurgo and his colleagues in the 1960s and 1970s, they discovered that their usual laboratory bench was no longer the right kind of space as they moved towards higher precision measurements – they found themselves measuring traffic noise rather than the electrical charges on small bits of matter. They had to find a new controllable space, in the basement (and a new time: at night).5 The story of Otto Sibum’s recreation of Joule’s experiments on the mechanical equivalent of heat points in the same direction, Sibum found that temperature fluctuations, not least due to sweating brought on by moving weights around, went out of control in

4 5

Andrew Pickering. The Mangle of Practice. Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Ibid. 87.

4

Andrew Pickering

his university laboratory, and he ended up making his measurements in an old tower with walls many feet thick.6 The moral of such stories can be told in two ways. One is that the abstract space of modern science is parasitic upon the construction or finding of very specific spaces – the laboratory, the nocturnal basement, the ancient tower. The other is to say that space, the visible space of experiment (not any abstract idea of space) is mangled in practice – emergently and open-endedly tuned to the exigencies of specific scientific projects. Either way, these stories are reminiscent of the phenomenological analysis that refers space to the body, but, I want to note, they are different. They do not depend on any deep reflections on what it is like to have a body. They are the product of specific, mundane, documentable, interactions in which the human and the nonhuman are reciprocally reconfigured in relation to one another – human performances, practices, disciplines, knowledges, material configurations and performances, including dispositions of and in space. Viewed from the other extreme, like the antihumanist ontology, these stories help us to take space itself seriously, but as something to be actively engaged with, not as that which can be known in advance. One can also appeal to science, or hi-tech engineering, from another angle. I find it interesting to think about two traditions in robotics since the second world war. One, which we could call the symbolic artificial intelligence tradition, takes for granted the idea of space as container. The centre of this kind of robotics is a computer programmed to manipulate representations of its environment, programmed to plan, for example, a route from A to B in Cartesian coordinates. On the other hand, there is a tradition of ‘situated robotics’ running from W. Grey Walter’s robot ‘tortoises’ of the late 1940s up to the ‘biologically inspired’ robots of the present day.7 Crudely, these are non-representational robots that find their way through an environment in their interactions with it. They search through the environment in a trial-and-error process with various sensors – photocells, contact switches – and act accordingly. If symbolic AI instantiates a vision of neutral coordinate space, then situated robotics again reminds us of the phenomenological perspective. But the 6 7

Ibid. 106. Andrew Pickering. “Mit der Schildkröte gegen die Moderne: Gehirn, Technologie und Unterhaltung bei Grey Walter.” Trans. Gustav Rossler. Kultur im Experiment. Ed. Henning Schmidgen, Peter Geimer, and Sven Dierig. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos. 102-19.

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difference from the latter is, again, that situated robotics is not philosophy, it does not depend on introspection about bodily experience. It involves the construction of performative machines, machines that visibly act in the world. This robotics is a science of space that thematises space as interactively explored, rather than given – by humans or machines. It might also be mentioned that it appears that situated robots work better than symbolic AI ones – at least according to the admittedly committed history as told by Rodney Brooks.8 This raises the fascinating possibility of pursuing ontological arguments at the level of engineering rather than words – let the robots fight it out. With robots we drift from science towards engineering, so what about the latter? I have talked about the idea that our ontological take on space derives from our scientific heritage and education, but surely engineering has a lot to do with it, too. There are many angles to explore here, but let me pursue just one of them. In his marvellous book, The Railway Journey,9 Wolfgang Schivelbusch discusses what one could call the rectification of space in the construction of the 19th-century railway network. Where once there had been winding roads which respected the contours of the land, the railways instead, with their cuttings, tunnels, and embankments, drove straight lines between major centres of European population, and in major cities like Paris new boulevards shot like arrows between the railway terminals, piercing through a maze of mediaeval lanes. We could take this as emblematic of a rectification of the built environment, accelerating since the industrial revolution. We live in a rectified space (and a linearised time; Schivelbusch talks about that, too) whether we like it or not. Is it, then, any wonder that we imagine space as linear, empty, metric – the journey as a featureless gap between London and Edinburgh, or Tokyo and San Diego? The railways are an old hat, but water is always with us. For the past century or so, the civil engineers have been busy straightening rivers and streams – another rectification of the environment – optimizing flows in the name of management, control and planning. And two points strike me here. One is that this project never quite succeeds; it has the structure of an open-ended and decentred ‘dance of agency’10 8 9 10

Rodney Brooks. Cambrian Intelligence. The Early History of the New AI. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Wolfgang Schivelbusch. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Pickering. Mangle of Practice.

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between the waters and the engineers. As John McPhee’s11 history of the work of the US Army Corps of Engineer’s work on the Mississippi makes clear, the metaphor of a continuing war is appropriate to this way of going on. The ACE launches an offensive, building control structures – dams, levees – the river strikes back – washing the structures away, inundating its flood-plain – the ACE builds bigger levees and new control structures, and so on. This control project itself, then, is embedded in an open-ended becoming of the natural and built environment. This observation is the analogue of my earlier remark that the Cartesian ontology of science depends upon continually finding specific spaces for its exhibition. My second point is that it is increasingly recognised by water engineers that, as I said, the project never quite succeeds. A new style of civil engineering is now emerging, which, as it were, is predicated on recognising the agency of rivers and streams. This is science in its infancy … It’s a mixture of science and trial-and-error … We’re good in ways we can command and control a stream. We’re not good at figuring out ways to make it a complex system in which nature can function.12

Here the metaphor might be symmetric collaboration rather than war: waterways will meander, how can we live and pursue and develop our human goals in the presence of that? Where have we got to? In telegraphic fashion I have tried to suggest the following: Our ontological sense of space as an invariant and featureless container of events owes much to the history of ‘modern’ science and engineering. One can challenge that sense in many ways. The one I recommend takes a decentred, non-dualist, posthumanist route, pointing to mundanely visible, symmetric interactions between people and things that evokes an image of space as that which we open-endedly engage with and explore – neither to be known in advance, nor necessarily to be referred back to body-centred understandings. The last question I need to address is, so what? Why bother to criticise the ontological view of space as container? There are, I think, at least two answers to that question. One, to echo Heidegger,13 is that an ontology of space as container might be scientifically ‘correct’ but it is 11 12 13

John McPhee. “Atchafalaya.” The Control of Nature. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989. 3-92. Kirby Pringle. “Movement Afoot to Undo Some of Draining’s Damage.” Champaign-Urbana News Gazette 3 March 2002. E1, E7. Martin Heidegger. “The Question Concerning Technology.” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. W. Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. 3-35.

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not ‘true’. The abstract space (and time) of science is parasitic upon a continual search for very specific and material spaces in which it can be exhibited. The ontology of modern science, as it happens, is incapable of recognising that or articulating it – it simply edits it out of our consciousness. Much the same can be said of engineering. As noted, the rectification and domination of waterways has never been more than a way of going on in a flow of decentred becoming, spatial and otherwise, while trying to deny that flow. The other answer is that there is a reflexive relation between ontology and practice. How we think of the world and how we act in it are bound up together. A taken-for-granted ontology of neutral space fosters a certain class of ‘modern’ sciences and of engineering projects, and these reflect the ontology back to us as self-evidently true. But as I have indicated, another ontology of space finds its working out and exemplification in other sciences, different branches of mathematics and strange styles of engineering – from fractal geometry and situated robotics to new approaches to the civil engineering of water. At stake here, then, is not only the question of how we think about space, but about how we go on in the world. We could say that there is a politics, or perhaps a subpolitics, of ontology to be worked through, materially and socially, as well as conceptually and philosophically. The beginning of a new millennium might be an auspicious time to challenge the hegemony of containerised space.

WORKS CITED Brooks, Rodney. Cambrian Intelligence. The Early History of the New AI. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Heidegger, Martin. “The Question Concerning Technology.” The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. W. Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. 3-35. Mandelbrot, Benoit. “Towards a Second Stage of Indeterminism in Science.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 12 (1987): 117-27. McPhee, John. “Atchafalaya.” The Control of Nature. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989. 3-92. Pickering, Andrew. The Mangle of Practice. Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Pickering, Andrew. “Mit der Schildkröte gegen die Moderne: Gehirn, Technologie und Unterhaltung bei Grey Walter.” Trans. Gustav Rossler. Kultur im Experiment. Ed.

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Henning Schmidgen, Peter Geimer, and Sven Dierig. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos. 102-19. Pringle, Kirby. “Movement Afoot to Undo Some of Draining’s Damage.” ChampaignUrbana News Gazette 3 March 2002. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Thompson, D’Arcy W. On Growth and Form. 1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Wolfram, Stephen. A New Kind of Science. Champaign: Wolfram Media, 2002.

HELMAR SCHRAMM

Kunstkammer – Laboratory – Theater in the ‘Theatrum Europaeum’: On the Transformation of Performative Space in the 17th Century

1. Wittgenstein’s House Let’s begin with the imaginary view of a geometrical object. A desirable object, a strictly functional construction, whose dynamic form not only pertains to the asymmetrical facade but also to the cleverly arranged interior. From the artistic combination of alternate light incidences, smooth wall surfaces, glass perspectives, and ambitious staircases, from the mechanic perfection of doors, windows, locks, something like the dynamic of a playful machine grows. The building was constructed in Vienna in the nineteen-twenties, Ludwig Wittgenstein was the architect. His house in Kundmanngasse is a striking location of inquiry at the overlap of philosophy and architecture.1 It is not as a translation or even as an illustration of philosophical thought that the building is of interest, but rather as a gesture of reference to the enormous importance of spatial principals in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. In this respect, commonalities are known to pervade all major thought systems of European Modernism: indeed the metaphor of the house runs like a leitmotif through the history of philosophy.2 It is, however, in the mirror of Wittgenstein’s main works that this development culminates; and it becomes clear that the whole wealth of differing philosophical pillars can be traced back to two decisive spatial 1 2

Cf. Paul Wijdeveld. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Architect. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. 101-03. See on the mutual relations of architecture and knowledge: Peter Galison. “Buildings and the Subject of Science.” The Architecture of Science. Ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. 1-25.

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models. If the Tractatus shows in crystal clarity the characteristics of a philosophical-geometrical systematically construed space, the Philosophical Investigations reveal a complex sensory experiential space.3 When we say that a certain tradition of philosophical architecture culminates in Wittgenstein, that is not to say that the competing thought constructions have now, so to speak, assembled to form a city, or even an ideal city. Such a sublation would be totally unthinkable, since along with the gesture of systematic building, the design form of spatial thought was always based on methodical strategies of dismantling and removal, quite as if such tabula rasa gestures were intended to guarantee a direct reference to the actual fundament of spatial order: the uniform, colourless, universal Newtonian space. At first Wittgenstein reemphasises this gesture of reduction as the logically consistent pursuit of unity: this links his philosophy with traditional space concepts. But this is already happening in a fundamentally altered situation. At almost the same time as the publication of the Tractatus, the general theory of relativity comes to light and forces a development in the process of which the sequence of gestures of spatial creation are, as it were, deprived of their basis; and this happens in the course of a fundamental challenge to the Newtonian space as such. The three-dimensional space loses its habitual stability as a conceptual standard when time as a fourth dimension makes its mark. Against the backdrop of the new physics, Wittgenstein’s work is also subject to extreme tension, which is to be seen in that network of fracture lines which characterise his perpetual quest for a systematic positioning of the question about colour. It is not a coincidence that Goethe’s famous controversy with Newton was ignited by the question of the nature of colour.4 Referring to this in his fine essay Die Goethesche und die Newtonsche Farbenlehre im Lichte der modernen Physik Werner Heisenberg states that, from the perspective of the newer physics, both were basically right and that it was henceforth a matter of completely rethinking the relationship between systematically construed space and experiential space.5

3

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Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tractatus logico-philosophicus [with translation]. Intro. Bertrand Russel. Ed. K. Paul. N. p., 1922. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations 1958. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Cf. Josef G. F. Rothhaupt. “Die Farbeninkompatibilitätsthematik.” Farbthemen in Wittgensteins Gesamtnachlaß. Philologisch-philosophische Untersuchungen im Längsschnitt und in Querschnitten. Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum, 1996. 243-54. Werner Heisenberg. “Die Goethesche und die Newtonsche Farbenlehre im Lichte

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It is not, however, only in the light of modern physics that the architecture of thought is altered in the 20th century. Also making its mark is the shift in the dominance of media technology from the traditional culture of writing to completely new images and textual spaces. This tendency also leaves traces in Wittgenstein’s work; one only need’s to think of his concept of Sprachspiele (language games). Thus this short sketch of Wittgenstein’s house and its surroundings might indicate why it could be important from today’s perspective to shed light on forms of the architecture of knowledge in their earlier guises. If on the one hand, in the 17th century, space could be ever more accurately designed as a systematic geometrical space, on the other hand it often proved to be a paradoxical experiential space. Against the backdrop of this tension Kunstkammer, laboratory and theater become spaces of new observational and presentational art. As settings of knowledge they also acquire their spatial characteristics through the escalating culture of writing in the age of the printing press. Conversely, some publications of the time can be, as it were, spatially understood, can be read as textual and image spaces, or interpreted as a special form of Kunstkammer, laboratory and stage. Here the Theatrum Europaeum earns credit as an exemplary case.6

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der modernen Physik.” Goethe im 20. Jahrhundert. Spiegelungen und Deutungen. Ed. Hans Mayer. Hamburg: Wegner, 1967. 394-417. THEATRUM EUROPAEUM Oder/ Ausführliche und Warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten, so sich hin und wieder in der Welt, fürnemblich aber in Europa, und Teutschlanden, so wol im Religion= als Prophan=Wesen, vom Jahr Christi 1617 biß auff das Jahr 1629, exclus. Bey Regierung deren beyden Glorwürdigsten, Allerdurchleuchtigsten/ und unüberwindlichsten Römischen Keysern/ Matthiae und Ferdinandi Deß Andern, allerhöchstseeligster Gedächtnuß, sich zugetragen haben. Described by M. Johannem Philippum Albelinum, Argentoratensem. 3rd impression. Franckfurt am Mayn, M DC LXII. The first volume appears in the first edition in 1634. In total twenty one volumes are to be published by 1738, the contents covering the time period from 1618 to 1718. A table with an overview with details of altering editorship can be found in Herrmann Bingel. Das Theatrum Europaeum. Ein Beitrag zur Publizistik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Luebeck, 1909. Schaan/ Liechstenstein, 1982. 6. From here on, for references to volumes of THEATRUM EUROPAEUM, the abbreviation TE will be used along with the Roman numeral of the volume, followed in brackets by the year of the first issue and – in cases of discrepancy – the edition used.

Helmar Schramm

12 2. Theater (Play)

A god of time armed with scythe and hour glass rides on a winged mythic beast through a cloudy celestial space. By contrast, deep below in a grim cave a group of figures, forgotten by time, abandoned by god: masked, demasked, imprisoned in waiting, sleeping and dreaming (fig. 1). Suspended somewhere between heaven and earth, a melancholy ruler sits upon his throne. Far in the background, half concealed by an arrangement of a soaring pillar and a zestfully swung back curtain, a city or fortress is visible. Trumpeting angels transform the scene into a spectacular acoustic setting (fig. 2). Again and again such frontispieces adorn the 21 volumes of the Theatrum Europaeum. Bound with such theatrical illustrations this voluminous work aims, from various perspectives, to accurately observe and situate the European ambient between 1618 and 1718. Naturally, this universal work, marked by the “universal wars spreading throughout Europe” (“durch Europam durchgenden universal Kriegen”) attracted the attention of historians repeatedly. But the 30, 000 pages of material were not only systematically categorized and administered as a precious document; they were also blocked off and sealed through methodologically blinkered perspectives.7 This tendency resulted first of all from a certain ignorance concerning the title.8 It finally culminated in a fatal reordering of the sources. Spun off as mere entertainment material were those layers which conjoined with the performative spaces of Kunstkammer, laboratory, and stage and thus also with time-dependent observational and presentational historical techniques. “What remains after the extraction of the entertainment material are the truly memorable stories which tell of the Haupt- und Staatsaktionen.”9 To be shown, as a countermeasure, is the way in which Kunstkammer, laboratory and stage have left decisively important traces in the main archive of the Theatrum Europaeum. 7

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On the problem of the cultural-historical evolvement of blinkered perspectives see Helmar Schramm. “Einleitung. Schauraum/Datenraum. Orte der Interferenz von Wissenschaft und Kunst.” Bühnen des Wissens. Interferenzen zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst. Ed. Helmar Schramm et al. Berlin: Dahlem University Press, 2003. 10. On the exposed significance and cultural meaning of such popular titles in the 17th century see Thomas Kirchner. “Der Theaterbegriff des Barock.” Maske und Kothurn 31 (1985): 131-40. Bingel. Das Theatrum Europaeum. 9.

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Fig. 1: Matthaeus Merian Frontispiece of Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. 2, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1637).

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Fig. 2: Matthaeus Merian Afrika und Asien huldigen der Europa. Allegorical engraving. Frontispiece of Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. 1, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1635).

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The Theatrum Europaeum is characterized as a stage not only through its title and respective sensory images. Frequently and explicitly mentioned is “this theater or stage setting of the stories of the world”10 as is “theater of the present and future world.”11 The type and functional mode of the intended theater is suggested when it states: “then we raise a little the curtain of our theater,”12 when it is announced that “plays of joy and sadness”13 would take place within, or when in 1672 “the 9th part of the European Theater [will be] opened/ and this with 15 scorings.14 However it is not just a case of the text being interspersed with expressions such as “miserable spectacle”15 or “peculiar spectacle and deplorable acting”16 when political pointedness or natural catastrophes are on the agenda. The editor’s attention also focuses on very concrete elements of theatrical culture. Along with the descriptions of the arrangements of theatrical space on different occasions, a whole spectrum of artistic offerings and deterrent stagings of punishments is described, as are ceremonies and theatrical festivals. This is very frequently joined by information on the behaviour and the size of the audience. What is interesting here is the way people and places are always integrated into the context. As spatial entities stage structures are very often built into other spaces. Thus for example in 1663 we read that in the French court His Majesty himself [held] a ballet of extraordinary magnificence in the large guard room: the location itself was upholstered with precious wall-textiles/ and within a theater or scaffolding/ equipped with two staircases/ upon which both queens sat beneath a cover of violet brown satin bordered with gilded lilies.17

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

“diesem THEATRO oder Schaw=Platz der Geschichten der Welt.” TE, VI (1652, 1663), Introduction [n. pag.]. “Theatro der jetzigen und künftigen Welt.” TE, VIII (1667), Introduction [n. pag.]. “Dann ziehen wir den Vorhang unsers Theatri ein wenig auff.” TE, VIII (1667), Introduction [n. pag.]. “es kämen “darinnen Freuden= und Trauer=Spiel” vor. TE, VIII (1698), Introduction [n. pag.]. “des Theatri Europaei Neunter Theil/ eröffnet [wird]/ und zwar mit 15 Verthonungen oder Rubricken.” TE, IX (1672, 1699), Introduction [n. pag.]. “erbärmliches Spectackel.” TE, II (1633,1646), 592. “sonderbares Spectacul und jämmerliche[r] Schauspiegel.” TE, IX (1672, 1699), 1074. “Se. Maj Selber ein Ballett in dem Grossen Saale dero Guarden mit überauß prächtiger Herrlichkeit [hielt]: Denn der Platz an ihm selbsten war mit kostbaren Tapezereyen gezieret/ und darinnen ein Theatrum, oder Gerüste/ mit zween Treppen aufgerichtet/ auf welchem beyde Koeniginnen/ unter einer Violbraunen

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It was not only within the sphere of court culture that the integration of theatrical scenes in political action and representational spaces was to be found. The permeation of urban spaces by provisional locations of theatrical performances is manifest in numerous ways. One almost gets the impression that the architecture of the towns is suffused with the projection and mirror system of a second mobile spatial structure. Drastic theatrical actions transfer towns into stony mnemonic theatres. In Prague for example the raised stage or theater (upon which many executions were consequently performed) was prepared in the Zimmerhof in the old town/ und the following day the same was set up in the old town ring/ first of all at the town hall ( so that you could get up onto it through a door leading outwards)/ it is 4 cubits high/ 22 paces wide and 22 paces long/ and everywhere boarded up/ and there is also a surrounding barrier.18

Along with such projections of stage space in the architecture of political and public spaces, also deserving of attention is the kind of omnipresent mobile exhibition space which manifested itself impressively on the 23nd of May, 1630, at seven o’clock in the evening in Stuttgart. The sky changed before an audience of several hundreds of people. And like in a regular theater a fight broke out between a multitude of glistening spears flying about, helter-skelter, with occasional sporadic shooting flames of fire. Quite shocking to behold.19

In relation to the systematic positioning of the whole palette of performances shown in the Theatrum Europaeum, it seems to me a remarkable fact that the enormous wealth of material in the 30,000 pages functions essentially via a registry and reference system in which alongside towns, villages, rivers and estates, people also play an important role. They form, so to speak, a second mobile, cartographic system

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sammeten und mit güldenen Lilien bordirten Decke sassen.” TE, IX (1672, 1699), 1032. “hat man die erhöchte Bühne oder Theatrum (auf welcher man hernacher die Execution mehrentheils vollzogen) im Zimmerhoff in der Alten Stadt gefertiget/ und dieselbige folgenden Tags auff dem Altstädter Ringk/ zu allernächst am Rathauß (daß man zu einer Tür herauß drauff gehen können) aufgericht/ dieselbige ist 4 Elen hoch/ 22. Schritt breit und 22 Schritt lang/ und solche allenthalben verschlagen/ auch rings herumb ein Schrancken gemacht gewesen.” TE, I (1634, 1662), 482. “gleich als einem auffgerichteten Theatro, entstunde einsmahls ein Streit/ als zwischen vielen durcheinander fahrenden glänzenden Spiessen/ und hin und wider schiessenden Fewerflammen/ ganz schröcklich anzusehen.” TE, II (1633,1646), 113.

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Fig. 3: Combination of two experiential spaces: a mobile re-presentational space within the architectural space of the town. Here: Abbildung der Röm. Kaiserl. Wahl und Crönung. Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. 8, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1667).

which lies like a transparency over the fragile cartography of Europe.20 Thus, concerning concrete ideas of European as well as local space, their remarkable entrances have at that time a stabilizing or dynamizing effect. Every costly illumination, every eccentric scene, every attention-attracting show is also to be understood as the marking out of space. Therefore, it hardly makes any difference whether the performances are realized by paid actors or by the main protagonists of Theatrum Europaeum itself. It is no coincidence that it is related, for example, how the queen of France at the aforementioned ballet of 1664 outshined all others, “as she wore jewellery of pearls and diamonds to the worth of 20

On the dynamic of the change in terms and concepts of Europe in 17th century see: Wolfgang Schmale. “Körper – Kultur – Identität: Neuzeitliche Wahrnehmungen Europas – Ein Essay.” Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit 1 (2001): 8191.

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over 6 million.”21 In the same report we learn that the income of the kingdom at that time amounted to 36 millions, so the queen wore approximately one sixth of the kingdom’s revenue directly on her body. Bearing in mind the influence on space, indeed the space-creating and demarcating function of theatrical events, it becomes conceivable how it came to pass that the firework (visible from afar) is promoted to the true centre of all theatrical actions in the 17th century. “Fun-fireworks” (Lust=Feuerwerke), ordered per decree, serve in their way as the more or less direct maintenance of the cartographical status quo and simultaneously evince pleasant horror in recollection of the serious fireworks with their border-moving power.22 Against this background, it also becomes clear to what extent rituals and ceremonies are to be conceived of as dynamic, calculable components of the spatial ordering of the person in the Theatrum Europaeum; and it is revealing that their precise description and graphical depiction is elevated, as it were, to a demarcating cultural comparison when news of ceremonies in Germany, England, Sweden, and “at the Muscovite Czar’s” confront one another.23 In the system of personal space demarcation the signal system of horrific corporal punishment doubtlessly possessed an extraordinary power.24 Here the long distance effect of symbolic power was proportionate to the physical violence. Thus the Theatrum Europaeum also becomes an echo of a demonstrative language of power. Fingers pulled off with red-hot pincers, tongues nailed to the pillory, heads impaled on spires offered certain guarantees for the degree of dissemination, speed of communication and memorability of such news.25 However, in each case it had to be guaranteed that the message came from the appropriate 21 22

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“denn sie hatte einen Schmuck von Perlen und Diamanten/ über 6. Millionen werth/ an sich.” TE, IX (1672, 1699), 1032. The intensive mutual influence of recreational fireworks and war technology is particularly impressively expressed in: Casimir Simienovicz. Artis magnae Artilleriae. Vollkommene Geschütz- Feuerwerck- und Büchsenmeisterey-Kunst. Franckfurt am Main, 1676. “beym Moscovitischen Czaar.” TE, IX (1672, 1699). 623. In this sense, there are revealing connections between corresponding spectacular presentations in Theatrum Europaeum and in: Jacob Döpler. Theatrum poenarum, suppliciorum et executiorum criminalium. Oder Schau=Platz derer Leibes= und Lebens= Straffen. Vol. I “Leibesstrafen,” Vol. II “Lebensstrafen.” Sondershausen, 1693-97. Cf. Jürgen Martschukat. “Das ‘Theatrum Poenarum’ vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert.” Inszeniertes Töten. Eine Geschichte der Todesstrafe vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2000. 42-53.

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representative of power, that it was expressed by the appropriate protagonist of Theatrum Europaeum, and not, for example, by the delinquent himself. There are notable reports about this, too, as for example the entry on the occasion of the execution of the Baron von Teuffenbach, who lashed out vehemently on the punishment stage and tried to speak, although it “wasn’t possible to understand the words/ because underneath the theater drums were beating loudly/ however one could observe it well enough from his gestures.”26 On such occasions the potential function of an audience is manifest and thus reports of the most horrific executions mention “that over three thousand men had spontaneously collected for the purpose of watching”27 or that a princess landed on the gallows “in the presence of and under the watchful gaze of many thousands of people.”28 In illustrations too, great importance is attached to representing the crowd of spectators and active participants (fig. 4.). Here, however, the effect of stages of the printed word in the overall structure of performative spaces is perceptible. The Theatrum Europaeum is not just at the service of a few thousand or a hundred thousand, but quite simply of all readers of the present and future from whatever profession they may come/ soldiers/ courtiers/ nobles/ statesmen/ envoys/ theologists, lawyers, natural scientists, mathematicians, historians, star gazers/ genealogists and the like/ yes, both the learned and the unlearned.29

Thus claims a promotional enclosure in 1716. Against this background a certain indication of quixotry is detectable when in 1660 for example “Milton’s book written against the king of England/ […] was publicly burned by the executor”30, and when, in the period following, reports about book burnings steadily increase.

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“die Wort nicht verstehen mögen/ weil man mit Trommeln unter dem Theatro starck aufgeschlagen/ jedoch hat man es auß den Gestibus genugsam observiret.” TE, I (1634,1646), 482. “daß über drey tausend Mann umb Zusehens willen.” TE, I (1634, 1646), 286. “im Beyseyn und Zusehen vieler tausend Menschen.” TE, IX (1672, 1699), 1077. “von was Profession sie auch seyn mögen/ Soldaten/ Hoff=Leuten/ Staats =Männern/ Gesandten/ Theologis, Juristen, Naturkündigern, Mathematicis, Historicis, Sternsehern/ Genealogisten und dergleichen/ ja Gelehrten so wohl als Ungelehrten.” TE, I (1634, 1646), promotional enclosure from 1716. “Miltons Buch, so er gegen den König in Engelland geschrieben/ [...] durch den Hencker öffentlich verbrennet.” TE, IX (1672, 1699), 112.

Fig. 4: Ceremonial scene with great expenditure of personnel. Here: Einzug der zu Ungarn und Böhmen königl. Majest. zum Wahl-Tag in Franckfurt am Mayn 1658. Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. 8, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1667).

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Having outlined so far the way in which elements of theatrical culture were viewed by the Theatrum Europaeum as important constituent factors of the European ambient and not by any means as mere entertainment, the question now is to what extent the TE itself contains characteristics of a performative realm. The value of printed paper for the change in spatial conceptions in those days is expressed extremely pointedly by Campanella when he writes that the printing press, gunpowder and compass are curious signs and a means of keeping all of mankind together like sheep in a pen. Essential here is not the unlimited range of printed material, but above all the possibility of converting on paper any realm whatsoever into a predictable system with centristic perspective. Theater, we know, formed a centre of spatially related experiments and this in strict relation to spatial aspects of perception, language and movement. This was by no means simply a case of the invention and further development of existing houses as representational machines. Referring to what was probably the most spatially striking and simultaneously most fleeting theatrical art of the time, the firework, Joseph Furttenbach in 1663 emphasises that the most important thing with this work was that one first of all acquired on paper an overview of the fireworks location, or its appropriate theater, in correct posture and size.31

In a later paragraph it is then explained “what form the theater was to take on from the paper and how it was to be set up in the field.”32 Such spatial translation processes should be considered when the Theatrum Europaeum places itself as an independent performative space alongside spatial objects such as “well-known machines, obelisks, collosi, amphitheaters, statues and the like,”33 when it views itself as a sort of mnemonic paper theater or when the editors “wish to produce it on the public theaters of the world”34 in order to situate it, as it were, in the comprehensive system of performative space. 31

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“allernothwendigste bei diesem Werck [...]/ das man vor allen Dingen/ deß Feuerwerckes Platz oder sein hierzu wolfügendes Theatrum, erstlich auff das Papir [...] in seiner rechten Postur/ auch wie groß es sein solle/ vor Augen stele.” Joseph Furttenbach. Mannhaffter Kunst-Spiegel. Augspurg, 1663. 101. “in was Gestalt das Theatrum von dem Papier zunehmen/ und in das Feld hinauß abzustecken seye.” Furttenbach, Mannhaffter Kunst-Spiegel. 198. “namhaffte Machinas, Obeliscos, Colossos, Amphitheatra, Statuas und dergleichen.” TE, V (1647,1707), Introduction [n. pag.]. “auff das offentliche Theatrum der Welt produciren wollen.” TE, II (1633,1646), Introduction [n. pag.].

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Fig. 5: Combination of system space and experiential space: ambivalent interplay between ground plan and scenic image. Here: Abbildung des Königlichen Schwedischen Feldlagers bey Werben an der Elbe 1631. Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. 2, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1637).

Within the interior of the 21 volumes a spatial dimension is built via two fundamentally different, but nevertheless completely interrelated map systems, namely through large-format copper plates of maps, cities, fortresses and architectural structures on the one hand and location and space-related Contrafacturen of high and noble people on the other hand. At the intersection of both perspectives, in combination with the relevant text passages, it can be seen how the attempt is made on the stage of the Theatrum Europaeum to not merely communicate the impression of concrete spatiality, but also to suggest the ability to experience sensory movement. This sensory effect of vibrant moments totally corresponds to the stage. And we realize, how in such moments of spatialization of time and temporalization of space, the labile balance between experiential and system space can be found. This is strikingly exemplary in the many scenes of sieges, when on the one hand, for the sake of precision, maps and urban views tend towards a geometric ground plan, whilst at

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the same time, in the interest of believable testimony, they incorporate figurative representations showing tiny buildings collapsing, people flying through the air, horses bolting and thick clouds of smoke rising from the canon round just fired (fig. 5). Another form of directional movement is impressively staged by panorama representations of parades and processions on largely formated leporellos. A lot could be said on the spacetime-dynamics of the Theatrum Europaeum; especially important however is the interrelation between experimentation with the most differing movement forms in picture and text and the whole character of the publication itself; this is, after all, a work presenting a periodical, a journal, an information process lasting for over one hundred years. 3. Kunstkammer (Admiratio) The Theatrum Europaeum is not a stage. In its whole design as a collection room of the astonishing and the horrible, the wonderful and the strange, in its gesture of presenting precious pictures, documents, and objects, it resembles far more a Kunst- and Wunderkammer.35 In fact, many references to such collections and related activities are to be found. The cargos of ships from India are mentioned and precisely recorded. Complete registers of the most varied kinds of objects and facts keep turning up. The large number of pictures alone, wondrous copper plates,36 present an impressive collection over a time span of 100 years. And this collection of pictures is multiplied both in the mirror-cabinet of a graphic, analogy-laden language as well as through the direct thematization of the pictures’ techniques, functions and effects. The Hussite iconoclasm in Prague is reported just as is the burning of a portrait of Cromwell. The exchange of visitors’ gifts and their presentation apparently constituted an established ritual from which it was not uncommon for provisional Kunstkammern to spring up, as for example in 1660 when before their departure a Dutch delegation honoured

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See on this cultural-historically accentuated concept of the Kunst- and Wunderkammer: Horst Bredekamp. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine. The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. TE, I (1634,1662), Introduction [n. pag.].

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Helmar Schramm his majesty with a precious gilded travel-bed, chairs and other accessory pieces, as well as many artistic pictures by old and new experienced masters together with a large number of other images very beautifully sculpted from white marble, all quite marvellous and highly valuable. The king thanked them in a most specially friendly manner and had all these precious things arranged in a room so that he could show them to all noble people who wished to see them.37

If a “travel-bed” (“Reyse=Bett”) embodies here the main attraction, in 1715 it is a precious “travel-tent” (“Reyse=Zelt”)38 which is presented to the King of Prussia by the King of Saxony. Through close examination, one can discover in the Theatrum Europaeum how objects and art works make their own characteristic movement through the European realm and how impressions of strangeness and wonderment are evoked here through border-crossing in both the topographical and experiential spheres. For some time border and wonder seem to form a memorable point of intersection in the field of knowledge.39 Above all we are struck by the intensive interweaving of the collecting and gathering of worlds of objects in the Theatrum Europaeum. If the Kunstkammer is to be understood as the new ordering of collected, discovered, and invented things, conversely, it becomes clear how political processes, wars, and catastrophes function as decisive sources of a permanent production of wonders of dispersal, grotesque alienation and the formation of new constellations of objects. Dispersed objects after a volcanic eruption, “all those uncountable/ wooden doors/ windows/ benches/ mattresses/ clothing/ knives/ chairs/ barrels/ pillows”40 – opportunities to find and collect. Dismembered body parts, limbs on the battle field, occasions for stories of wonder and discovery. In 1632, on the 4th of March, 37

38 39 40

“seyner Majestät ein kostbar übergüldetes Reyse=Bett/ Stühle und andere darzu gehörige Stücke/ wie auch viel künstlicher Schildereyen von alten und neuen erfahrnen Meistern gemahlet/ samt einer großen Anzahl anderer Bilder/ so auß weissem Marmor sehr schoen gehauen waren/ alles gar herrlich und von grossem Werthe verehrten. Der König bedankte sich deßwegen insonderheit gantz freundlich/ und ließ alle diese kostbaren Sachen in ein Zimmer in Ordnung stellen/ damit er solche allen vornehmen Personen/ so Lust hätten dieselbige zu sehen/ zeigen könnte.” TE, IX (1672, 1699), 152. TE, XX (1734), 411. Cf. Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature. 11501750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. “allda unzehliche Bäume Thüren/ Fenster/ Bänck/ Materssen/ Kleydung/ Scabellen/ Stüle/ Fässer/ Kisten.” TE, II (1633, 1646), 513.

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a soldier on the Steig in Plünden shot an extraordinarily large eagle in full flight which fell dead onto a watchman’s hut; its wings extended were about 9 feet long, the claws were a lovely blue and extraordinarily large. Found in its stomach were the hoof of a chamois, a flat bone sharp at both ends as well as a little marrowbone and then a marrowbone from a human thigh.41

For some time, bodily delimitations and wonder seem to present a memorable intersection in the field of knowledge.42 Over here we find the report on a ten year old boy, who having overcome sickness, retches out a whole Wunderkammer of objects which are precisely catalogued in the Theatrum Europaeum; there the strange news of a soldier sweating blood in the year 1630; and there whole sections are filled with ‘wonder’ births, deformed births, or ominous animals. Different kinds of technical instruments play an increasingly important role: diving instruments, hanging bridges, fast-firing canons, measuring instruments, and musical instruments. Even the long sought after perpetuum mobile43 is allegedly invented in 1715 near Leipzig. For some time wonder and horizons of experience seem to form a memorable intersection in the field of knowledge. For a long time the keyword ‘Wunder’ constitutes a category of its own in the Theatrum Europaeum from which a whole book of wonders could be put together. Unlike other Kunst- and Wunderkammern, wonders of movement, of spatial dynamic, constitute an especially important or even decisively crucial point. Celestial space, as the most reliable and most technically perfect medium of the 17th century, becomes an enormous screen of symbols and wonders (time and again complete armies appear in geometrical formation; there are air battles; multiple suns rise simultaneously). Over long periods of time, the Theatrum Europaeum collects without comment such projection reports and categorizes them. As with the Instrument-, Kunst- and Wunderkammern, in the long sustained process of collecting, real series are produced.

41

42

43

“hat ein Soldat auff der Steig in Plünden einen überauß grossen Adler in vollem Flug geschossen/ daß er auff ei Schiltwaechter Haeusslein todt herunder gefallen; dessen Flügel aufgespannt waren bey 9. Werckschuch lang/ die klawen waren schoen Blaw und ueberauß groß. In seinem Magen sind gefunden worden ein Klawen von eiem Gembs/ ein flaches Bein an beyden Orthen sehr scharpff/ item ein Marckbeinlein und dann ein Marckbein von einem Menschenschenckel.” TE, II (1633, 1646), 629. For further development on this problem see: Barbara Maria Stafford. Body Criticism. Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993. TE, XX (1734), 691, 437, 431.

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Fig. 6: Exemplary illustration of wonders and catastrophes that break the norm. Here: Vorbildung deren Mißgeburten dieses 1620. Jahres, welcher hie bevor gedacht worden. Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. I, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1635).

At the beginning of the 18th century, however, the section on ‘Wunder’ suddenly disappears from the index. As far as particularily

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peculiar processes, objects, or catastrophes are mentioned at all, it is as an addendum. So, laconically noted in the register, we read “1713 huge fires reported/ 1714 huge fires reviewed/ 1715 huge fires described.”44 The gesture of wonderment yields to an administrative act. 4. Laboratory (Possibility) The Theatrum Europaeum is no Kunstkammer. In its overall aim to precisely observe and believably present the most different processes, objects, and changes in the European realm, in its efforts to build a system of evidence-production, in its attempt to employ and further develop different implements to achieve this, it actually resembles far more a laboratory. Its relationship to the experimental culture of the time crystallizes primarily at two decisive poles. On the one hand, it is primarily a question of space, whereby the concept extends from architecture and land surveying through military geometry to tidings of the celestial realm, astrosemiotics, and the whole field of secret internal spaces. On the other hand, attention is concentrated on problems of motion. Questions of the observation of stars and the weather, of the human body, and mechanics are thus validated, but so too is the movement of military formations and political documents, i.e. the strategical movement of information in space. Naturally, directly connected with such observational fields are the limits of representability and diverse attempts to relativize these limits. The spatial exploration concerns in equal parts both the experiential space and the geometric system space. It is not only the quantity of cartographic materials and the gradual improvement in their precision which evidences a consistently increasing functional energy of system space. Also, the attempt to formulate even more accurately the registration of movements, and to thus raise map works and copperplates to the status of “watertight witnesses”45 speaks here for itself. A certain parallel effort to refine the instrument of language is perceptible. On the one hand, an orientation towards the language of law is to be noted here (it is no coincidence that volume XX is expressly dedicated to the newly founded Reichskammergericht – Supreme Court of the Empire – in 44 45

“1713 Feuers=Brünste erzehlet/ 1714 Feuers=Brünste rezensiret/ 1715 Feuers =Brünste beschrieben.” TE, XX (1734), 691, 437, 431. “unverwerfflicher Zeugen.” TE, II (1633, 1646), Introduction [n. pag.].

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Fig. 7: The sky as medium of wonderful and terrible events. Here: Cometstern 1618. Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. 1, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1635).

Frankfurt); on the other hand, the efforts concentrate above all on the systematic improvement of precision in the interrelation of writing, image, and number. This constellation bears fruit both in the recording of urban architecture as well as in the presentation of architectural structures of the army in open country. Further mention is to be given to the description and occasionally also the graphic presentation of comets (fig. 7) which could be seen simultaneously from different places in Europe and also the reference to diverse instruments amongst which the map itself held a prominent position. The penetration into the inner space of the human body, in the course of permanent repetition, also gradually tended towards a consistent systematization, which was only occasionally broken through in spectacular fashion, as for example, when in the corpse of a deformed birth, “a heart/ a lung/ but set far apart from each other on both sides [of the body]/ two stomachs/ two livers/ and the usual interior organs of the body all in duplicate”46 were identified. At the same time, linked to this is a gradual objectification resulting in the shifting of taboo boundaries. 46

“ein Herz/ eine Lunge/ doch auff beyden Seiten weit von einander getheilet/ zween Mägen/ zwo Lebern/ und die übrigen innerliche Theil deß Leibs alle doppelt.” TE, I (1645,1662), 1145.

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Fig. 8: Vivid representation of the Vesuvius erruption in 1631 as a supplement to a detailed description of the events. Here: Ioachimo Sandrart Berg Vesuvius 1631. Theatrum Europaeum (Vol. 2, Franckfurt am Mayn, 1637).

When in 1713 it is reported at the occasion of the opening of a corpse that all in all the body seemed completely normal and healthy apart from the brain, where “a bilious material was found which was the cause of her death,”47 the object of this public announcement is in fact queen Anne of England. The experimental opening up of experiential space becomes important not only in the context of political processes and everyday life; it also plays a role when alongside measurable and predictable facts, substantially different views on the material and the sensory move into the foreground. This is, for example, the case when weather reports or the huge Theatrum Anatomicum of the war make the observation of noises, smells, and colour advisable. In the 17th century, colour and light especially – with Descartes and Newton – become a fundamental challenge for the contemplation of the spatial and temporary composition of the world. We are confronted in an exemplary manner with laboratory-like techniques of observation and presentation when the eruption of Vesuvius in 1631 is meticulously described in all its phases and when we

47

“galligte Materi gefunden [worden], welche die Ursach ihres Todes gewesen.” TE, XX (1734), 261 b.

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then have the opportunity to compare similar processes in later volumes of the Theatrum Europeaeum (fig. 8). All in all, it can be concluded that traces of the experimental culture have made their mark on the work in such a way that in the end the whole project itself becomes a kind of laboratory. This can be verified by evaluating the total material as a precisely demarcated long-term observation referring to different layers of reality. This is joined by a gradually increasing awareness for questions of the ordering of the material, the registry, the reference system, in short: the spatial organization within the Theatrum Europaeum itself. Additionally, a growing striving for probability can be detected, whose special feature and drawback consists, however, in methods of evidence production from the most diverse fields of knowledge all being equally amalgamated into an alchemistic-poetical analogical process.48 5. Performative Space The Theatrum Europaeum is no theater, no Kunstkammer, no laboratory. The last volume appeared in the year 1738 and is dedicated to the period between 1716 and 1718. Why does the curtain now close so finally, why does the enterprise go under? Many practical reasons, as for example financial problems, lack of strategy, pressure from the competition and suchlike catch our attention at first. It gets more interesting, however, if we turn our gaze to those changes to which Kunstkammer, laboratory, and stage, as spaces of knowledge have meanwhile been subjected. If the development of alchemist laboratories in the 17th century and the associated written material is considered, it can be seen that a radical process of restructuring has gradually taken place. Since the middle of the 17th century, the practice of decomposition, purification and sublimation of substances, tried and tested in centuries of tradition, is increasingly applied to the alchemic written material itself. In view of publicistic controversies, alchemy is caught up in a radical self-clean48

This is an entirely symptomatic contrast to the systematic differentiation and demarcation of techniques of evidence presentation and production characterized by Leibnitz as an essential tendency towards the end of the seventeenth century in such fields as law, historiography, medicine, and logic. Cf. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. “Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand.” Trans. and intro. Ernst Cassirer. Philosophische Werke in vier Bänden. Vol. 3. Hamburg: Meiner, 1996. 509-38.

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sing process. The alchemists’ fire in a treatise from 1702 is converted into a “Fegefeuer des Scheidekunst” (lit. “purgatiorial fire of the craft of separation”)49 which should serve to cleanly divide and categorize the labyrinth of texts. Similar developments take place in the area of the theater. Secret, paradox, spontaneous physical sides of theatrical culture are systematically excluded under the influence of the enlightenment. Under the paradigm of the culture of writing and against the backdrop of a general rationality, the standard of a ‘purified stage’ is institutionalized. After 1700, new boundaries and partition lines can be detected everywhere in the architecture of knowledge which are not least a consequence of an extension of the ambivalent balance, typical in the 17th century, between experiential space and systematically conceived space. But with this development, the interplay between Kunstkammer, laboratory, and stage, which for a certain time had constituted a cultureforming space of observation and representation, is disbanded. And this is precisely that performative space in which the Theatrum Europaeum was to be situated. With the fundamental change in this space, in its ensemble act of system space and experiential space typical for the time, the Theatrum Europaeum is literally deprived of its location. So, at the end of my contribution, the inquiry into the Theatrum Europaeum becomes an inquiry into the secret of performative space. Every cultural-historical architecture of knowledge, one could say, establishes itself in relation to the stylization of a performative space typical for its respective time, whose exploration relates to problems of representation in writing, image and number, of perception and systematic observation as well as problems of physical and technical movement. But this horizon of inquiry leads us back to Wittgenstein. Using his ideas I tried to outline at the beginning, the break which separates us today from a scientific architecture which in one way or another adheres to the tradition of 17th century spatial concepts. In as far as all methods, techniques, and practices of observation and representation have been affected by those concepts (a situation which is be49

This is a wordplay referring both to the fire the alchemists used to separate substances as well as to the separation of would-be “artists, heretics, cheats, quacks bunglers and wannabes” from the true artists (the former being consigned to the fires of hell). Cf. Keren Happuch [Soeldner]. Posaunen Eliae des Kuenstler/ oder Teutsches Fegefeuer der Scheide=Kunst/ Worinnen Nebst den Neu =gierigsten und groessten Geheimnuessen vor Augen gestellet. Die wahren Besitzer der Kunst; wie auch die Ketzer, Betriege/ Pfuscher/ Stuemper/ und Herren Gern=Grosse. Hamburg, 1702.

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coming increasingly evident), the question of performative space belongs today to the agenda of science and art. Translation: Shivaun Conroy

WORKS CITED Bingel, Herrmann. Das Theatrum Europaeum. Ein Beitrag zur Publizistik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts [Reprint Lübeck, 1909]. Wiesbaden: M. Sändig, 1962. Bredekamp, Horst. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Daston, Lorraine and Katherine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature. 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Döpler, Jacob. Theatrum poenarum, suppliciorum et executiorum criminalium. Oder Schau=Platz derer Leibes= und Lebens=Straffen. Vol. I „Leibesstrafen.“ Vol. II „Lebensstrafen.“ Sondershausen, 1693-97. Furttenbach, Joseph. Mannhaffter Kunst-Spiegel. Augspurg, 1663. Galison, Peter. “Buildings and the Subject of Science.” The Architecture of Science. Ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. 1-25. Hankins, Thomas L. and Robert J. Silverman. Instruments and the Imagination. Princeton: Princeton University Press,1995. Heisenberg, Werner. “Die Goethesche und die Newtonsche Farbenlehre im Lichte der modernen Physik.” Goethe im 20. Jahrhundert. Spiegelungen und Deutungen. Ed. Hans Mayer. Hamburg: Wegner, 1967. 394-417. Kirchner, Thomas. “Der Theaterbegriff des Barock.” Maske und Kothurn 31 (1985): 131-40. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand.” Trans. and intro. Ernst Cassirer. Philosophische Werke in vier Bänden. Vol. 3. Hamburg: Meiner, 1996. Martschukat, Jürgen. “Das ‘Theatrum Poenarum’ vom 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert.” Inszeniertes Töten. Eine Geschichte der Todesstrafe vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau, 2000. 43-53. Rothhaupt, Josef G. F. “Die Farbeninkompatibilitätsthematik.” Farbthemen in Wittgensteins Gesamtnachlaß. Philologisch-philosophische Untersuchungen im Längsschnitt und in Querschnitten. Weinheim: Beltz Athenäum, 1996. 243-254. Schmale, Wolfgang. “Körper – Kultur – Identität: Neuzeitliche Wahrnehmungen Europas – Ein Essay.” Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit 1 (2001): 81-98. Schramm, Helmar. “Schauraum/Datenraum. Orte der Interferenz von Wissenschaft und Kunst.” Bühnen des Wissens. Interferenzen zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst. Ed. Helmar Schramm et al. Berlin: Dahlem University Press, 2003. 9-27. Simienovicz, Casimir: Artis magnae Artilleriae. Vollkommene Geschütz- Feuerwerckund Büchsenmeisterey-Kunst. Franckfurt am Main, 1676. [Soeldner], Keren Happuch. Posaunen Eliae des Kuenstlers/ oder Teutsches Fegefeuer der Scheide=Kunst/ Worinnen Nebst den Neu=gierigsten und groessten Geheimnuessen vor Augen gestellet Die wahren Besitzer der Kunst; wie auch die Ketzer, Betrieger/ Pfuscher/ Stuemper/ und Herren Gern=Grosse. Hamburg, 1702.

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Stafford, Barbara Maria. Body Criticism. Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993. THEATRUM EUROPAEUM Oder/Ausführliche und Warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten, so sich hin und wieder in der Welt, fürnemblich aber in Europa, und Teutschlanden, so wol im Religion= als Prophan =Wesen, vom Jahr Christi 1617 biß auff das Jahr 1629, [...] sich zugetragen haben. Beschrieben durch M. Johannem Philippum Abelinum, Argentoratensem. 3rd ed. Franckfurt am Mayn, 1662. THEATRI EUROPAEI, Das ist: Historischer Chronick/ Oder Warhaffter Beschreibung aller fürnehmen und denckwuerdigen Geschichten/ so sich hin und wider in der Welt/ meistentheils aber in Europa/ von Anno Christi 1629, biß auff das Jahr 1633 zugetragen […] verlegt/ und zum dritten mal in Druck gegeben: Durch MATTHAEUM MERIANUM, Buchhändlern und Kupfferstechern […]. Franckfurt am Mayn, 1646. THEATRUM EUROPAEUM, oder Außführliche und warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten so sich hin und wieder in der Welt fürnemblich aber in Europa und Teutschlanden, so wol im Religion- als Prophan-Wesen, vom Jahr Christi [...] biß auff das Jahr […] exclus. […] sich zugetragen haben/ 1643 - 1647/ Beschr. durch J[ohann] P[eter] Lotichium [Joannes Petrus Lotichium]. Franckfurt am Mayn, 1647. THEATRUM EUROPAEUM, oder außführliche und warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten, so sich hin und wieder in der Welt, fürnemblich aber in Europa und Teutschlanden […] vom Jahr […] biß auff das Jahr […] exclus. […] sich zugetragen haben/ 1647 biß 1651/ […] zusammen getragen […] durch Johannem Georgium Schlederum [Johann Georg Schleder]. Franckfurt am Mayn, 1663. THEATRUM EUROPAEUM, oder Außführliche und warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten so sich hin und wieder in der Welt fürnemblich aber in Europa und Teutschlanden, so wol im Religion- als Prophan-Wesen, vom Jahr Christi [...] biß auff das Jahr […] exclus. […] sich zugetragen haben/ Irenico-Polemographiae Continuatio I. Das ist Der Historisch-fortgeführten Friedens- und Kriegs-Beschreibung Zweyter- Oder deß Theatri Europaei Achter Theil [...] von den denckwürdigsten, so sie hie und da in Europa und zwar vornehmlich in Friedens-Geschäfften in dem Heil. Röm. Teutschen Reiche von dem 1657. Jahre [...] biß an das 1661. Jahr begeben und zugetragen/ So […] beschrieben Martin Meyer vom Hayn in Schlesien. Franckfurt am Mayn, 1667. IRENICO-POLEMOGRAPHIAE CONTINUATIO Das ist: Der Historisch= fortgeführten Friedens= und Kriegs=Beschreibung Oder deß THEATRI EUROPAEI Neundter Theil [...] von dem 1660. Jahre anzufangen/ biß in das 1665. Jahr denck= und schreibwürdig vorgegangen. [...] zusammen getragen Und beschrieben Martin Meyer [...]. Franckfurt am Mayn, 1699. THEATRUM EUROPAEUM, oder ausführliche und warhafftige Beschreibung aller und jeder denckwürdiger Geschichten, so sich hin und wieder in der Welt, fürnemblich aber in Europa, und Teutschlanden […] vom Jahr […] biß auff das Jahr […] exclus. […] sich zugetragen haben/ 1687-1691. Franckfurt am Mayn, 1698. THEATRI EUROPAEI, Zwanzigster theil. Oder Ausführlich fortgeführte Friedens= und Kriegs=Beschreibung usw. um dem Leser den Begriff der Historie anmuthiger und gewisser zu machen, mit annehmlichen Kupfern gezieret, und verleget Durch Weyland Carl Gustav Merians Seel. Erben. Franckfurth am Mayn, 1734. Wijdeveld, Paul. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Architect. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

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Wittgenstein. Ludwig. Tractatus logico-philosophicus [with translation]. Intro. Bertrand Russel. Ed. K. Paul. London: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1922. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. 1958. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

JAMES W. MCALLISTER

The Virtual Laboratory: Thought Experiments in Seventeenth-Century Mechanics

1. Universality and Locality in the New Science In the seventeenth century, a new science of mechanics, created by Galileo Galilei and others, displaced the Aristotelian theory of motion. The new discipline, based on mathematics and experiment, laid the foundations for what became modern physical science. The new mechanics shows some remarkable epistemological features not found in the Aristotelian theory of motion. One of these is a tension between universality and locality. On the one hand, the new mechanics aspires to be a universal science, or science of the universe in its entirety. On the other hand, its practice is rooted in specific locations. By exploring this tension, we can gain special insights into the role of place and space in the production of knowledge in early modern science. The new mechanics claims universality in at least three respects. First, it endorses a mechanicism that recognizes only masses in motion in a Cartesian space. It thereby negates the Aristotelian assumption that bodies of different materials and shapes exhibit significantly different dynamical behaviour. Henceforth, it is unnecessary to ascertain the particular properties of a body before its dynamical behaviour can be understood. The new mechanics is thus universal in the sense of encompassing all bodies without distinction. Second, the new science rejects the Aristotelian partition of the universe into a sublunar and a superlunar domain, with their distinct substances and types of motion. This partition is obliterated by the concept of law of nature, introduced by Johannes Kepler and Galileo. Laws of nature, such as the principle of inertia, are taken to hold throughout the universe. The new mechanics is thus universal in the sense of being valid everywhere.

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Third, the new mechanics is intended to offer both causal accounts and mathematical models of all mechanical phenomena. In the Aristotelian classification of knowledge, by contrast, these attainments were divided among distinct disciplines. The causal explanation of celestial motions was assigned to physical cosmology, whereas mathematical models of these motions were produced by the separate discipline of mathematical astronomy; mathematical models of terrestrial motions were regarded as unattainable. The new mechanics is thus universal in the sense of being the first unified science of motions. Whereas the new mechanics claims universal validity in all these senses, the methods prescribed to establish its results exhibit a surprising dependence on locality. Aristotelian natural philosophy accepted observations of occurrences in natural circumstances as evidence for and against empirical claims. These observations could be performed by any competent observer at any place and time: they required no special facilities, preparation, or apparatus. In Aristotelian natural philosophy, with its mistrust of abstraction and idealization, the generic character of these observations guaranteed that nature was experienced in its normal course. The new mechanics, by contrast, withdraws evidential significance from observations of occurrences in natural circumstances. Such observations are poorly suited to establish laws of nature. Instead, the new science attributes evidential significance to the experiment, an observation of an occurrence that is specially created and that would probably never take place naturally. An occurrence created in an experiment is much simpler than natural occurrences: the experimenter reduces the effect of perturbations on the occurrence, as we shall see, so the phenomenon under investigation shines through more clearly. Because of this, practitioners of the new science regard experimental occurrences as better suited than natural occurrences to reveal fundamental truths about the universe. Experiments in the new mechanics are invoked in the name of empiricism, but the empiricism concerned is unlike that recognized by Aristotelian natural philosophy.1 1

The attribution of evidential significance to experiment in seventeenth-century science is studied by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the AirPump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Simon Schaffer. “Glass Works. Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment.” The Uses of Experiment. Studies in the Natural Sciences. Ed. David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989. 67-104. Peter Dear. “Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature.” Isis 81 (1990): 663-83. Idem. “Narratives, Anecdotes, and Experiments. Turning Experience into Science in the Seventeenth Century.” The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument. Historical Studies. Ed. Peter Dear.

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Reducing the effect of perturbations in an experiment requires special procedures and facilities. In other words, experiments require special places, demarcated and sheltered from the natural world. The tension between universality and locality in the new science arises here. Whereas an experiment is intended to reveal the universal properties of the world, its performance depends on the retreat from the natural world to a specially constructed environment. While the scope of laws expands to encompass the universe in its entirety, the activity of establishing these laws becomes localized and concentrated at specific places. It is important to realize how controversial this proposal was in the early seventeenth century. The artificial nature and special environment of experiments ruled them out in the eyes of Aristotelian natural philosophers as suitable sources of knowledge about nature: anything established in such circumstances would not, in their opinion, be representative of the ordinary course of nature. The special place created for experiments is the laboratory, the workshop of the new science. The seventeenth-century laboratory was a private space, at first usually located in the experimenter’s home: persons lacking the requisite intellectual credentials and social connections had no access to it. The activity of establishing claims in the new science was thus restricted not only physically, but also socially. In this respect, too, the new science differs from Aristotelian natural philosophy, where in principle any person was licensed to perform observations of use to establishing claims about the world. Once scientific discovery was localized in the laboratory, and access to this space was restricted, new procedures became necessary to allow results established in the laboratory to be propagated through the intellectual community. A practice of testimony and of virtual witnessing of experiments was founded. Didactic demonstrations – simplified experiments designed to convey a striking result – quickly grew in popularity. Demonstrations of this kind, being staged in a special setting before an audience, showed explicitly theatrical and dramatic aspects. Indeed, scientific demonstrations for nonspecialist audiences became a popular form of cultured entertainment.2

2

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 135-63. And Lorraine Daston. “Baconian Facts, Academic Civility, and the Prehistory of Objectivity.” Annals of Scholarship 8 (1991): 337-63. On the laboratory as a locus of scientific practice in seventeenth-century England, see Shapin, Schaffer. Leviathan. Steven Shapin. “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England.” Isis 79 (1988): 373-404. Idem. “‘The Mind Is Its Own Place.’ Science and Solitude in Seventeenth-Century England.” Science in

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As a scene of knowledge, the laboratory may be compared to the cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkammer, which arose in the Renaissance and played an important role in natural history and natural philosophy in the seventeenth century. The cabinet of curiosities was a display of rare, exceptional, and marvellous objects of varied kinds. The boundary between natural specimens and artefacts was not sharply drawn in the cabinet of curiosities: nature and art were fused in many objects, such as marble panels bearing painted scenes that incorporated the natural colorations of the stone as landscape features or clouds, bronze casts of reptiles, and pitchers made from ornamented nautilus shells. The cabinet of curiosities was thus a place where human creativity was overlaid on natural forms in a search for beauty and wonder. In the laboratory, similarly, human artifice and effort are superposed on natural forces in a search for fundamental truths. In both the laboratory and the cabinet of curiosities, the understanding and appreciation of nature involve manipulating and constraining it.3 Whereas the experiment constituted a profoundly new methodological device, seventeenth-century mechanics formulated an even more audacious concept: the thought experiment. In the work of Galileo, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton, and others, the thought experiment was the only context in which phenomena could be visualized in pure form, free of the perturbations that arise in any material setting. It is no surprise that Galileo’s Aristotelian contemporaries, with their concern for materiality and causality, found it difficult to credit his thought experiments with evidential significance in natural philosophy, as we shall see. In the thought experiment, the tension between universality and locality reaches its greatest intensity. Concrete experiments involve a retreat from the world at large to particular locations in order to establish universal truths, but thought experiments are even more remarkable: they involve a retreat from all material locations to an abstract world and from the sphere of sensations to that of pure thought. From one perspective, this abstractness makes the thought experiment a highly appropriate device for establishing universal truths: by dispensing with material location, it is not bound to a specific place and time, as a concrete experiment in a laboratory is. A thought experiment can

3

Context 4 (1991): 191-218. Idem. A Social History of Truth. Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. On the cabinet of curiosities, see Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. 255-301. Patrick Mauriès. Cabinets of Curiosities. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002.

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take place anywhere; in other terminology, it takes place in a delocalized Platonic realm. From a more critical perspective, however, it is misleading to say that the thought experiment transcends the specificity of location. On the contrary, it takes place in the most specific location conceivable, namely the virtual laboratory of a person’s mind. The validity and evidential significance of a thought experiment depend on the performer’s intuitions and background assumptions. In thought experiment, the process of establishing universal truths is bound to a location that is even more specific than the laboratory in which concrete experiment takes place.4 Modern science is marked by a tension between universality and locality, and this tension takes its most extreme form in the thought experiment. The study of thought experiment in seventeenth-century mechanics thus allows us to gauge how modern science reconciles its universal scope with the need to locate scientific practice at a specific place and time. To do this, we must first remind ourselves in greater detail how experiment – both in the laboratory and in thought – arose in opposition to the prevailing tradition in the seventeenth century. 2. Phenomena and Accidents Aristotelian natural philosophy was conceived primarily as a project to account for occurrences in natural circumstances. Aristotle and his followers aimed to describe natural occurrences with the greatest accuracy possible. They held detail in high regard and mistrusted abstraction and idealization, which they regarded as diverting attention from the description of actual occurrences. These epistemological values are embodied in, for instance, Aristotelian botany, which was founded by Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle. This discipline aimed at providing detailed and accurate descriptions of flora with as little abstraction and idealization as possible. Aristotle and his followers applied this approach not only in natural history, but also in the study of inorganic matter. Aristotelian mechanics, like Aristotelian botany, aimed to describe natural occurrences with as much accuracy and detail as possible, and mistrusted abstraction, 4

For discussion of the assumptions on which thought experiment acquires evidential significance, see James W. McAllister. “The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiment in Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 27 (1996): 233-50. Idem. “Thought Experiments and the Belief in Phenomena.” Philosophy of Science 71 (2004): 1164-75.

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idealization, and excessive generalization. Theories in Aristotelian mechanics strove to account for the particularities of natural occurrences: for example, the Aristotelian theory of free fall attempted to explain the variety of the attributes of natural falls, by appeal to variables such as the substance, shape, and weight of falling bodies. This approach must be distinguished from the model of apodeictic or demonstrative science that Aristotle expounded in the Posterior Analytics. The latter is a heavily conceptualized system that focuses on identifying the categories or essences of objects and processes, and relies on syllogistic reasoning. This model appears to conflict with the claim that Aristotelian natural philosophy aimed to account for natural occurrences by empiricist techniques. In fact, however, Aristotle’s theory of apodeictic science is not a doctrine about scientific investigation. Rather, it is a doctrine about how – once scientific knowledge has been acquired – we may construct an axiomatization of it, especially for use in teaching. The style of the Posterior Analytics, thus, does not undermine the view of Aristotelian natural philosophy as an empirical investigation of natural occurrences.5 The Aristotelian conception of natural philosophy shaped not only the form of the claims admitted within it, but also the sources of evidence regarded as apt to establish and dispute these claims. Evidential significance in Aristotelian mechanics was vested in reports of natural occurrences, intended to record happenings with as little idealization and loss of detail as possible. For example, evidence about free fall was constituted by reports of natural falls that strove to record the particular attributes of each. Aristotelian theories in many areas of mechanics, including the Aristotelian account of free fall, found quite good support in the evidence constituted by natural occurrences. By the seventeenth century, natural philosophers claiming to be Aristotelian had departed in two respects from the methods used by Aristotle and his immediate followers. First, they had come to envisage the proper method of natural philosophy no longer as the cautious generalizing procedure exemplified by Theophrastus, but rather as demonstration on the model of the Posterior Analytics. Second, they had come to evaluate contributions to natural philosophy largely on their accord with the writings of Aristotle and other authoritative texts. While many 5

The distinction between Aristotle’s theory of apodeictic science and the methods actually pursued in natural philosophy by Aristotle and his followers is emphasized by Jonathan Barnes. “Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration.” Phronesis 14 (1969): 123-52.

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of the claims of scholastic natural philosophers are recognizably Aristotelian, thus, their ability to respond creatively to new developments may be regarded as falling short of the example set by Aristotle himself.6 The Aristotelian approach in natural philosophy was not without alternatives in antiquity. Aristotle had envisaged also four mixed sciences – a quantitative form of mechanics, mathematical astronomy, optics, and harmonics – in which mathematical entities, such as points and lines, were treated as physical objects. These disciplines were regarded as occupying a position intermediate between natural philosophy and mathematics.7 More radically, Pythagoras, Plato, and their followers theorized a quite different manner of describing the world. In their approach, science is a study of invariant mathematical forms underlying, and often not immediately apparent in, natural occurrences. Pythagoras and Plato influenced the sixteenth-century practitioners of astronomy and mechanics, such as Nicholas Copernicus and Simon Stevin, who conceived of the world as embodying harmonies, symmetries, proportions, and ratios.8 This approach was formalized by Galileo in the seventeenth century. Partly inspired by Neoplatonism, Galileo came to believe that natural occurrences are an only imperfect reflection of an underlying reality, and that fundamental knowledge of the world is knowledge of this underlying reality rather than of occurrences.9 6

7

8

9

On the development of Aristotelian natural philosophy in the Renaissance, see Charles B. Schmitt. Aristotle in the Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. And Edward Grant. “Ways to Interpret the Terms ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘Aristotelianism’ in Medieval and Renaissance Natural Philosophy.” History of Science 25 (1987): 335-58. On the Aristotelian mixed sciences and their relation to Galileo’s mechanics, see W. Roy Laird. “Galileo and the Mixed Sciences.” Method and Order in the Renaissance Philosophy of Nature. The Aristotle Commentary Tradition. Ed. Daniel A. Di Liscia, Eckhard Kessler, and Charlotte Methuen. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. 253-70. On the history of Pythagoreanism, see Charles H. Kahn. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. A Brief History. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001. On concepts of harmony and symmetry in the sixteenth century, see Paul L. Rose. “Universal Harmony in Regiomontanus and Copernicus.” Avant, avec, après Copernic. La Représentation de l’univers et ses conséquences épistémologiques. Ed. Suzanne Delorme. Paris: Blanchard, 1975. 153-58. On Neoplatonism and its influence on Galileo, see Alexandre Koyré. Metaphysics and Measurement. Essays in Scientific Revolution. London: Chapman and Hall, 1968. 16-43. Paolo Galluzzi. “Il ‘platonismo’ del tardo Cinquecento e la filosofia di Galileo.” Ricerche sulla cultura dell’Italia moderna. Ed. Paola Zambelli. Bari: Laterza, 1973. 37-79. And Alistair C. Crombie. “Mathematics and Platonism in

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The details of Galileo’s account were highly innovative. The world contains causal factors of two kinds: phenomena and accidents. Phenomena are fundamental components of the world: they are universal and stable modes in which physical reality is articulated. Accidents, by contrast, are local, variable, and irreproducible. Every natural occurrence is the resultant of one or more phenomena and a large number of accidents. Whereas phenomena are responsible for the underlying uniformities and invariances of the world, accidents are responsible for the great variability of natural occurrences. Mechanics, for Galileo, aims solely to identify and describe phenomena: no scientific knowledge of accidents is possible in his view. The term “phenomenon” in Galileo’s sense thus means something quite different from “appearance,” as in the phrase “to save the phenomena”: Galileo’s phenomena are all too often not apparent to the untrained eye.10 An example of phenomenon, according to Galileo, is free fall. Two natural occurrences determined in part by this phenomenon – that is, two instances of free fall – share qualitative and quantitative features owed to the underlying phenomenon. However, each instance of free fall is also partly determined by accidents, such as the shape of the falling body, air resistance, air currents, and so on. These differ from one occurrence to another. Thus, each instance of free fall shows erratic features that cannot be reduced to any pattern. Only the phenomenon of free fall can be investigated and described scientifically: the accidents that affect individual falls of bodies lie outside the scope of mechanics. Since phenomena are presumed to be universal, simple, and few, accounts of them will be general, concise, and often mathematical, and there will be a relatively small number of them. Such accounts became known as “laws of nature,” such as Galileo’s own law of free fall. Laws of nature constitute the prime output of Galilean science.11

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11

the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy.” Prismata. Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien. Ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Saltzer. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1977. 63-94. On Galileo’s account of phenomena and accidents, see Noretta Koertge. “Galileo and the Problem of Accidents.” Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1977): 389408. For broader discussions of idealization in Galileo’s work, see Leszek Nowak. The Structure of Idealization. Towards a Systematic Interpretation of the Marxian Idea of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980. Leszek Nowak. “Remarks on the Nature of Galileo’s Methodological Revolution.” Idealization VII. Structuralism, Idealization and Approximation. Ed. Martti Kuokkanen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. 111-26. And Ernan McMullin. “Galilean Idealization.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16 (1985): 247-73. On the introduction of the concept of law of nature, see Friedrich Steinle. “The

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Galileo faced a problem, however. Laws of nature constitute relatively inaccurate descriptions of occurrences under natural circumstances, as Galileo acknowledged. In the Discorsi, the Aristotelian spokesman Simplicio criticizes the concise universal statements produced by Salviati on the grounds that it is “highly improbable that anything demonstrated from such fickle assumptions can ever be verified in actual experiments.” Salviati, who is Galileo’s mouthpiece, replies: All the difficulties and objections you advance are so well founded that I deem it impossible to remove them. For my part, I grant them all, as I believe our Author would also concede them. I admit that the conclusions demonstrated in the abstract are altered in the concrete, and are so falsified that horizontal [motion] is not equable; nor does natural acceleration occur [exactly] in the ratio assumed; nor is the line of the projectile parabolic, and so on.12

Galileo could explain the discrepancies between laws and natural occurrences by pointing out that laws describe phenomena and neglect the influence of accidents, which play a large part in determining natural occurrences. In consequence of this fact, however, it was difficult for him to portray natural occurrences as corroborating laws of nature. Natural occurrences are in greater agreement with the output of Aristotelian natural philosophy than with the laws of Galilean mechanics. For instance, the free fall of bodies under everyday conditions near the surface of the earth and the forced movement of objects against friction are described more accurately by Aristotelian accounts, which are alert to the differential effects of the shapes and materials of bodies, than by the mechanics of Galileo.13 In response to this problem, Galileo proposed that evidential significance in mechanics be withdrawn from observations of natural occurrences, and vested in new sources of evidence that, he believed, were better indicators of phenomena. It was necessary for these sources of evidence to be occurrences determined to as small a degree as possible by accidents: such occurrences would then be determined to a greater

12 13

Amalgamation of a Concept. Laws of Nature in the New Sciences.” Laws of Nature. Essays on the Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Dimensions. Ed. Friedel Weinert. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995. 316-68. Galileo Galilei. Two New Sciences. 1638. Ed. and trans. Stillman Drake. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. 223. For present-day reviews of the evidence that the Aristotelian account of free fall accords with natural occurrences, see Gerald Feinberg. “Fall of Bodies Near the Earth.” American Journal of Physics 33 (1965): 501-02. And Carl G. Adler and Byron L. Coulter. “Aristotle. Villain or Victim?” Physics Teacher 13 (1975): 3537. For discussion, see Koyré. Metaphysics. 18, 21.

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degree by the underlying phenomenon. In the limiting case, if the influence of accidents could be reduced to zero, it would be possible to read off the properties of the phenomenon from an occurrence. Any such occurrence, of course, would have to be produced artificially. Galileo called such a contrived occurrence “experiment,” redefining a term that, in the scholastic tradition, meant nothing more than an everyday experience of something.14 Experiment is thus the attempt to produce an occurrence determined entirely by a phenomenon and to no extent by accidents. This view of experiment is evident in Galileo’s descriptions of his own experiments. Galileo invariably takes care to reduce the magnitude of irregularities and perturbations in his experimental apparatus. His experiments on the fall of bodies along an inclined plane, for example, involve much polishing of bronze balls and smoothing of the parchment lining the slope down which the balls roll. This polishing and smoothing are undertaken in the attempt to reduce the influence of accidents on the occurrence that will be produced, allowing the underlying phenomenon of deflected fall to show through more clearly.15 Galileo’s experiments are based on an epistemological presupposition that was, for his time, of breathtaking audacity: that fundamental knowledge of the natural world can be gained more easily from polished and smoothed apparatus than from apparatus that shares the normal irregularities of natural objects. The dependence on polished and smoothed apparatus, and on a controlled environment for the experiment, imposes a need to confine experiments to places very dissimilar from the natural world. 3. The Place of Thought Experiment In the case of many phenomena, Galileo’s polishing and smoothing of his experimental apparatus yielded the desired result. As he would ex14

15

Changes in the meaning of “experiment” in the sixteenth century are discussed by Charles B. Schmitt. “Experience and Experiment. A Comparison of Zabarella’s View with Galileo’s in De motu.” Studies in the Renaissance 16 (1969): 80-138. The inclined plane experiment is described in Galilei. Two New Sciences. 169170. Discussions of concrete experiment in Galileo include Michael Segre. “The Role of Experiment in Galileo’s Physics.” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 23 (1980): 227-52. And Ronald H. Naylor. “Galileo’s Experimental Discourse.” The Uses of Experiment. Studies in the Natural Sciences. Ed. David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 117-34.

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press it, his experiments produced occurrences that were determined to only a small degree by accidents, and which therefore allowed the experimenter to perceive the properties of a phenomenon clearly. In the case of other phenomena, however, the polishing and smoothing did not suffice: it proved impossible to reduce the influence of accidents sufficiently to exhibit a phenomenon. Galileo was aware that, in these cases, no concrete experiment that he could perform would convincingly establish a law of nature. The problem manifests itself as follows. If an experiment is successful in presenting a phenomenon free of accidents, all performances of that experiment will have the same outcome: if distinct performances of the same experiment have different outcomes, these must have been determined partly by accidents. Galileo must have perceived that, to be able plausibly to present an experiment as displaying a phenomenon, he had to establish that distinct performances of the experiment showed substantial accord with one another. In some cases, Galileo was able to do this: an example is the experiment on the fall of bodies along the inclined plane. In the case of other experiments, however, distinct performances conflicted with one another: none of these experiments could be presented as exhibiting a phenomenon. For phenomena where every feasible concrete experiment had this shortcoming, Galileo had no means of establishing laws of nature. I suggest that Galileo devised thought experiment as a source of evidence about phenomena for use where all feasible concrete experiments exhibited this shortcoming. Thought experiments represent a continuation of the process of polishing and smoothing, until – to speak figuratively – the entire, imperfect physical apparatus of the experiment has been polished and smoothed out of existence. With the abstract experimental apparatus that remains, we can at last be certain that accidents no longer obstruct our view of the phenomenon. If a phenomenon is so subtle that no concrete occurrence can be produced in which the phenomenon is displayed in accident-free form, the phenomenon may be displayed only in an abstract occurrence. This is what a thought experiment does: it produces an abstract occurrence in which a phenomenon is displayed.16 16

Previous discussions of thought experiment in Galileo include Gad Prudovsky. “The Confirmation of the Superposition Principle. On the Role of a Constructive Thought Experiment in Galileo’s Discorsi.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 20 (1989): 453-68. McAllister. “Evidential Significance.” Idem. “Thought Experiments.” Tamar Szabó Gendler. Thought Experiment. On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases. New York: Garland, 2000. 33-63. And Paolo Palmieri.

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This view explains why Galileo, in the case of some phenomena, withdrew from the world of empirical sensations and sought knowledge about the world in a thought experiment rather than in a concrete experiment. As an example, consider the most famous of Galileo’s thought experiments: the one involving bodies of different weights dropped from a tower, by which he claimed simultaneously to discredit the Aristotelian account of free fall and establish his own law that the rate of fall of a body is independent of the body’s mass.17 Why did Galileo resort to thought experiment in the study of free fall? Distinct performances of any concrete experiment with falling bodies that was technically feasible in Galileo’s time would certainly have conflicted with one another: for example, performances involving falling bodies of different weights, densities, and shapes from different heights and in different environmental conditions would not have accorded on any clear-cut phenomenon of free fall. In Galileo’s terms, such concrete experiments would have failed to display the phenomenon “free fall” in accidentfree form. Thus, to display this phenomenon, Galileo was compelled to turn to an immaterial occurrence – the one that his thought experiment presents. Only this immaterial occurrence allowed Galileo to establish the claim that, in the phenomenon “free fall,” the speed of falling bodies is independent of their weight. All other appeals to thought experiment by Galileo are similarly in domains of mechanics in which distinct performances of any feasible concrete experiment would have conflicted with one another, and therefore in which it was not possible to establish claims about phenomena by means of concrete experiment. For example, Galileo maintained that the period of a simple pendulum, such as a lamp hanging from a cord in a church, is independent of the amplitude of the swing. In reality, the period of a pendulum depends to some extent on the amplitude of the swing; moreover, this dependence is different in different pendulums. Because of this fact, no feasible concrete experiment would have corroborated Galileo’s claim. Galileo was thus wise to present his readers with a thought experiment that supports his claim, rather than assemble empirical data in concrete experiments with pendulums.18 Similarly, in

17 18

“Mental Models in Galileo’s Early Mathematization of Nature.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 34 (2003): 229-64. Galilei. Two New Sciences. 66-72. The pendulum thought experiment is in Galilei. Two New Sciences. 96-99. See also 226-27. For discussion, see Ronald H. Naylor. “Galileo. Real Experiment and Didactic Demonstration.” Isis 67 (1976): 398-419. at 400-402.

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his argument for Copernicanism, Galileo wished to establish that we should not expect the earth’s motion to have a detectable effect on the motion of objects around us, just as the progress of a ship at sea does not affect the motion of objects on board. He may originally have considered arranging a series of concrete experiments aboard a moving ship in which objects dropped from the crow’s nest landed precisely at the foot of the mast, and in which insects flew and water dripped in the ship’s cabin precisely as if the ship were at rest. If so, he must have realized that distinct performances of such experiments on a rolling and pitching ship would plainly have conflicted with one another. Instead, Galileo appealed to thought experiments, in which the accidents of the ship’s motion were removed and the underlying phenomenon of the relativity of motion was convincingly displayed.19 The value of thought experiment as a means to display phenomena in accident-free form was apparent also to Huygens, who shared Galileo’s view of mechanics as a science of phenomena. Huygens used thought experiment to establish his laws of impact, including the claim that, in an elastic collision between two bodies of equal mass, the velocities of the bodies are exchanged. Huygens imagined a collision between two bodies that takes place on a moving boat: the velocities of the bodies before and after the collision are measured by an observer on the boat and by one on the bank. Could Huygens have performed this test as a concrete experiment? The practicalities of boats in motion, even on a calm Dutch canal, ensure that a concrete experiment would have failed to establish any simple relation between the velocities of the bodies: distinct performances would have conflicted with one another, producing a confused picture. Thought experiment is much better suited to display the phenomenon of elastic collision in a form free of accidents. This is graphically demonstrated in the series of figures illustrating Huygens’s treatise. The first figure presents the scene by depicting the water, the boat, and the experimenters with their arms outstretched, but these sources of accidents are removed in subsequent figures, leaving two pairs of disembodied hands supporting the colliding masses. Later the hands too are erased, allowing the masses to collide unaided. The capacity to excise sources of accidents constitutes 19

The thought experiment of the stone dropped from the mast of a moving ship is in Galileo Galilei. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – Ptolemaic and Copernican. 1632. Ed. and trans. Stillman Drake. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953. 141-45. The thought experiment of the motions in the ship’s cabin is ibid. 186-88.

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precisely the advantage of thought experiment as a source of evidence about phenomena.20 The Galilean doctrine of phenomena and accidents is endorsed, in slightly different terms, by Newtonian mechanics, one of the pillars of classical physics. Newtonian mechanics regards natural occurrences as determined jointly by two causal factors: universal regularities, which resemble Galileo’s phenomena and are described by laws of nature, and initial or boundary conditions, which are considered as nonlawlike and as lying outside the scope of physical theorizing, like Galileo’s accidents.21 This analysis leads Newtonian mechanics to envisage that, while a regularity may not always be apparent in natural occurrences, it may be displayed in an imaginary occurrence that abstracts from the peculiarities of initial and boundary conditions. Consequently, Newtonian mechanics attributes evidential significance to thought experiment as a means to display phenomena. An example of a Newtonian phenomenon that cannot be displayed in a concrete experiment is inertial motion. According to Newtonian mechanics, inertial motion is exhibited by a body on which the total external force is nil. It is therefore impossible to display inertial motion in any concrete experiment: the boundary conditions of the laboratory, consisting of the gravitational masses around the moving body, invalidate the occurrence as an instance of inertial motion. A Newtonian physicist who wishes to conduct an empirical investigation of inertial motion is therefore driven to a thought experiment, in which a body moves in an otherwise empty universe. A second Newtonian phenomenon for which concrete experiment fails is absolute motion. In a bucket partially filled with water that is set in rotation in the actual universe, for example, the motion of the water that climbs up the sides may be the effect either of rotation relative to absolute space, or of rotation relative to the rest of the matter in the universe. To eliminate the latter possibility, Newton proposed a thought experiment in which the bucket rotates in an otherwise empty universe. Since in Newton’s account of this thought experiment the water still climbs up the sides of the bucket, he drew the conclusion that the centrifugal effect is due to absolute rotation, and thus that absolute space exists. No concrete experiment 20

21

Christiaan Huygens. “De motu corporum ex percussione.” 1703. Oeuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens. Vol. 16. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1929. 29-91. at 29-49. For the Newtonian account of the relation between occurrences, laws of nature, and initial conditions, see James W. McAllister. “Universal Regularities and Initial Conditions in Newtonian Physics.” Synthese 120 (1999): 325-43.

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would allow us to reach the same conclusion. Newton’s paring away the matter in the universe surrounding the rotating bucket is analogous to Galileo’s polishing and smoothing away the accidents in his thought experiments.22 All the seventeenth-century thought experiments described in this section present accident-free occurrences. These occurrences take place in special settings: spaces offering no resistance, ships and boats making perfectly smooth progress, universes containing nothing but a bucket. These settings resemble laboratories: they are places specially equipped to reveal fundamental truths about the world, and are thus privileged scenes of knowledge. They constitute a more extreme form of the laboratory, however: whereas laboratories represent an idealized version of the natural world, these settings represent an abstract version of the laboratory. 4. The Laboratory and the World Outside Do results established in special settings hold also in the world outside?23 The dispute between the Galilean and Aristotelian forms of mechanics provides an insight into this question. Galilean mechanics is a science of phenomena, which prescribes that results be established in laboratories and in the virtual laboratories of thought experiments. Aristotelian mechanics, by contrast, is a science of natural occurrences, which prescribes that results be established in natural circumstances. Thought experiments appeared to Aristotelian natural philosophers as 22 23

On Newton’s bucket thought experiment, see Ronald Laymon. “Newton’s Bucket Experiment.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978): 399-413. The question how results established in the laboratory can be made to hold in the macrocosm is tackled by Bruno Latour. “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World.” Science Observed. Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. Ed. Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay. London: Sage, 1983. 141-71. And Ian Hacking. “The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences.” Science as Practice and Culture. Ed. Andrew Pickering. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 29-64. For reflections on this debate, see Graeme Gooday. “The Premise of Premises. Spatial Issues in the Historical Construction of Laboratory Credibility.” Making Space for Science. Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge. Ed. Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1998. 216-45. For introductory discussions of the concept of places of knowledge, see Adi Ophir and Steven Shapin. “The Place of Knowledge. A Methodological Survey.” Science in Context 4 (1991): 3-21. And Thomas F. Gieryn. “Three Truth-Spots.” Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences 38 (2002): 113-32.

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very dissimilar from reports of natural occurrences. On these grounds, they regarded thought experiment as having no relevance to establishing and discrediting claims in mechanics.24 Between the proponents of mechanics in its Aristotelian and Galilean versions there thus opened a dispute about the forms of evidence that were to be admitted in the discipline, and about the scenes where evidence could be collected. Let us return to Galileo’s thought experiment about free fall. Aristotle’s account claims that, in general, heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones. Galileo asks us to imagine dropping from a tower a compound body consisting of a cannonball joined to a musketball. How would the Aristotelian theory analyze this occurrence? On one reading, Galileo says, Aristotle’s theory implies that the compound body falls more slowly than the cannonball alone would, since the musketball retards the cannonball to some extent. On another reading, however, Aristotle’s theory implies that the compound body falls faster than the cannonball alone would, since the compound body is heavier than the cannonball. Galileo concludes that Aristotle’s theory of free fall is internally inconsistent. To avoid inconsistency, a theory of free fall must entail that the compound body falls at the same rate as the cannonball alone would; and, in order to entail this, the theory must claim that the rate of fall of bodies is independent of their weight. Some present-day writers, impressed by the apparent power of Galileo’s reasoning, take it for granted that Galileo’s thought experiment conclusively discredits Aristotle’s account of free fall. They view the thought experiment as self-evidently establishing that the rate of fall of bodies is independent of their weight, and think that anyone who understands the thought experiment is compelled to reject Aristotle’s theory of free fall for that of Galileo. They assume that the result established in Galileo’s abstract world holds also in the real, physical world.25 In fact, Galileo’s thought experiment does not prove that the Aristotelian account of free fall is incorrect. It cannot do so, for the reason 24

25

Peter King. “Mediaeval Thought-Experiments. The Metamethodology of Mediaeval Science.” Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy. Ed. Tamara Horowitz and Gerald J. Massey. Savage: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991. 43-64, suggests that thought experiments are found in medieval Aristotelian natural philosophy; as he concedes, however, his examples can be regarded equally validly as instances of reasoning from hypothesis and analogy, familiar to Aristotelian dialectic. This view is defended by James R. Brown. The Laboratory of the Mind. Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences. London: Routledge, 1991. 1-3, 77-79. And Roy A. Sorensen. Thought Experiments. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 126-27.

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that the Aristotelian account of free fall is, in the circumstances of everyday experience, correct: in everyday circumstances, heavier bodies indeed fall faster than lighter bodies. What Galileo’s thought experiment succeeds in establishing is that, if the rate of fall of simple and compound bodies were a function of their total mass alone, then the rate of fall of bodies would necessarily be independent of their mass. The conclusion of Galileo’s thought experiment holds only in a world in which its premise also holds – that is, a world in which the rate of fall of bodies is a function of their mass alone. Ours is not such a world: the rate of fall of bodies in our world is a function of many variables, including their mass, their volume, their shape, their surface properties, and the density and viscosity of the medium in which they are immersed.26 The discrepancy between what occurs in Galileo’s thought experiments and what occurs under natural circumstances ensured that Aristotelian natural philosophers failed to attribute evidential significance to the former. For them, Galileo’s thought experiments carried no weight: evidence in natural philosophy was constituted by natural occurrences. This stance is apparent in the reactions of Aristotelian natural philosophers to the thought experiments that Galileo used against them. In a few instances, Aristotelian natural philosophers argued that Galileo’s thought experiments admitted conclusions different from those that he drew: this response effectively concedes the methodological dispute to Galileo, since it grants that thought experiments are relevant in establishing and discrediting claims in mechanics. For the most part, however, Aristotelian natural philosophers countered Galileo’s thought experiments with reports of occurrences in the real world. For example, Giorgio Coresio, an Aristotelian scholar at Pisa, responded to Galileo’s thought experiment about free fall in 1612 by reporting that he had dropped actual bodies of different weights from the leaning tower and observed that the heavier body reached the ground before the lighter body. Vincenzo Renieri reported comparable observations in 1641. The Jesuit astronomer Giovanni Battista Riccioli published in 1651 an account of dropping balls of different weights from the Asinelli tower in Bologna in the presence of named witnesses, who saw that the heavier ball landed first in each case. Responding to Galileo’s thought 26

On Galileo’s interpretation of Aristotle’s account of free fall, see Barry M. Casper. “Galileo and the Fall of Aristotle. A Case of Historical Injustice?” American Journal of Physics 45 (1977): 325-30. For a critical analysis of Galileo’s free fall thought experiment, see Gendler. Thought Experiment. 33-63.

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experiments set on a moving ship, similarly, Aristotelian natural philosophers presented testimony that, in some actual occurrences of stones dropped from ships’ masts, the stones had fallen not onto the deck at all, but overboard. Such natural occurrences are what the Aristotelian form of mechanics takes as evidence.27 Aristotelian natural philosophers confronted Galileo with observations of actual occurrences in other cases too. An example is a dispute about buoyancy that began in 1611. The Aristotelian theory held that whether a body floats or sinks in water depends on the shape of the body. Galileo claimed that it depends only on the specific weight of the body, and not on its shape. His Aristotelian opponent, Ludovico delle Colombe, showed that, whereas a sphere of ebony sinks to the bottom of a container of water, a thin lamina of ebony floats on the surface. Galileo’s response was, as usual, to try to turn the dispute away from actual occurrences to considerations about phenomena, arguing that delle Colombe’s observations were irrelevant in the context of a wider theory of hydrostatics. Galileo ultimately prevailed in this dispute too, and later used delle Colombe as one of the models for his character Simplicio, the dogmatic Aristotelian. Galileo’s success, however, should not obscure the fact that actual occurrences do not straightforwardly support his approach.28 We now more clearly appreciate the differences between the Aristotelian and the Galilean accounts of the world. The Aristotelian account is the output of an attempt, doubtless not wholly successful, to reckon with the full complexity of natural occurrences and tell the truth about them. For this reason, the Aristotelian account fails to deliver any simple formulae; in compensation, it receives qualitative support from everyday experience. Galileo renounces the aim of tackling natural occurrences in their full complexity. He thereby allows himself the 27

28

Coresio’s and Renieri’s reports are documented in Michael Segre. “Galileo, Viviani and the Tower of Pisa.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 20 (1989): 435-51. at 450 and 441-42. For an alternative view of Coresio’s intervention, see Palmieri. “Mental Models.” 258-60. Riccioli’s work is discussed by Peter Dear. Discipline and Experience. The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 76-85. Aristotelian reaction to the moving ship thought experiments is described in William R. Shea. Galileo’s Intellectual Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1972. 156. And Edward Grant. “In Defense of the Earth’s Centrality and Immobility. Scholastic Reaction to Copernicanism in the Seventeenth Century.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74/4 (1984). at 36-42. The buoyancy dispute is discussed by Shea. Galileo’s Intellectual Revolution. 1448.

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opportunity of stating concise laws, such as the law of free fall. However, he cannot hope to support such laws by everyday experience – hence his recourse to concrete experiments, and, where these fail, to thought experiments. Seventeenth-century mechanics appealed to special scenes of knowledge, in which fundamental truths could be apprehended more clearly and securely than in the natural world. The truths established in these scenes do not hold precisely in the world of everyday experience. They were not meant to do so: they were intended to hold in an abstract network of laboratories, both concrete and virtual. This network spanned the world, but did not exhaust it: outside the walls of the laboratory, nature continued its ordinary course.29

WORKS CITED Adler, Carl G. and Byron L. Coulter. “Aristotle. Villain or Victim?” Physics Teacher 13 (1975): 35-37. Barnes, Jonathan. “Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration.” Phronesis 14 (1969): 12352. Brown, James R. The Laboratory of the Mind. Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences. London: Routledge, 1991. Casper, Barry M. “Galileo and the Fall of Aristotle. A Case of Historical Injustice?” American Journal of Physics 45 (1977): 325-30. Crombie, Alistair C. “Mathematics and Platonism in the Sixteenth-Century Italian Universities and in Jesuit Educational Policy.” Prismata. Naturwissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien. Ed. Y. Maeyama and W. G. Saltzer. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1977. 63-94. Daston, Lorraine. “Baconian Facts, Academic Civility, and the Prehistory of Objectivity.” Annals of Scholarship 8 (1991): 337-63. Daston, Lorraine and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Dear, Peter. “Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature.” Isis 81 (1990): 663-83. Dear, Peter. “Narratives, Anecdotes, and Experiments. Turning Experience into Science in the Seventeenth Century.” The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument. Historical Studies. Ed. Peter Dear. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 135-63. 29

This chapter is a revised and expanded version of my contribution to the conference Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne: Schauplätze des Wissens im 17. Jahrhundert, Freie Universität, Berlin, May 2002. I thank Helmar Schramm, Ludger Schwarte, and Jan Lazardzig for the invitation, and the participants for useful comments.

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Dear, Peter. Discipline and Experience. The Mathematical Way in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Feinberg, Gerald. “Fall of Bodies Near the Earth.” American Journal of Physics 33 (1965): 501-02. Galilei, Galileo. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems – Ptolemaic and Copernican. 1632. Ed. and trans. Stillman Drake. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953. Galilei, Galileo. Two New Sciences. 1638. Ed. and trans. Stillman Drake. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974. Galluzzi, Paolo. “Il ‘platonismo’ del tardo Cinquecento e la filosofia di Galileo.” Ricerche sulla cultura dell’Italia moderna. Ed. Paola Zambelli. Bari: Laterza, 1973. 37-79. Gendler, Tamar Szabó. Thought Experiment. On the Powers and Limits of Imaginary Cases. New York: Garland, 2000. Gieryn, Thomas F. “Three Truth-Spots.” Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences 38 (2002): 113-32. Gooday, Graeme. “The Premisses of Premises. Spatial Issues in the Historical Construction of Laboratory Credibility.” Making Space for Science. Territorial Themes in the Shaping of Knowledge. Ed. Crosbie Smith and Jon Agar. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1998. 216-45. Grant, Edward. “In Defense of the Earth’s Centrality and Immobility. Scholastic Reaction to Copernicanism in the Seventeenth Century.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74/4 (1984). Grant, Edward. “Ways to Interpret the Terms ‘Aristotelian’ and ‘Aristotelianism’ in Medieval and Renaissance Natural Philosophy.” History of Science 25 (1987): 335-58. Hacking, Ian. “The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences.” Science as Practice and Culture. Ed. Andrew Pickering. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 29-64. Huygens, Christiaan. “De motu corporum ex percussione.” 1703. Oeuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens. Vol. 16. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1929. 29-91. Kahn, Charles H. Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. A Brief History. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001. King, Peter. “Mediaeval Thought-Experiments. The Metamethodology of Mediaeval Science.” Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy. Ed. Tamara Horowitz and Gerald J. Massey. Savage: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991. 43-64. Koertge, Noretta. “Galileo and the Problem of Accidents.” Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1977): 389-408. Koyré, Alexandre. Metaphysics and Measurement. Essays in Scientific Revolution. London: Chapman and Hall, 1968. Laird, W. Roy. “Galileo and the Mixed Sciences.” Method and Order in the Renaissance Philosophy of Nature. The Aristotle Commentary Tradition. Ed. Daniel A. Di Liscia, Eckhard Kessler, and Charlotte Methuen. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. 253-70. Latour, Bruno. “Give Me a Laboratory and I Will Raise the World.” Science Observed. Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. Ed. Karin D. Knorr-Cetina and Michael Mulkay. London: Sage, 1983. 141-171. Laymon, Ronald. “Newton’s Bucket Experiment.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978): 399-413. Mauriès, Patrick. Cabinets of Curiosities. London: Thames; Hudson, 2002.

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McAllister, James W. “The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiment in Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 27 (1996): 233-50. McAllister, James W. “Thought Experiments and the Belief in Phenomena.” Philosophy of Science 71 (2004): 1164-75. McAllister, James W. “Universal Regularities and Initial Conditions in Newtonian Physics.” Synthese 120 (1999): 325-43. McMullin, Ernan. “Galilean Idealization.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 16 (1985): 247-73. Naylor, Ronald H. “Galileo. Real Experiment and Didactic Demonstration.” Isis 67 (1976): 398-419. Naylor, Ronald H. “Galileo’s Experimental Discourse.” The Uses of Experiment. Studies in the Natural Sciences. Ed. David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 117-34. Nowak, Leszek. The Structure of Idealization. Towards a Systematic Interpretation of the Marxian Idea of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel. 1980. Nowak, Leszek. “Remarks on the Nature of Galileo’s Methodological Revolution.” Idealization VII. Structuralism, Idealization and Approximation. Ed. Martti Kuokkanen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994. 111-26. Ophir, Adi and Steven Shapin. “The Place of Knowledge. A Methodological Survey.” Science in Context 4 (1991): 3-21. Palmieri, Paolo. “Mental Models in Galileo’s Early Mathematization of Nature.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 34 (2003): 229-64. Prudovsky, Gad. “The Confirmation of the Superposition Principle. On the Role of a Constructive Thought Experiment in Galileo’s Discorsi.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 20 (1989): 453-68. Rose, Paul L. “Universal Harmony in Regiomontanus and Copernicus.” Avant, avec, après Copernic. La Représentation de l’univers et ses conséquences épistémologiques. Ed. Suzanne Delorme. Paris: Blanchard, 1975. 153-58. Schaffer, Simon. “Glass Works. Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment.” The Uses of Experiment. Studies in the Natural Sciences. Ed. David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 67104. Schmitt, Charles B. Aristotle in the Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983. Schmitt, Charles B. “Experience and Experiment. A Comparison of Zabarella’s View with Galileo’s in De motu.” Studies in the Renaissance 16 (1969): 80-138. Segre, Michael. “Galileo, Viviani and the Tower of Pisa.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 20 (1989): 435-51. Segre, Michael. “The Role of Experiment in Galileo’s Physics.” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 23 (1980): 227-52. Shapin, Steven. “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth-Century England.” Isis 79 (1988): 373-404. Shapin, Steven. “‘The Mind Is Its Own Place.’ Science and Solitude in SeventeenthCentury England.” Science in Context 4 (1991): 191-218. Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth. Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Shapin, Steven and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Shea, William R. Galileo’s Intellectual Revolution. London: Macmillan, 1972. Sorensen, Roy A. Thought Experiments. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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Steinle, Friedrich. “The Amalgamation of a Concept. Laws of Nature in the New Sciences.” Laws of Nature. Essays on the Philosophical, Scientific and Historical Dimensions. Ed. Friedel Weinert. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995. 316-68.

WOLFGANG SCHÄFFNER

The Point: The Smallest Venue of Knowledge in the 17th Century (1585-1665) What we are about to discuss here is a venue of knowledge, and it is truly minuscule as far as size goes. It is no imposing edifice, no office block, no room or laboratory, but rather a tiny little space, one that is hardly visible or tangible. We shall be dealing with the point, as the beginning and foundation of every geometric operation, as the condition for space to be possible, the point itself being a space. The point is the beginning and the absence or limit of space; it is something that is not yet nothing and, at the same time, a nonentity that is not yet something. It is precisely with this gap that geometry has begun since antiquity, with its classical Euclidean starting proposition: “Semeíon estín, ouk meron outhén.”1 The smallest of all venues is a weightless sign, which indicates the absence of size and extent. The point is a semeion, as in Euclid’s Elements, the most inconspicuous of all signs; a stigmé, as previously found in Aristotle’s Physics, whose Latin translation punctum has been preserved in the words Punkt/point/punto: the point is a puncture, a hole actually, from which the world of magnitudes and extensions seems to fall out, an operation of discontinuity and interruption, and at the same time the beginning and the end of all continuous magnitudes. That is the grammatological denominator to which this venue of geometry and marker of a present absence can be reduced. Since the 3rd century AD, the Euclidean Elements and their success as the basic foundation of geometry guaranteed the stability of a discourse with a real longue durée. Commentators and translators like Proclus, Commandinus or Johannes Campanus developed the textual basis, while surveyors and master builders provided the technical basis for the continuity of geometrical discourse. Particularly since the Early Modern Age, so-called practical geometry has spread throughout a wide 1

Evclidis Elementa. Ed. E. S. Stamatis. Trans. I. L. Heiberg. Leipzig: Teubner, 1969. 1.

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range of sciences and technologies, thus becoming a sort of epistemic technique for the design and production of knowledge. Even arts like painting developed links to geometrical measurement procedures, as clearly proclaimed for example by the title of Albrecht Dürer’s book Unterweysung der Messung in 1525, and as evidenced by their inclusion as a central object of study in history of art at least since Samuel Edgerton’s books.2 This seemingly ahistorical persistence of Euclidean geometry was also made possible by the exclusion of all paradoxes and practical chasms of geometry as such. This was the basis for Euclid’s success with his Elements when, in the 3rd century B.C., he built the whole architecture of geometry on definitions like the following: “1. A point is that which has position but not dimensions. 2. A line is length without breadth.”3 This definition first successfully excluded from geometry all questions regarding the inscrutable nature of the point in the sense of peras and apeiron, of a limit that is nothing in itself but is still something or an infinite entity that breaks every continuity, i.e. questions that had been brought up a few decades earlier, mainly by Zeno’s paradoxes and Aristotle’s physics. The outline presented below focuses on the way this long-lived discourse about geometrical space with its “ideal objects” (Husserl) point and line experienced truly dramatic transformations since the late 16th and 17th century and opened up a specific field of experimentation. The point will no longer be the stable graphic or epistemic tool that is the basis or orientation of every geometrical operation. Rather, this basic element of knowledge, apparently so stable and static, becomes itself an object of research: the point as such turns into one of the most spectacular sites of experimentation, the setting of decisive transformations of knowledge, science and technical practices in the 17th century. The following relatively well-known elements from very different fields can be regarded as stages for this transformation: (1) arithmetic experiments which discover a new field of arithmetic in practical ge2

3

Cf. Samuel Y. Edgerton. The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective. New York: Basic Books, 1975. Martin Kemp. The Science of Art. Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Samuel Y. Edgerton. The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry. Art and Science in the Eve of the Scientific Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Euclid. The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid, and Propositions I.-XXI. of Book XI., and an Appendix on the Cylinder, Sphere, Cone, etc., with Copious Annotations and Numerous Exercises. Ed. and trans. John Casey. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1885. 2.

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ometry; (2) trial and error experiments testing the validity of texts on the laws of motion; (3) intellectual experiments, in which questions are raised about the observer, the experimenter himself; and last but not least (4) sign experiments, in which graphic operations are not used as a means of representation but rather become the object of investigation. However, with the point, all four of these procedures put space under the microscope as the central object, thus giving this peculiar and smallest venue of knowledge a completely new contour. 1. Arithmetic Experiments: Zero Point and Unit Line To begin with, the year 1585 marks a decisive moment in the history of the point, with the publication of Arithmétique, by the Dutch engineer and mathematician Simon Stevin. It is not in Meetdaet, the practical geometry, published in the same year, in which Stevin introduces the new quality of the point, but in connection with the question as to the definition of numbers as continuous magnitudes. Whereas, ever since antiquity, the number one was considered to be the origin of all numbers without itself being a number, Stevin defines the number one and the unit as a number as well – “l’unité est nombre” –, consequently also divisible, “divisible en parties.”4 Besides, one, like all other numbers, is no longer a discrete unit. This opens a new field in the realm of quantities, because until then the difference between discrete and continuous magnitudes had been observed like the difference between arithmetic and geometry. This new field of continuous magnitudes thus includes the whole domain of mathematical operations, extended magnitudes and rational numbers. What had until then applied only to geometrical magnitudes began to apply as well to numbers, which built an endless continuum, like water: Numbers are to magnitudes something like moisture to water, because just like moisture extends all over and in every part of water, numbers, which are defined by a certain magnitude, extend all over and in every part of their magnitude. Just like continuous water is coupled with continuous moisture, a continuous magnitude is coupled with a continuous number.5

4 5

Simon Stevin. “Arithmétique.” The Principal Works IIB. Mathematics. Ed. Dirk J. Struik. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1958. 495. Ibid. 502.

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However, in this field of continuous magnitudes to which the number one also belongs, the equivalence of one and point, applicable since the time of the Pythagoreans, loses its validity. In the same way as the point was the beginning of all geometry, the number one was the origin of all numbers. Neither of them was itself a part of its domain, but rather its indivisible limit and origin. This parallelism of one and point will no longer be valid after Stevin, on the basis of continuous magnitudes. What does the point have in common with the number one? Certainly nothing at all, since two units result (as is said) in a number, but two or even a thousand points will not result in a line. The unit can be divided into parts […] but the point is indivisible; the unit is a part of the number, but the point is not a part of the line. Therefore, in relation to the number, the unit is not the same as the point in relation to the line. What, then, corresponds to the point? I say it is zero (Ie di que cest o).6

It is no longer the divisible number one, but zero that is the operational equivalent of the geometrical point. As a nonentity, both are something that can occupy a position, or rather what makes positions possible in the first place. This double valence gives the two starting elements of arithmetic and geometry a new and specific operational character. Just like zero, which, added to a term, does not modify the latter, a line AB cannot be lengthened by adding a point.7 On the one hand, addition with zero or point as operands constitutes an arithmetic or geometric operation, but it does not change anything in the value of the term. On the other hand, the point, like zero, can of course, as operator, lengthen a line AB up to a point C on the graphic surface.8 Consequently, despite all discreteness, the dimensionless point has a central operational value, since it can transform and lengthen continuous magnitudes. 6

7

8

“Mais quelle communauté (ie vous suplie) y a il entre l’vnité & le poinct? certes nulle seruant au propos; car deux vnitez (comme ils disent) font nombre, mais deux, voire mille poincts ne font nulle ligne: L’vnité est diuisible en parties … le poinct est indiuisible: L'vnité est partie du nombre, le poinct n'est pas partie de la ligne, & ainsi des autres: L'vnité doncques n'est point telle en nombre comme le poinct en ligne. Qu'estce donc qui lui correspond? Ie di que cest o.” Ibid. 498 et seq. No typographical distinction between zero (“o”) and the lowercase “o.” “Comme la ligne A B ne se peut augmenter par addition du poinct C, ainsi ne se peut le nombre D 6, augmenter par 'addition de E o, car aioustant o à 6 ils ne font ensemble que 6.” Stevin. Arithmétique. 499. “Mais si l'on concede que A B soit prolongée iusques au poinct C, ainsi que A C soit vne continue ligne, alors A B s'augmente par l'aide du poinct C; et semblablement si l'on concede que D 6, soit prolongé iusques en E o, ainsi que D E 6o soit vn continue nombre faisant soixante, alors D 6 s'augmente par l'aide de nul o […].” Stevin. Arithmétique. 499-501.

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If, as is known, the introduction of zero made numbers as a place value system operable in a completely new way, likewise, an equal transformation of geometrical processes occurs when the point takes on new epistemic significance as zero point. It embodies a graphic operation that takes place in the realm of continuity without itself being, as a discrete and discontinuous element, a component of the continuous. Moreover, unlike the merely symbolic form of existence of zero, the point as place marks the coincidence of representation and object of representation. It is thus the divisibility of all numbers, including one, and at the same time the introduction of rational numbers as a set, that enables Stevin to correct this inconspicuous but momentous analogy of point and one. Only zero and point will continue to be discrete, all other geometric and arithmetic magnitudes being continuous and containing infinite internal divisions. That is exactly the meaning of decimal numbers, about which Stevin wrote the first textbook, De Thiende (1585).9 Just like the point is the analogue of zero, the line corresponds to one and to the unit. This new correlation and compatibility of geometric and arithmetic operations, as formulated by Stevin, makes clear the specific new operativity of the line in analytical geometry, as formulated by Descartes in his Géometrie in 1637. John Wallis clearly saw this in his Mathesis universalis (1657), when he connected analytical geometry mainly with a new definition of numbers: “Mr Descartes and his ingenious interpreter van Schooten,” wrote Wallis, “in bringing geometrical constructions into line with arithmetic operations, have actually regarded the point not as a unit but just as an arbitrarily chosen distance, describing the other numbers as other distances which, in respect of the chosen distance are in the same relation as such numbers to the unit.10 The incommensurability of the point as counterpart to the unit had until then prevented this new operationalization of geometrical magnitudes and numbers. In Descartes’ version of an analytical geometry, lines and numbers are still on an equal footing with each other. This is so because Descartes’ arithmetic operations, which can be performed 9

10

Simon Stevin. De Thiende. Das erste Lehrbuch der Dezimalbruchrechnung nach der holländischen und der französischen Ausgabe von 1585. Ed. and trans. Helmuth Gericke and Kurt Vogel. Frankfurt a. M.: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1965. John Wallis. “Mathesis Universalis sive, Arithmeticum opus integrum; tam Philologice quam Mathematice traditum.” Opera mathematica. Vol. Primum. Oxford, 1695. 26.

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Fig. 1: Charles Bouelles’ division of a line from his Géométrie pratique (Paris, 1542).

with lines and the other way round, can be traced back to the analogue calculation devices of practical geometry around 1600, i.e. measurement and division instruments that if used in a certain way can be turned into analogue calculation instruments similar to reduction or proportional dividers. The unit as quantity actually makes numbers geometrically operable in a new way, i.e. invents a geometric unit which, unlike the point, has the qualities of a unit. As Stevin had shown, the addition of points or through points never leads to the field of expanded magnitudes, as opposed to the way addition of the unit creates the number two, etc. The point was never a unit in the same way as the number one, and was therefore not of much help when adding or multiplying. This is evidenced by the graphic division procedures that turn arithmetical operations into graphical ones (fig. 1 and 2). All these division and calculation instruments are based precisely on this analogy of unit and line, not of unit and point. Therefore, long be-

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Fig. 2: Jost Bürgi’s Reduction Compass from Levinus Hulsius, Traktat der mechanischen Instrumente (Frankfurt, 1604).

fore Descartes’ geometry they implemented the operational compatibility of numbers and lines in a geometric-mechanical structure, which Descartes subsequently put down on paper. As is well known, Descartes did not conceal this fact and made it very clear in his famous letter to Beeckman.11 2. Experiment on Motion: Galileo’s De motu (1590) The consequences of this new quality of the point, which no longer represents a unit, but rather, like zero, marks an absence, can be seen in a different way in an experiment on motion conducted by Galileo a few years later in Pisa, between 1589 and 1592, and documented in De motu. This is about the motion of the pendulum, which serves as a device for the experimental study of projectiles and, with its periodic 11

Descartes’ letter to Beeckman, dated April 23, 1619. René Descartes. Oeuvres philosophiques. Vol. I. 1618-37. Paris: Garnier, 1963. 42. Cf. Stephen Gaukroger. Descartes. An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

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Fig. 3: Diagram of Pendulum movement.

swinging is a sort of testing instrument for ballistic items like cannon balls12 (fig 3). It should, nevertheless, be noted that Galileo performs two different tests in his trial and error experiment: on the one hand he asks how the movement of the pendulum is arranged at the three inflection points A, B, C, and on the other hand he compares his observations with the classical text of the theory of motion, Aristotle’s Physics, i.e. a data comparison experiment whose central subject matter is certain points which, as with Aristotle, are analyzed as danger moments of a dead halt. Whereas Aristotle had Zeno as his great rival, Galileo is mainly interested in the matter of compound motion, since, according to the model of Aristotelian-scholastic physics which was still valid in the 16th century, there is no mixture between forced and natural movement. The shooting trajectory of a cannonball is therefore modelled through the sides of a triangle (fig. 4). 12

See a more conceptual historical reconstruction by Peter Damerow et al. Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics. A Study of Conceptual Development in Early Modern Science: Free Fall and Compounded Motion in the Work of Descartes, Galileo, and Beeckman. New York: Springer, 1992.

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Fig. 4: Kaspar Uttenhofer Trajectory from his Circinus Geometricus (Nuremberg, 1626).

This is first the straight trajectory of the cannonball according to the alignment of the gun-barrel; the stillstand of this motion is finally followed by the natural perpendicular gravitational motion. The question then arises as to what exactly happens at the inflection points of the projectile. Does the one motion come to rest before the other one begins? This is why the pendulum is such an ideal observation instrument for this problem,13 because it readily exhibits three of such motional points of inflection (fig. 3): according to Aristotle, at the two reversal points of motion, A and C, and at the deepest point of swinging (B), at which the downward motion passes over into an upward motion. Aristotle, who does not yet deal with the pendulum, explains this by reference to the analogous problem of a body (G) that moves up to height D and then falls: For if an object G was in motion towards D and then reversed its direction and travelled back down again, it did treat the extremity D as both an end and a beginning and make this single point two. That is why it is bound to have been at

13

See generally Piero E. Ariotti. “Aspects of the Conception and Development of the Pendulum in the 17th Century.” Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 8 (1972): 329-410.

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Wolfgang Schäffner a standstill; it did not simultaneously reach D and leave it, because in that case it would have been there and not have been there in the same now.14

This is precisely the concept Galileo opposes. Motions like the one along a throwing or shooting trajectory or that of a pendulum do not consist of individual opposed motions:15 “So far, then, are these motions from being contraries, that they are actually only one, continuous, and coterminous.” This is why the turning point is no discontinuity either; “rest does not intervene at the turning point.”16 Otherwise the point would again be the stigmé, the Aristotelian hole in which time and space disappear. What is it then that happens in that instant? In any case, Galileo rejects Aristotle’s arguments about the turning point as freezing motion for a moment. Such is Aristotle’s argument. But how weak it is will soon be clear. For, as he himself holds, the moving body makes use of a point on the line of its motion, i.e., one point, numerically, for what are two things in logic, for a beginning and an end. Yet there is no line between these two things, since they are only one in number. And why, similarly, will the same body not use the same instant (one, in number) as two in logic, namely, for the end of the time of moving toward [the turning point] and for the beginning of the time of moving away [from it], so that between these instants that are two in logic, no time intervenes, since they are only one in number?17

The turning point contains no space or time. The logical doubling is only a superposition of different moments at one and the same point, whose discreteness absorbs any possible discontinuity of the motion. This is why the motion of a vertically rising and then falling projectile 14 15

16 17

Aristotle. Physics. Trans. Robin Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 218-19. In contrast to the Discorsi of 1638, in De motu the trajectory of projectiles still consists of three parts, as is the case with Tartaglia. The motion along the straight line which the gun determines, continuously becomes a circular-like motion, which then leads to a falling motion. Cf. Galileo Galilei. On Motion and On Mechanics. Trans., intro., and notes I. E. Drabkin and Stillman Drake. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960. “Tantum, ergo, abest ut isti motus sint contrarii, ut etiam unum tantum, continuum, et ad eundem terminum, sint [...].” Galilei. De Motu. 94. “Haec est argumentatio Aristotelis; quae quidem quantum infirma sit, mox apparebit. Nam, sicut ipse vult, quod movetur utitur in linea sui motus puncto uno, numero, pro duobus, ratione, ut pro principio et pro fine; et tamen inter haec duo linea non intercedit, cum unum tantum sint numero: cur etiam idem mobile, eodem modo, in tempore sui motus non utetur eodem instanti, numero, pro duobus, ratione, nempe pro fine temporis accessus et pro principio temporis recessus, ita ut inter haec duo instantia, ratione, non sit tempus, cum unum tantum, numero, sint?” Ibid. 96.

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is uninterrupted: “But, as we have already explained, that motion of change from light to heavy is one and continuous, just as is the change from hot to cold.”18 The discontinuous turning points thus get lost in the continuous motion trajectory. The symbolic order of logical opposites underlying the principle of the contradiction and the discontinuous motion determining physics in the Early Modern Age19 can thus coincide in a new point. Zero point can be occupied in a new way and initiate a continuous connection. In this regard it can be said that the laws of motion studied by Galileo are decided at and in the point. It is a point that can relate in a new way with the continuous of the line and, both as place as well as moment, no longer interrupts continuity but actually makes it possible. 3. Intellectual Experiment One of the lead actors in this history of the point is René Descartes, who carried out a significant intellectual experiment on the point in his Mediations. He sits there and writes that he abstracts from everything, because everything in his existence is uncertain: “body, figure, extension, motion and place are merely chimeras.” Descartes’ doubt scenarios plunge him into the worst average: “It feels as if I have fallen unexpectedly into a deep whirlpool which tumbles me around so that I can neither stand on the bottom nor swim up to the top.”20 In view of this uncertain position, he wishes he had, like every navigator, “a point that was firm and immovable,” like Archimedes, “used to demand just one firm and immovable point in order to shift the entire earth; so I too can hope for great things if I manage to find just one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshakeable.”21 That one thing is ultimately also the result of his intellectual experiment. It is like in geometry: what is left is an extensionless point, which, as element of elements, forms the beginning and stands directly opposed to a world of extension: the cogito, a point-shaped res cogitans, the continuum of a res extensa. This is the Euclidean clothing in which the subject presents itself, as the origin of 18 19 20

21

“[…] verum, ut iam declaravimus, motus ille, dum ex levi fit grave, est unus et continuus, ut cum ex calido fit frigidum, quod in tempore non quiescit.” Ibid. 96. Cf. Damerow. Exploring the Limits. 78-79. René Descartes. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. II. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 16. Ibid.

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all things and operations; as they abstract from all that belongs to the world of things and has spatial extension, the Meditations lead to the starting point, to the origin of thought, to the point as the extensionless place that cannot be reached by doubt, time or space. This point-subject is an implosion of all knowledge in an extensionless symbolic space: the space of thought is a radical hiatus, complete absence, discontinuity. This point-shaped configuration of a subject therefore also calls for the question as to how the world of things can influence this detached subject. It is mainly Pierre Gassendi, in his answers to Descartes’ Meditations, that throws light on this matter and, when formulating the epistemological problem of the subject as one of sending and receiving, looks mainly into the topic of this communication. Gassendi’s major objection has to do with the fact that a transmission of images and signs to the subject becomes problematic as long as the point subject is characterized by a pure nonextension. Even if all nerves were to converge in such a point, Gassendi writes that Even if we grant that all the nerves do meet, they cannot meet at a mathematical point, since they are corporeal things, not mathematical lines, and so cannot come together at a mathematical point. And even if we grant that they do come together, the spirits which pass through the nerves cannot enter or leave the nerves since they are bodies and a body cannot exist in a non-place or pass through a non-place (which is what a mathematical point is). And even if we grant that they can exist in and pass through a non-place, if you exist in a point which has no right-hand or left-hand or upper or lower regions etc., you cannot possibly judge where the spirits come from or what messages they bring.22

The discontinuity of the point would separate the subject from any messages from the sense organs. However, this question does nothing but repeat Galileo’s considerations on the relationship between motion and turning point. There, the point could experience multiple occupations, since it could bring together several moments of motion in itself. Within this framework, after Descartes the subject will be possible as a fundamental point of operation, as a zero point, which does not itself occupy any space and which generates operative spaces through transmissions and reflections. In a discussion with Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida rightly pointed out that the Cartesian cogito does not rule out madness, but rather is its immediate embodiment. “The cogito,” writes Derrida, “is the zero point at which determined meaning and nonmeaning come together in their common origin. […] In this sense nothing is less reas22

Descartes. Philosophical Writings. Vol. II, 236.

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suring than the Cogito at its proper and inaugural moment.” The Cogito is thus the “project of a singular and unprecedented excess – an excess in the direction of the nondetermined, nothingness or infinity.”23 The point, which has no parts, as peras and apeiron, as limit and infinite, as zero point, thus became a new and spectacular protagonist. The subject point is thus a zero point and, accordingly, an operative geometric magnitude like zero for all numbers. This zero point, in the eminent sense, is not nothing like zero, but something that does not itself occupy any space and generates operative spaces through transmissions and reflections. That is the topology of Descartes’ new subject as a means of knowledge. 4. Graphic Experiment The point marks an absence, but is always a marker. Whereas, traditionally the visible diagramma only illustrates the ideal schema, practical geometries principally focus precisely on this marker and its graphic operation. Leon Battista Alberti was the one who first clearly formulated and ennobled this punctum physicum in his Elimenti di pittura (around 1435). Unlike mathematicians, painters and architects operate with another point: “1. Punto nominamo noi in pittura quella piccola inscrizione quale nulla puote essere minore.”24 Points are inscrizione, inscriptions, they are extensive and form the Elimenti di pittura, the elements of a graphic visibility. In this regard, Della pittura reads as follows: “Solo studia il pittore fingere quello si vede.”25 These Elementi di pittura are something that occurs beyond the geometric schemata. Hence the double operation, which, far from being tautological, conveys the Euclidean discourse to the practical geometry of inscrizioni. On the one hand, this means that we are dealing with graphic techniques and at the same time with a peculiar visibility generated by graphic operations. Practical geometry no longer operates only in ideal concepts, but with graphic and material processes. However, to the 23 24

25

Jacques Derrida. Writing and Difference. Trans. with intro. and notes Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. 56. Leon Battista Alberti. “Elimenti di pittura.” Opere volgari III. Trattati d’arte, Ludi rerum mathematicarum, Grammatica della lingua toscana, opuscoli amatori, lettere. Bari: Laterza, 1973. 116. Idem. “De picture.” Opere volgari III. Trattati d'arte, Ludi rerum mathematicarum, Grammatica della lingua toscana, opuscoli amatori, lettere. Bari: Laterza, 1973. 10.

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extent that specific manifestations of points and lines depend on graphic instruments, on graphic surfaces or writing materials, the question of precision becomes a constitutive factor of practical geometry. The fact that lines can be drawn with compasses and rulers in any numerical extension finds its limit where the visibility of points turns into invisibility, where graphic points take on such an extension that their place is not clear. After all, practical geometry is also governed by the principle that the graphic point must be small, although what appears on paper as a mere graphic point can correspond even to enormous objects; that is what the point of gravity as a virtual place represents in mechanics. In 1665, Robert Hooke, in his Micrographia or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies, was the first one to consider how small the point is or can be, starting, in truly Euclidean fashion, by the most simple. The most simple is not just defined, but observed under the microscope.26 We will begin these our Inquiries therefore with the most simple nature first, and so gradually proceed to those of a more compounded one. In prosecution of which method, we shall begin with a Physical point; of which kind the Point of a Needle is commonly reckon’d for one; and is indeed, for the most part, made so sharp, that the naked eye cannot distinguish any parts of it.27

Here, the point, in the point of a needle, becomes a thing that Hooke places as the first object under the microscope, as the point of a needle to the naked eye is a point-shaped object which has no parts. The world of small things and of the smallest settings therefore also begins under the microscope with the most inconspicuous of elements, which thereby loses its inconspicuous nature: But view’d with a very good Microscope, we may find that the top of a Needle (though as to the sense very sharp) appears a broad, blunt, and very irregular end. […] The Points of Pins are yet more blunt, and the Points of the most curious Mathematical Instruments do very seldome arrive at so great a sharpness; how much therefore can be built upon demonstrations made only by the productions of the Ruler and Compasses, he will be better able to consider that shall but view those points and lines with a Microscope.28

26 27 28

Robert Hooke. Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses. 1665. New York: Dover, 1961. Ibid. 1. Ibid. 1-2.

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Fig. 5: Robert Hooke needle and point from his Micrographia, or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses (London, 1665).

Under the optical conditions of the microscope, the world of the punctum physicum presents itself as a peculiar relationship between visibility, graphic medium and imprecision. The combination of two different types of instruments, mathematical instruments and the newly-invented microscope, is effective in several ways. On the one hand, the needle of mathematical instruments becomes a hotbed of imprecision. But this is no longer the old game between mathematical and physical point, in which the latter always lags behind the conceived ideality of the schema. Rather, the device which Hooke invents and with which he proves the inaccuracy of mathematical instruments is purely medial. It is the microscope that transfers the world of visibility and also and precisely the basic element of all that is visible, the point. It is thus an inaccuracy that presents itself in the instrument itself and not in contrast to the ideal geometric conception. Modern Age precision, for which Hooke’s scenario sets a paradigm, is born out of the inaccuracy of the instruments themselves, which appears as a counterpart of rational numbers. And it is not just a game when Hooke, looking for small things, places needle points under the microscope, because in that way he invents a procedure that changes mathematical instruments themselves. At least since Jesse Ramsden and John Bird, Hooke’s scenario is incorporated by itself into these instruments, when the division pro-

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cedures, with which the scales and point are engraved on the instruments, take place under the microscope. So even the graphic point is subject to a division, in the double sense of the point as needle point and thing, which is repeated on paper as point marking; the point in practical geometry, particularly when examined closely, is the effect of a process, a graphic connection of needle point, ink, and paper. But the point as mark reveals itself as monstrous as the apparently so sharp needle. There are clear reasons for this: The Irregularities of it are caused by three […] coadjutors, one of which is the uneven surface of the paper, which at best appears no smother than a very course piece of shag’d cloth, next the irregularity of the Type or Ingraving, and the third is the rough Daubing of the Printing-Ink that lies upon the instrument that makes the impression, […] and you may have sufficient reason to guess that a point may appear much more ugly then this, which I have here presented, which though it appear’d through the Microscope gray, like a great splatch of London dirt, about three inches over; yet to the naked eye it was black, and no bigger then that in the midst of the Circle A.29

So a whole technical medium device converges in the point: the materiality of paper, followed by the irregularity of the writing or printing instrument and, finally, the materiality of ink or of the writing material. All these components become the object of division processes or optimizations of the materials, which subject the point as mark or as needle point to an endless minimalization. In Alexandre Koyré’s words, the point opens a whole “univers de la précision.”30 5. Conclusion The point, that smallest of all figures, that most incorporeal of things, that nonentity, becomes a centre of fundamental epistemic transformations around 1600. All four transformations of the point scene outlined here represent different forms of the operationalization of the point and, at the same time, the geometric and graphic surface; on the one hand zero point and on the other a figure of infinite divisibility, which will eventually become an object of infinitesimal mathematics with Leibniz and Newton. 29 30

Ibid. 3. Alexandre Koyré. “Du monde de l'à-peu près à l'univers de la precision.” Critique IV (1948): 806-23.

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The experimental scenario displayed throughout the individual examples constitutes a special dimension. All these experiments that are actually centered around the point, do not investigate so much things and their qualities but rather their spatial preconditions; they can therefore be described as epistemic and, last but not least, medial experiments. The continuous motion of the pendulum, which links time and space; the merging of geometric and arithmetic elements in devices that enable arithmetic operations; the intellectual experiment that uses an observer-subject as specific and yet infinite operative space of thinking, and finally the graphic experiment, which has the point in its material existence as object, are experimental scenarios that look into experimentation itself from four decisive perspectives, put it to the test and fundamentally transform it. The incision of the point in the continuity of space became a symbolic but also graphic operation, which can transfer any motion to a drawing. This could be described as the elementary framework of experimentation in the Modern Age: a diagrammatic machine that divides, measures and takes notations. Translation: Walter Kerr

WORKS CITED: Alberti, Leon Battista. “Elimenti di pittura.” Opere volgari III. Trattati d’arte, Ludi rerum mathematicarum, Grammatica della lingua toscana, opuscoli amatori, lettere. Bari: Laterza, 1973. Alberti, Leon Battista. “De pictura.” Opere volgari III. Trattati d’arte, Ludi rerum mathematicarum, Grammatica della lingua toscana, opuscoli amatori, lettere. Bari: Laterza, 1973. Ariotti, Piero E. “Aspects of the Conception and Development of the Pendulum in the 17th Century.” Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 8 (1972): 329-410. Aristotle. Physics. Trans. Robin Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Damerow, Peter et al. Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics. A Study of Conceptual Development in Early Modern Science: Free Fall and Compounded Motion in the Work of Descartes, Galileo, and Beeckman. New York: Springer, 1992. Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Trans. with intro. and notes Alan Bass. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Descartes, René. Oeuvres philosophiques. Vol I. 1618-37. Paris: Garnier, 1963. Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 3 vols. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

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Edgerton, Samuel Y. The Renaissance Rediscovery of Linear Perspective. New York: Basic Books, 1975. Edgerton, Samuel Y. The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry. Art and Science in the Eve of the Scientific Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Euclid. The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid, and Propositions I.-XXI. of Book XI., and an Appendix on the Cylinder, Sphere, Cone, etc., with Copious Annotations and Numerous Exercises. Ed. and trans. John Casey. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, & Co., 1885. Gaukroger, Stephen. Descartes. An Intellectual Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Galilei, Galileo. On Motion and On Mechanics. Trans., intro., and notes I. E. Drabkin and Stillman Drake. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960. Hooke, Robert. Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses. 1665. New York: Dover, 1961. Kemp, Martin. The Science of Art. Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Koyré, Alexandre. “Du monde de l’à-peu près à l’univers de la précision.” Critique IV (1948): 806-23. Stevin, Simon. “Arithmétique.” The Principal Works IIB. Mathematics. Ed. Dirk J. Struik. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1958. Stevin, Simon. De Thiende. Das erste Lehrbuch der Dezimalbruchrechnung nach der holländischen und der französischen Ausgabe von 1585. Ed. and trans. Helmuth Gericke and Kurt Vogel. Frankfurt a. M.: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1965. Wallis, John. “Mathesis Universalis sive, Arithmeticum opus integrum; tam Philologice quam Mathematice traditum.” Opera mathematica. Vol. Primum. Oxford, 1695, 11-228.

LUDGER SCHWARTE

Anatomical Theatre as Experimental Space 0. Architecture and Philosophy of Science In recent years, universal claims have been confronted with an emphasis on the locality of scientific practice. The key word locality has mostly pointed to the scientists participating in the experiments, their materials, and their instruments, but the architecture which defines a locality in the first place received remarkably little consideration. It is often simply assumed that there are centres of calculation (laboratories, museums, etc.) in which the cycles of knowledge accumulation are organised through networks.1 For research on experimental systems, the architecture appears secondary. Accordingly, the concrete architecture of science is only consulted in explaining how it configures the identity of the scientific fields, how it facilitates, appropriates and presents the work,2 yet the epistemological contribution of the locations – according to my thesis – goes well beyond facilitation and identity. In some scientific work, the concept of the public sphere as the intersection of architecture and science has become clear, but it is too often the case that modern science as an open space is contrasted with 1

2

Yet it is well known that the aesthetic characteristics of research stage settings must also prove suitable for the presentation and evaluation of factual or theoretical claims. Thus Nicholas Jardine does actually explain how important the architecture is for the philosophy of science, especially if one considers the aesthetics of the “scenes of inquiry,” but he contents himself with a discussion of the Callon/Latour “Centers of Calculation.” Nicholas Jardine. The Scenes of Inquiry. On the Reality of Questions in the Sciences. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson eds. The Architecture of Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Michael Hagner understand the experimental system as the materiality of the research which leads to inscriptions. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger and Michael Hagner, eds. Die Experimentalisierung des Lebens. Experimentalsysteme in den biologischen Wissenschaften. 1850/1950. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993.

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science in the Middle Ages. Numerous architectonic filters refuse the “general public” access to these spaces.3 Architectonic, epistemological and social access are interwoven in the idea of “openness.” Openness is an exciting, eventful spatial quality developing between the action of the living bodies and the action of the building blocks, and this is what I would now like to illustrate using the anatomic theatre as a case in point. For our concept of science, the public is essential, and especially the anatomic theatre makes a public space possible. The design of this theatre is therefore essential for a definition of what can be understood as revelatory, as openness, and as the public space. Modern science still greatly consists of the mysticism of revelation in the arcanum of power. A theatre can be a place of revelatio, it can be a location for the presentation of evidence. Such a theatre can, however, also be a place of dialogue. The fact that the location in the dialogue possesses a voice can be inferred from the key scene in which experimental anatomy distances itself from the old authorities. 1. Anatomic Theatre and what Took Place therein In January 1540, Andreas Vesalius was performing a dissection before an enthusiastic public of two hundred international students and faculty members in a self-erected temporary theatre at the university of Bologne, while Matthaeus Curtius,4 seated above their heads in the elevated professorial chair, was formally delivering an anatomy lecture. Although Vesalius’ actual task was confined to demonstrating the parts of the body which were discussed in the lecture, a dispute erupted. Cur3

4

Steven Sharpin has shown in his social history of truth that the “openness” is thoroughly ambivalent: in Gresham House it applied to gentlemen, but not for the “general public.” Paula Findlen points out that at Ulisse Aldrovandi’s, in line with Alberti’s idea of the villa and the idealised study cabinets within (according to Mark Wigley the ‘first truly private space’), women were not granted admission to the Wunderkammer. William Newman has shown that Andreas Libavius’s plan for a laboratory, in spite of the uniform niches and the urban location, did not mark the end of alchemy: the alchemic monad is actually the basic design element in the ground plan of Libavius’s laboratory. Libavius’s laboratory separates off certain areas from the common masses in order to link the symbolic transmutational scheme of alchemy with the selection of the almost perfect. An eyewitness account is given by Baldasar Heseler, a German student, who was present at the demonstrations and lectures. Ruben Eriksson, ed., trans. with intro. and notes. Andreas Vesalius’ First Public Anatomy at Bologna 1540. An Eyewitness Report. Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1959.

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Fig. 1: Claude Perrault, Frontispiece of his Histoire des Animaux (Paris, 1671). The illustration shows a visit of the king to the work rooms of the academy. The human skeleton in the centre is framed by animal skeletons. It stares at the skeletal globe in the foreground. The view through the right window shows the Observatoire in a state of construction.

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tius emphasised the Galenic anatomy text whilst Vesalius insisted that the result of the dissection, laid plain for all to see, should be believed and not the authority of the text. According to Baldasar Heseler’s account, Vesalius replied to Curtius: “even if that is not Galen’s opinion, we shall however demonstrate here, that in fact it is so.”5 The possibility of such a radical change from demonstration to experiment derived from the staging: the transposition of authority and method was performed by the room. A lecture manages with rhetorical, acoustic resources. Vesalius’s dissection, on the other hand, is like a “lecture-performance”6 in which that which is being shown marks the discursive steps which explain and comment upon the lecture. The gaze upon the particular bodily specimen acquires a distinguished status. This status and the gaze, like the anatomist’s instruments and the openings and profile of the body, are the product of an architectonic operation. Naturally, the experimental architectonic operations also include the reduction of the theatrical space to the dimension of the drawing, the engraving, and the illustration.7 The lecture room is consequently a place of experiment in which the realities are tested through presentation. As a follow up to an execution, as a carnival or a theatrical performance, the anatomic theatres drew hundreds of spectators. The anatomical theatre buildings existing before the playhouses, namely in Montpellier from 1530 on, give evidence to the fact that experimental anatomy had become a cultural institution. The anatomical demonstrations thus served as a performative paradigm for the other experimental sci-

5 6

7

Eriksson. Andreas Vesalius. 89. See K. B. Roberts, “The Contexts of Anatomical Illustrations.” The Ingenious Machine of Nature. Four Centuries of Art and Anatomy. Ed. Mimi Cazort, Monique Kornell, and K. B. Roberts. [Exhibit. cat.] Ottowa: National Gallery of Canada, 1996. 72. Already in the 1960’s, William Brockbank judged that anatomical theatre was the foundation site of natural science research and this for the very reason that in the Renaissance it was a point of interception between art and science. “It is closely connected not only with the history of medicine and of teaching, but also with the history of art. The theatre arose out of the stream of ideas which flowed through Italy at the time of the Renaissance. Its purpose was to offer a performance, for […] an anatomical dissection in those days was really more of a theatrical occasion than a lesson. The outstanding personalities and authorities of the town were invited to be present. It was the first laboratory, the first place where scientific research was carried out.” William Brockbank. “Old Anatomical Theatres and What Took Place Therein.” Medical History XII (1968): 371-84.

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ences8 to be reproduced, for instance, in the 18th century in the physics spectacles of Abbé Nollet. What had begun with Vesalius led in the 17th and 18th century to two further revolutionary steps: firstly, demonstration before an ever larger public; secondly, tactile studies. Pierre Dionis and Joseph Guichard Du Verney set up special rooms in Jardins de Plantes from 16809 in which students could perform dissections, which, 100 years later, would lead to the Birth of the Clinic. The performativity of spaces results from their being attempts at the production of experience – experiments in Bacon’s sense – namely methodically ordered test series which arise through the planned alteration of the conditions of a particular phenomenon. In the spatial experiment, the performativity of the human actors is transferred to the theatrical machinery.10 Schematically, the following forms can be dif8

9

10

In scholastic times and continuing into the Renaissance the word ‘experiment’ is mostly used synonymously with ‘experience’ (experientia). Experiments meant in the present day sense are found in other expressions, e.g., manuum industria (Petrus Peregrinus de Maricourt). Roger Bacon (already) was extensively concerned with experience gained through instruments and apparatuses which were to give greater certainty than that gained by mere argument. Since this time, the use of the word experiment for experience gained through apparatus and test set-up has gradually taken hold. The weighing-scales most notably gain importance as a measuring and experimental instrument, as shown for example in Roger Bacon’s Scientia ponderum and Nicolaus von Kues’ De staticis experimentis dialogues. In this time the practice of experimenting is essentially influenced by techniques developing from alchemy and craft work, but also through new text genres like the dialogue. Francis Bacon then particularly clearly expresses the use of experimentum for the experience consciously brought about by human action, the experiential questa: “There remains simple experience which, if taken as it comes, is called accident, if sought for, experiment.” Francis Bacon. The New Organon and Related Writings. Ed. and intro. Fulton H. Anderson. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960. §82, 79. Bacon’s realisation was that only methodologically ordered test series can be the basis of a systematic control of nature. According to Bacon, the principle for test series arise through the planned alteration of the conditions of a particular phenomenon. The performative element is thus transferred from the human actors to the theatrical machinery. In 1691, Verney had a further ampitheatre erected as well as salles de cours in the Jardin des Plantes: “Grande Salle don’t l’intérieur est garni de Bands disposez en amphitheatre.” From 1706, there is a program for practical anatomy in Hôtel Dieu, a little later a comparable architectural concept is introduced – also for the medical orderlies – in Hôtel des Invalides. Cf. Toby Gelfand. “The ‘Paris Manner’ of Dissection. Student Anatomical Dissection in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46.2 (1972): 99-130. Francis Bacon writes programmatically: “For I am building in the human understanding a true model of the world, such as it is in fact, not such as man’s own rea-

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ferentiated: (a) the arena form (Padua), (b) the amphitheatre form (Paris), and (c) the confrontational lecture-hall form (Altdorf).11 Here the seating ascends linearly to one side in five spectator tiers. For most authors the concept of anatomic theatre thus describes a “room with ascending seating to allow the audience a clear view of the procedure being demonstrated.”12 It is said to be the origin of the modern “auditorium.” Yet, also numbered among the prominent buildings is (d) the festival hall. Here the action took place on a single plane. The anatomical theatre of the university of Bologna, constructed by Antonio Levanti in 1639, created a space for the demonstrations in the centre of the room, like a dance floor. Benches resembling choir stalls are arranged in a quadrangle around the walls. The lectern for the theoretical lecture is raised up at the front of the room. While in the festival hall certain seats are still raised at the sides, in the (e) salon form, typical for academies, there is only a dissection table in the middle of the room with everyone involved moving freely around it.13 In contrast to the festival hall, the representative constructions are informal, and the encounters with provisional exhibits intimate.

11

12 13

son would have it to be; a thing which cannot be done without a very diligent dissection and anatomy of the world.” Francis Bacon. The Works of Francis Bacon. 1860. 10 vols. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989. 110. This anatomy of the world which Olaf Rudbeck was to take all too literally in the anatomic theatre of Uppsala is as a gesture reliant on an ordered space. Bacon’s multifaceted description of a repository of knowledge contains a library, a zoological and botanical garden, an experimental laboratory and “a goodly, huge cabinet, wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine hath made rare in stuff, form or motion; whatsoever singularity, chance, and the shuffle of things hath produced; whatsoever Nature hath wrought in things that want life and may be kept; shall be sorted and included.” Francis Bacon. “Gesta Grayorum.” [1594]. Works. Vol. 8, 335. The Altdorf Academy, raised to the status of university in 1622, possessed a botanical garden, a large library and copious exhibitory collections. In Altdorf physics was studied for the first time experimentally and with a model. Altdorf also possessed the first chemical laboratory. The anatomical theatre is built on the model of the Roman private theatre: the corpse is pushed out from a preparation room to the space in front of the professors demonstration chair. Instrument cupboards, wall charts and skeleton form a flat front wall. Konrad Rückbrod. “Das Anatomische Theater – Archetypus des modernen Hörsaals.” Medizinischer Monatsspiegel MERCK (1974): 97-114. In each case the respective building forms allow different scientific work. Often they correspond to a different institutional context: medicinal faculties (arena, amphitheatre, confrontational hall, festival hall), art colleges (amphitheatre), academies (festival hall, salon-form, amphitheatre).

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In the following, I would like to emphasize the scientific importance of the salon for the history of science. With Descartes and Perrault, I want to learn from the salon form, why, on the one hand, perception is not simply the result of the positioning of motion and bodies, but requires an act of perception14, and on the other hand, why this act of perception is less linked to bodies and intentions than it is to processes of spatial formation.

14

The concept of the act of perception tries to go beyond the absolutism of the media, which sees perception as a function of apparatuses and cultural patterns of order and beyond the human centred reaction, which clings to the concepts of ‘mind’ and ‘reflection.’ In this context a run through the Baroque concepts of theatre and perception seems advisable today. Well into the first half of the 18th century the word theatre is known to refer to more than buildings or the performances; it also refers to areas in the garden ornamented with water games and statues. Theatre in Baroque is a model of perception, which, on the one hand, means a reconstruction, an explanation for the way in which we perceive things as well as it is an idealised gauge according to which we carry out our perception. In this sense “theatre” highlights a piece of adapted nature for perception. The theatrical includes the construction of a space in which an object of display is produced and in which perception is demonstrated as a spatial mode of organisation. At the same time theatre is a “distance-keeping orientational model” in which the public, mediality and artificiality communicate an “awareness of the question of indefinable bodily dimensions of human life-experience.” Helmar Schramm. “Theatralität und Öffentlichkeit – Vorstudien zur Begriffsgeschichte von ‘Theater.’” Weimarer Beiträge 36.2 (1990): 223-39. Theatrical perception is differentiated here from the simple gaze, from seeing, in that it doesn’t consider all being (Daseiende) as essential and existent, but investigates the actual constitution of the objects according to the circumstances. The theatre is a stage because there the constitution of the subject matter is presented as being generated from the circumstances. If the Greek Theatron still described the spectator room, the accent now moves to the stages so that the character of being produced for the spectacle side and for the spectator side the reification element in perception is set in a constellation in the Baroque version where the spectator, the perceived, and mimesis all meet up together. The scene is aligned through imitation with the dimensions of the cosmos. What theatre buildings have in common with books which don’t have “theory” but “Theatrum” in the title is not only that they bring something to light and publish it, thereby wishing to justify the material, but at the same time, with this material and its publication, they conceive a symbol of the world. The Baroque meaning of theatre is connected with this theatricality of recognition. If the Renaissance still assumed the similarity of object and sign qua convenientia or aemulatio, in the 17th century reliance on the appearances as infalliable signs has considerably diminished. This loss of trust derives from experiments which show disparity between the outward appearance accessible to perception and the actual laws underlying the phenomenon. In this sense perception is an action.

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As the purpose of anatomy is to contemplate les belles oeuvres de nature and to see the inner organs clearly, Charles Estienne, a Parisian doctor who was educated in the humanities and familiar with Vitruv’s writings, wrote as early as 1545 that in an anatomic theatre everyone should be able to see and move optimally and in the same way. “In a public spectacle, nothing perfect is ever to be found, if all that belongs to the theatre hasn’t been made and disposed as reason commands.”15 In accordance with this definition of the anatomical theatre, René Descartes’ Discours de la Méthode (1637) replaces perception with doubt in order to perfect the former through reason. Doubt separates the perception from the impressions. The senses deliver only the simple impression of the outside world onto the various sections of our nervous system. This nervous system for Descartes is the interior furnishing, so to speak, of doubt.16 Through experiment, the descriptive reason distances itself from the outer appearances. Descartes counters Kepler in this field, declaring that the soul does not calculate its distance from objects according to a “natural geometry,” but rather places the angles of perception in relation to the rotation of the eyes, like a blind person with a stick who translates bodily movement into an intelligible sign.17 Dürer’s idea, according to which perspective reveals the hidden order of the universe, does not convince Descartes either: he claims, the mechanical function of the eyes provokes in us the sensation of distance and depth, and the virtuality of depth can easily be proven by

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“Tout ainsi qu’en un spectacle publique iamais riê ne se trouve parfaict, si tout ce qui appartient au theatre n’est ainsi faict & disposé côme la raison le veult.” Charles Estienne. “La dissection des parties du corps humain divisée en 3 livres […].” [1546] L’Oeuvre de Charles Estienne et l’école anatomique Parisienne. Ed. Pierre Huard and Mirko Drazen Grmek. Paris: Cercle du livre précieux, 1965. 373. Description is a movement of association. There are no chains of similarity any more, but rather “chacun se persuade communément.” René Descartes. “Le Monde.” Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 13. Ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: Vrin, 1999. 3. Descartes compares the brain here with a church organ. It doesn’t depend on the outward appearance, but on the distribution of air. Thus the visible parts which the anatomists distinguished in the brain substance could not explain the functioning of the brain. René Descartes. “L’Homme.” Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 11, 161. Similarly he does not wish to derive the aesthetic feeling in music from a translation of the harmony of things, but speaks rather of arbitrary habits.

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illusion in perspective.18 For Descartes, space is then created only when there are sticks and lines and alignments. At the same time, it is impossible to understand exactly what another person is expressing, even if we are completely acquainted with all their personal facial expressions. As Descartes says, everyone enters the theatre of the world masked.19 The people walking by on the street could be disguised automata. Consequently, there is no external intention or truth preceding the mind’s power of creation.20 The intuition regulates doubt and fabrication.21 If according to this intuition, only that which I clearly and distinctly register is true, then, in the physical world, the extended body can only be clearly and distinctly known if it is understood in its inner construction. Its shape is a function of the limits of its extension and of the alteration in situation, (substance, duration, and quantity), while colour, sound, smell, taste and touch qualities are blurred and obfuscated and possibly ideas of “non-things.” The Perceptio clara et distincta is consequently a construction, always related to the contrast with the exposed illusion.22 For such games of illusion, Descartes’ imagination constantly produces rooms, apartments with mirrors, complete cities in an almost surreal manner. For Descartes, architecture as automation is the core of the world comedy.23 The Dis18 19

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Descartes. “L’Homme.” 161. “Ut comoedi, montiti ne in fronte appareat pudor, personam induunt: sic ego, hoc mundi theatrum conscensurus, in quo hactenus spectator extiti, larvatus prodeo.” René Descartes. “Cogitationes privatae.” Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 10, 213. My translation. We can understand that the automata both reveal to us that life is soley a mechanism (animals are only machines), and that these mechanisms are based on artificial invention. In applying our efforts to the basic rules of understanding, our affective interpretation meets with the mechanical invention, (autonomy and happiness). René Descartes. “Discours de la méthode.” Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 19. Intuition for Descartes is not the passing evidence of the senses and the deceptive judgement which relies on the muddled images of the sensory perception (imagination), but rather such a simple and distinct apprehension by the pure and attentive mind that there can no longer be any doubt about what is thus recognised. René Descartes. “Regulae ad directionem ingenii.” Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 10, 366-68. As an example of such a lofty apprehension Descartes presents the intuition that the sphere has one single surface. But how do I know this? His theatrical metaphor implies that the mind remains an observer of the motion which is created in the world of extensions and that the limitedness of the physical bodies and their interrelatedness is an object of creation, the latter however incite interpretational observation. Still these bodies create the passions which affect the soul so that this can be directed by the surprise, admiration, certain blood circulation etc. caused by the objects. Cf. Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 11, 420. René Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 7, 563.

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cours de la méthode explains how one can only comprehend the world as a game of mere appearances and fictive truths when one becomes an observer rather than an actor.24 In order to see the world as a comedy, one must withdraw from it and understand it as architecture. Thinking is the performance of the world as architecture. Consequently, on the 10th of November, 1619, Descartes finds himself in a closed room and there he creates the theatre of his mind. In this founding scene of scientific individualism, Descartes compares himself with an architect who sketches “places regulières” (geometrical architectural landscapes) on a vacant plain in his fantasy. He counterposes the beautifully ordered works of the architect with the scholastic towns thrown collectively together.25 The architect does not imitate anyone when he traces geometrical architectural landscapes on a plain in his fantasy. He produces a space. The architect’s drawing, through his creativity, is capable of lending beauty, clarity, and perfection to his objects. Following Claudia Brodsky Lacour, we can see Descartes’ thought excursions as the origin of modern philosophy. Brodsky Lacour leaves no room for doubting that the famous cogito describes an architectonic action.26 The building of foundations as a self-projection of reason does not describe a private structure, but rather an entrance.27 Descartes’ method imitates the singular performance of architecture for the very reason that this does not imitate anything, but rather lays foundations. Later in the Meditationes, Descartes sums up his efforts to find a “solid ground” upon which he could construct the “foundations” of his philosophy as the attempt running through all his work to imitate the architects: 24 25 26

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“Taschant d’y être spectateur plutost qu’acteur en toutes les Comèdies qui s`y iouent.” Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 28. Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 11. “The image of a single architect drawing a comprehensive plan on a ‘vacant plain’ is the ‘thought’ Descartes opposes both to travel and to reading, the terms of the pseudo-opposition between the figurative book of the world and literal book learning.” Claudia Brodsky Lacour. Lines of Thought, Discourse, Architectonics, and the Origin of Modern Philosophy. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. 33. The architecture of the self is at the same time a masking corresponding to the geometric costumes of the Baroque through which the self removed itself from body’s decline. The costumes enhance the importance of appearance and completely hide the actual condition. The human appearance is staged as an artificial splendid ornament composed of geometrical figures. As the perfect expression of the significant immortal I, the baroque costume balances the carefully trained posture, gestures and gait with the geometrically designed landscaped spaces surrounding the castles, gardens and parks in the ceremonies, processions, ballets, and festivals.

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“Testatus sum ubique in meis scriptis, me Architectos in eo imitari, quòd, ut solida aedificia construant, in locis ubi faxum, vel argilla, vel aliud quodcunque firmum solum arenosâ superficie contectum est, fossas primum excavent […], ut deinde in solo firmo ponant fundamenta. Sic enim ego dubia omnia, instar arenae, primum rejeci.” (“Throughout my writings I have made it clear that my method imitates that of the architect. When an architect wants to build a house which is stable on ground where there is sandy topsoil over underlying rock, or clay or some other firm base, he begins by digging out a set of trenches from which he removes the sand […] so that he can lay his foundations on firm soil. In the same way I began by taking everything that was doubtful and throwing it out, like sand”).28 The act of the architectural – i.e. foundational – drawing is the image of a non-representative plan which at the same time is its execution. The plan is executed in the discursive realm. This plan-performance relation of the drawing combines reason (“qu’un ingénieur”) with imaginative freedom (“trace à sa fantaisie”). This relation intervenes on a plain (“dans une pleine”) where there is otherwise nothing.29 But the plain is an external requirement. The order of the “places régulieres,” it is true, are free from historical and physical limitations. But the plain, the image, is materially bound. In order for the surface to be freed, it must be mathematically redefined.30 The Cartesian Géométrie is in this 28

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Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 7, 536. Translation from: René Descartes. “Meditations on First Philosophy.” The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Vol. 2. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 366. Cf. Daniel Payot. Le philosophe et l’architecte. Sur quelques déterminations philosophiques de l’idée d’architecture. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982. 116. Payot says Descartes imitates architects in that they self-generating (auto-géniteurs) don’t imitate anything. All quotations: Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 11-12. In conceiving of the ‘squares’ and ‘cubes’ as not being two or three dimensional figures, but rather as multiplications of the lines with themselves, Descartes breaks with the restriction of polynomial equations (to an order of three). If one now understands orders as a representation of extensions in one dimension only, they can be described for each value so that the other dimensions are free to represent variables. If Descartes remains interested in the reality of physical space defined as dimension and magnitude, his reinterpretation of the orders as magnitudes opens a new approach to dimension as a graphical resource. His conceiving anew the orders of equations made multivariable equations clearly and distinctly visible by linking the variables to geometrical dimensions. Descartes’ geometry was able to make complex and more complicated equations graphically visible by translating geometric figures into equations without being limited by the linear incommensurability. This conversion possibility was based on a technical adjustment in the notation which consisted in an altered perception of the relationship between

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sense the counterpart to the narrative passages of the Discourse, as it casts the bridge from the plan to its discursive execution. With Cartesian geometry, figures previously unimaginable in two dimensions can be drawn. In simultaneously developing a new technique to speak about these figures – equations with two unknowns – Descartes was able to refer the algebraic notation to the knowledge of the physical world. The combination of conceptual and technical transformation described the outer world as the result of an act of perception (namely as forms which could be sketched with the help of a ruler and a compass given an arbitrarily determined line segment unit, two unknowns and their disposition along the coordinating axis) which corresponds to the places régulières of the fictitious architects.31 The problem of the materiality of the surface doesn’t first appear on the architect’s paper but exists already in his brain. In the fifth chapter of the Discours Descartes gets down to explaining the nature of material objects and does this through the same architectonic thought experiment: in order to speak of light, of the heavens’ vaults, of earthly bodies and finally of the human being who contemplates all these things, while at the same time evading the scholarly battles, Descartes decides once again to leave things in obscurity [ombrager un peu toutes ces choses] and to simply focus on “what would happen in a new world.”32 If there were physical bodies in this imaginary new world, without souls, but in all other ways just like our own, then, according to the natural laws of mechanics, these would demonstrate the same functions. Even if we were to equip a machine so that it aped us, uttered words, and cried out that it was being hurt, this machine, even if it were to do some things better than we can, would act solely according to the disposition of its organs. Man, says Descartes, is not a machine because he possesses a universal instrument.33 Reason, in its withdrawn cham-

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number and space. By combining the architectonic geometric form with the discursive, algebraic notation, Descartes expanded both conceptual modalities well beyond their previous restrictions. The increased power of mathematics to describe external natural phenomena (through the coordination of algebra and geometry) increased for Descartes the power of thinking. “Cartesian notation saves time for the mind.” Brodsky Lacour. Lines of Thought. 67. Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 42. This imaginary world would only have to contain material, movement and natural laws and it would inevitably order itself according to the form which could appear similar to our cosmos (“pûst paroitre tout semblable”). “Car, au lieu que la raison est un instrument universel, qui peut servir en toutes

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ber (the famous glande pinéale), is capable of overcoming limitations through projection, but it remains, like the fantasy of the architects, dependent on the material elements of its performance. So the mind, concludes Descartes, is so dependent on temperament and the physical disposition that in order to make people wiser and more mentally agile, medicinal remedies must be contemplated.34 On the other hand, in the sixth chapter of the Discours, architecture proves to be a link between geometry and medicine. Here Descartes calls upon those of his readers not versed in any way in anatomy to have the heart of a large animal dissected before them before reading any further.35 Only the sight of the organs of the non-rational animal functioning in the same way as our own shows to what measure our bodies are also ruled by solely mechanical laws – however, only if one actually sees in this organ what Descartes’ text describes. This is only achieved through interpreting the sight-organ in a geometrical fashion. The section through the eye allows the sight to be manipulated as in an architectonic scenography. In two dimensions sight only responds to lines; movements become vectors. The scenography reduces the world to the distinguishing characteristics of membranes, nerves, glass and water, brightness and refraction, i.e. to lines. With the aid of the drawings, Descartes focuses on the role of the optic nerves to explain the sense of sight. Herein lies the anatomic innovation of his approach. This allows him to cast doubt upon all similarities between the cerebral image and the object. Thus the disposition of the organ determines what can be perceived,36 but not the execution

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sortes de rencontres, ces organs ont besoin de quelque particuliere disposition pour chaque action particuliere.” Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 57. “car mesme l’esprit depend si fort du temperament, & de la disposition des organes du cors, que s’il est possible de trouuer quelque moyen, qui rende communement les hommes plus sages & plus habiles qu’ils n’ont esté jusqu’icy ie croy que c’est dans la Medecine qu’on doit le chercher.” Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 62. “car il est en tous assez semblable a celuy de l’homme.” Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 47. “Ie desire, dis ie, que vous consideriez que ces fonction suiuent toutes naturellement, en cette Machine, de la seule disposition de ses organs ” Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 11. 202. The investigation of nerves and irritability in particular becomes a test for the situation of liveliness and of consciousness. The ideal must reflect itself in the brain and in the nerves. Advances in brain physiology and psychology in the 18th century are not thinkable without Descartes’ initial contributions. Schiller for instance contemplates how physique conditions the development of ideas (Über den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geisigen (1780)). The ideal physique must prove to be the human one.

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of the perception, which is a matter for the subject. For Descartes it follows from anatomy that for humans, body and mind are inseparably unified.37 The mind depends upon the body’s mechanics: “c’est l’ame qui voit & non pas l’oeil, & qu’elle ne voit immediatement que par l’entremise du cerueau.” (“First, it is the soul which sees, and not the eye; and it does not see directly, but only by means of the brain.”38) The brain is, so to speak, the inner projection plane for the motions – the camera obscura of the mind, since although the soul sees, it reacts in its external acts of perception to the configuration of the brain and the nerves. The perfecting of the sight through lenses, filter etc. is the result of an architectonic experiment in which the susceptibility of the senses to deception is overcome by the use of geometry. As in the camera obscura and the telescope, the necessary contrasts for clear and distinct perception must be constructed.39 By showing how much knowledge of “external things” can be improved through a change in the “situation,” the transparencies, or the disposition of the body, he also demonstrates the dignity of the universal machine, reason. But in order to improve the mind of humanity as a whole, philosophy must pass into medicine. In order to liberate his method from the limitations of his own body, Descartes must publish it. Publication is the first step for the formation of experiential collectives.40 When the causes of the most common experiences have been explained, he says, 37 38 39

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“Ame et corps […] sont jointes et unies.” Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 11, 120. Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 141. Cf. 109. Translation from: Descartes. “Discourse on Method.” Philosophical Writings. Vol. I, 172. Thus Descartes calls for the arrangement of comparative bodies, in order to be able to perceive external bodies sufficiently separate from one another. For accessible bodies, the set-up should shift the object to be judged into the centre of a group, for the inaccessible a machine should fix the eye’s movement: “qu’on aperçoiue le plus d’obiets qu’il est possible en mesme temps. […] afin de sçavoir vers quel costé il faudra, par aprés, tourner ses yeux pour regarer celuy d’entre eux qu’on voudra mieux considerer. […] Mais il est aysé si les obiets sont plus distinctement au trauers de la lunete ; & s’ils sont inaccessibles, de mettre la lunete sur une machine, qui serue a la tourner facilement vers tel endroit deerminè qu’on voudra.” Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Vol. 6, 163-64. “[…] ie iugeois qu’il n’y auoit point de meilleur remede contre ces deux empeschemens, que de communiquer fidellement au public tout le peu que I’aurois trouué, & de conuier les bons esprits a tascher de passer plus outre, en contribuant, chascun selon son inclination & son pouuoir, aux experiences qu’il faudroit faire, & communiquant aussy au public toutes les choses qu’ils apprendroient, affin que les derniers commençant où les precedens auroient acheué, & ainsi ioignant les vies & les trauaux de plusiers, nous allassions tous ensemble beaucoup plus loin, que chascun en particulier ne sçauroit faire.”

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then communal efforts could also be made to explain the “circumstances” of the rare experiences. We can see from this comment that although in principle Descartes defines space only as extension, in the end he also attributes to it the other characteristics of the physical, so that a knowledge of the ‘external things’ becomes possible through collective experiments with the ‘circumstances’ on which the situation and the disposition of the bodies depend. Colours, tones, smells, taste, and tactile qualities are the ‘plain’ of the collective space. The publication of the method creates a space in which people are differentiated from automata through their observations. At this point, it seems to me that Cartesian ideas on space as extended matter, on the body as a perceptual dispositive, on architecture and anatomy coincide: Descartes’ method creates an internal space of imaginary contrast to the physical. Descartes devises his ‘anatomical theatre, as script, as a path from geometry to the living body, whereby the very publication of this method as discourse turns to the architectonic fantasy through which people are able to liberate themselves from their circumstances. 3. Perrault 3.1 Cartesianism and Architectural Theory Claude Perrault transposes Descartes’ foundational movement to the realms of architectural theory and of physiology.41 In each of these 41

It is true that Leonardo da Vinci had already thought about the similarities of the “sections” of bodies and buildings and influenced Bramante with knowledge gained through architectural and anatomic studies on the connection between section and structure, but Perrault’s call to recognise the supporting role of reason in the empirical sciences also led to new kinds of insights which actually gave particular emphasis to the artificial. As a professed Cartesian, Perrault doubted that knowledge was derived primarily from the senses: “car bienque la connoissance du corps humain dépende principalement de son inspection […], la Raison fournit aussi des lumières pour s’y conduire qui ne servent pas seulement à s’éclairer sur l’usage des parties que l’on a trouvées, mais mesme sur la nécessité ou la probabilité de celles que l’on espère de découvrir […]. Il est nécessaire de joindre toujours les observations avec le Raisonnement.” Claude Perrault. Essais de Physique. Paris, 1680-88. 325-27. His physiology lectures of the year 1651/2 comprise the starting point of his scientific career. “During these hectic times, Perrault went every day to the Rue de la Bûcherie where, in the new amphitheatre, he explained to the students the functions of the human body.” Wolfgang Herrmann. The Theory of Claude Perrault. London: Zwemmer, 1973. 3.

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fields Perrault grants the subject a supporting role in both the observation as well as in the representation – in order to free the imagination from false external dependencies in favour of a smooth plain. In the traditional architectural theory, such a dependency consisted above all in an intrinsic similarity between the macrocosm and the microcosm of buildings and body. According to this idea, our sense of beauty owes precisely to the presence of cosmic proportions. Perrault revolutionizes this basic assumption of classic aesthetics with a nominalist gesture in asserting that the proportional relations are arbitrary creations. No natural authority determines what pleases the eye. Perrault opens up beauty and proportion for innovation as they are based on nothing less than fantaisie – the Cartesian term for the free drawing of orders from the mind.42 Consequently, the evidence of that which pleases relies on methodical planning if one wants to avoid the fixation on generally accepted harmonies. What the eye ‘knows,’ as opposed to what it sees, is a pattern which it has learned to recognize. Thus the training of the organ becomes relevant. While everyone can recognize ‘positive beauty,’ the perception of ‘arbitrary beauty’ requires the development of taste, a structuring of aesthetical judgment which is directly comparable to the scientific method which Descartes seeks to establish with his ‘plan’ (dessein). Once freed from the restrictions of resemblance and general perceptions, the aesthetic theory can describe the mechanisms through which arbitrary beauty becomes an acquired taste. Perrault defines two axes of pleasure in architectural form: habit (acoutûmance) and closeness (compagnie). In the first case, the taste is reinforced through repetition over time. In the second case, it is transferred by spatial association: the mind links two different things in transferring familiar values between adjacent objects. Like Descartes, Perrault also takes the ‘average’ as a starting point.43 This arbitrary measure doesn’t correspond to any external order, but it determines precisely the relations composing a concrete whole.44 Perrault defines 42 43

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Claude Perrault. Les dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve. Paris, 1684. 120. The rejection of the architectural innovation as a departure from the imitation of the ancients is based on the false supposition that non-imitative works must necessarily be bizarre and capricious. Digressing from Vitruv and tradition, Perrault proposes one third of the columns diameter as a measuring unit in order that the proportional relations could be represented by the simplest means, namely by whole numbers. Like the proportional relations represented by mathematical orders in the new notation of Descartes’ equations, the proportions in Perrault’s theory of architecture are also primarily arbitrary intellectual constructions and secondarily linear configurations. In fact Perrault refused to ‘correct’ these relations for the senses

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architecture as an act which, in the drawing, combines the practice of executing the plan and the theory of appropriate proportions. In activating an arbitrary system retained by simple mémorisation (integration), the hand produces certain lines determined exclusively by the mind. These lines locate the exterior of the object in the interior of the gaze. Architecture is thus transposed to the mind in the way Descartes imagined it: it becomes the line of reasoning of thought. The execution of the plan is a development of the interior.45 Thus modern architecture, according to Perrault, does not represent, but rather invents and produces the mind. 3.2. The Observatory The planned execution of the interior is the basis of scientific acts. Although the observatory built by Claude Perrault from 1667 onward was primarily intended as an astrological observatory, it was in fact to serve the whole academy as a work station.46 In defiance of specialization, the building defines the academy through its collective acts of testifying and controlling as a “community of people who have eyes for such things […] and hands to find them.”47

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and so contradicts, in the best Cartesian sense, the entire visual tradition which considers that architecture must include a correction for the natural optical deformations experienced by the viewing body. The idea that the proportions themselves must be deformed to generate the sensory impression of regularity doesn’t make sense to a Cartesian who knows that the seeing takes place in the mind. The “correction” was much more a learning and memory process. Perrault opposes time-wasting learning and recalling with rapid recognition which frees the mind from the strictures of apparent matter, whether it be a line segment or a building. Brodsky Lacour. Lines of Thought. 132-33. Although in Perrault’s lifetime most dissections were performed in the Bibliothèque du Roi or in the Jardin des Plantes, it is clearly established that the academy’s activities were to move later to the Observatoire. It is beyond doubt that Perrault, Jean Pecquet and Adrien Auzout actively participated in these experiments. The academy had made it their rule that the control of an experiment was a collective act. No publications were authorised of “Mémoires qui ne contiennent pas de faits qui n’aient été vérifiés par toute une Compagnie, composée de gens qui ont des yeux pour ces sortes de choses.” Claude Perrault. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des animaux. Paris, 1733. Part I. 8. Followed by: “après avoir fait les dissections ensemble, les membres de la Compagnie entendaient chaque mercredi la lecture des descriptions anatomiques auxquelles Perrault ajoutait souvent ses propres réflections.” Archives de l’Académie des Sciences. Registres manuscrits. 1676 (11 mars), F78. Scientific work at home was not unusual. Dissection and vivisection experiments were per-

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Like the later Parisian Collège Royal, the Oxford Ashmolean Museum or the Petersburger Kunstkammer (cabinet of curiosities),48 the Observatoire is simultaneously a machine of observation, a stage of representation and a symbolic space in which the various sciences are brought to cooperate according to an architectonic of knowledge.49 Perrault’s outline corresponds to the organization of knowledge which Descartes develops in his Discours where he deals with the question of the nature of things, starting with a theory of light, passing through the heavens’ vaults to the earthly bodies and finishing up with the human being. According to Descartes, it is a human peculiarity to observe the nature of things. Thus it follows that humans exist only within an observatory. Perrault’s first drafts say virtually nothing about the use of the three floors: what is clear is that the actual astronomic instruments should rise up from the flat roof; beneath this, in the second floor of this building oriented along the meridian, sophisticated openings for light

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formed at Montmor’s by Pecquet, at Melchisédech Thévenot’s by Nicolaus Sténon, at Pierre Michon Bourdelot’s and at Denis’. However, it was most notable in the Jardin du Roi that anatomy and botany found exceptionally good working conditions. Cf. Joseph Schiller. “Les laboratories d’anatomie et de botanique à l’Académie des Sciences au XVII siècle.” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 42 (1964): 105. Also worth mentioning are the academy buildings in Berlin and Vienna. The Ashmolean Museum (1679-1683) was as much influenced by Giulio Camillo’s memory theatre as by Samuel Quiccheberg: in the basement there were chemistry laboratories, on the ground floor a school for natural history, on the first floor the museum, above this the library. The highlight of the royal collections was the Kunstkammer and library of Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg, with the adjacent academy of sciences (1718-34). A three-storey library and the museum were annexed to the other side of the elliptical anatomic theatres with spectator galleries in the upper stories. The tower accommodated an immense globe and no less than three observatories. Vertical communication was possible within the tower, but also via two lateral staircases, so that the access to the centre always led through the library or museum rooms. Both had galleries. Peter the Great had already planned to add a further academy of art and architecture to the physics laboratories, instrument collections and lecture halls, but this only came to pass after his death in 1725. Thomas A. Markus. Buildings & Power, Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern Building Types. London: Routledge, 1993. 190. In Perrault’s time anatomical experiments on plants and animals were also performed in the Observatoire. Schiller. Les laboratories d’anatomie. 97, 114. Michael Petzet. Claude Perrault und die Architektur des Sonnenkönigs. Der Louvre König Ludwigs XIV und das Werk Claude Perraults. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2000. 371.

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were constructed, incorporating sun clocks and a planetary calender.50 The library and the machine collection were situated on the top floor. On one of these machines Perrault once explained the anatomy of the tongue movement of the green woodpecker. The large salons were intended as assembly halls and laboratories.51 The basement rooms were designed for chemical and physical experiments. The academy’s Procès Verbaux from the 27th of August, 1690, report on the visit of the English king to whom the academy demonstrated all their activities. The demonstration of knowledge served a political if not a military purpose: according to Colbert, this citadel of sciences is the pendant of the triumphal arch which glorifies the earthly conquests of the armies of Louis XIV: “Arc de triomphe pour les conquests de terre – Observatoire pour les cieux,” notes Colbert in 1669.52 The conquest of the heavens by the sun king was to take its departure point here in observation. This concept of observation can be shown to derive from Descartes himself if the observatory is compared with its architectural model, Tycho Brahe’s Uranienburg. Perrault does not simply want to create a building from which one can observe the heavens, but rather one which, as perfect spatial order, is the mind’s foundation for clear and distinct observation.53 To perfect the mind, the inner construction of the perceptive body must itself be an experiment in the Cartesian sense; Descartes with his “ombrager les choses” approach built the bridge from astronomy to anatomy. Perrault now moves this architecture of shadows from the realm of experiment of thought to an accessible landscape, basing it on the public exchange of experience, an aspect not considered in Tycho Brahe’s princely island. The observatory is the anatomy of the heavens. Thus the learned republic can correct mistakes by advancing from the form of appearance to the exact description of the inner structure. Perraults idea of an inner 50

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The centre of the building was denoted by the shaft of a winding staircase. This shaft was intended to indicate the zenith without the help of any further instruments. Antoin Picon. Claude Perrault ou la curiosité d’un classique. Paris: Picard, 1988. 78, 202. Pierre Clément. Lettres, instructions et mémoirs de Colbert. Paris, 1861-1873. 288. Petzet. Claude Perrault. 369. Even for contemporaries the observatory, containing no ornamentation whatsoever, appeared as a model of military architecture. Picon reports with astonishment that Perrault seems to have anticipated Picard’s instruments which were only devised in 1668, whilst John Flamsteed and Christopher Wren another eight years later built an observatory in Greenwich which use Brahesian instruments. Picon. Claude Perrault. 212.

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structure takes its orientation from the Cartesian equivalent of body and space. The description of the size, form and situation of the body parts is at the centre of Perrault’s physiology when he opposes the old conception, according to which the human is the measure of all things: it cannot by any means be claimed that mankind is better proportioned than the most deformed beast, claims Perrault, since the perfection of each thing depends upon the way it relates to the purpose for which it was made.54 Thus Perrault made possible the transition from the cosmological idea to the morphological analysis of comparative anatomy. The comparative studies and the exact collective verification must construe a relationship between proportion and aim.55 Now I don’t want to claim that the observatory is a Cartesian citadel. Perrault deviates from Descartes in some important points. Precisely because he does not proceed on the assumption of the existence of God, but rather takes as his departure point the diversity of the empirical, the point which then renders Descartes vulnerable, namely the interlocking of the human intellect with its organs, leads Perrault to a different conception.56 While Descartes’ mechanics ascribed only a force of inertia to the body, Perrault’s theory of the body contains, in addition, at least toughness (dureté) and vigor (ressort). The configuration of elementary corpuscles characterizes each material differently: the finer and the flatter, the stronger the cohesion of corpuscles and the more spherical, 54

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“La perfection de chaque chose dépend du rapport qu’elle a à la fin pour laquelle elle a été faite […]. Il a fallu convenir d’une mesure et d’un module, de même que l’on fait en architecture: et considérant tout l’univers comme un grand et superbe édifice, qui a plusiers appartements d’une structure différente, on a choisi les proportions du plus noble pour régler tous les autres.” Perrault. Mémoires. Preface. Cf. Picon. Claude Perrault. 61. In order to correct the mistakes of the ancients and their Renaissance commentators, some strange experiments came to pass in the Académie des Sciences: because Plinius had claimed that the chameleon explodes with pure rage as soon as it happens upon a fig branch, “on fit monter le camèlèon sur un figuier savage poir voir si cela le renadait furieux […], mais il demaura aussi doux et aussi paisible qu’auparavant.” Archives de l’Académie des Sciences. Procès-Verbaux. 1668. Vol. 4, fol. 233v. This should also be seen in the context of the loner Lamy’s theory about the bodily parts with no function. In his Discours anatomique Guillaume Lamy comes to the conclusion that nature tries out every possible combination of organs and simply allows the non-adapted species to waste away. In the end Lamy rejects any functionality ascribed to bodily structure. Guillaume Lamy. Discours anatomiques […] avec des Réflexions sur les objections qu’on luy a faites contre sa manière de raisonner de la nature de l’homme et de l’usage des parties qui le composent. Rouen, 1675.

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the sooner they fall apart. According to Perrault, the main reason is the air-pressure and in this he follows Otto von Guericke’s experiment on the vacuum. Thus Perrault replaces Descartes kinetic approach with a theory of momentum arising from the oppositional arrangements of the bodily parts.57 The control system is not situated in the pineal gland, but rather in every part of the body. If the bodily machine resembles an organ58 then the music originates not in the intention, but rather in the interplay. Perrault counters Descartes man-made machine with the infinite interconnection of mechanisms: “Tous les corps qui composent l’univers sont tellement serrés et presses les uns contre les autres, que pour attirer un corps, il n’y a qu’à lui faire une place, dans laquelle il est nécessairement poussé par les autres.” (“All parts the universe is composed of are tightened and pressed against one another in such a way that in order to attach a new part one merely needs to clear a place for it in which it shall necessarily be compressed by the other parts.”)59 Thus in order to observe the details in nature, one only needs to clear an empty space corresponding to one of these singularities. So the experimental clearing of a space corresponds to the probability of an explanation. Perrault’s leaving the individual rooms in the observatory largely undefined may be due to this intention. Temporary structures can create an appropriate place for the object of investigation in the midst of educated eyes. An elephant requires a different space than an otter.60 In this way Perrault draws more radical consequences than Descartes from the role of the architectonic imagination, since he claims that there is always a multitude of possible models of explanation for physical experiments. The likelihood of the model depends upon the space which it renders to the specific configuration of matter, so that its observation and manipulation can be possible. Thus Perrault integrates precisely the diversity of the senses and their function in the experiment: the task of architecture is to bring the eye and the hand into

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Whilst Descartes had also explained movement as a consequence of the musclecontracting action of subtle mind-bodies (esprits animaux), for Perrault the activity of the nerves effects the opposite, namely relaxation. Perrault. Essais de Physique. 162. Picon. Claude Perrault. 73. Additionally, quite consistently with the aforementioned, he grants the animals a soul. Perrault. Mémoires. Paris, 1733. Perrault. Essais de physique. 138. In 1681 the group around Claude Perrault had the elephant of Versailles dissected in Jardin du Roi in the presence of the king. A theatre is built for this purpose. Similar special contraptions befitting the object of investigation are designed for the Bibliothèque du Roi.

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play in different ways – Perrault’s anatomic salon facilitates ‘seeing through’ and understanding. 4. Experimental Spaces: Architecture, Action, Science In conclusion, I would like to generalize my historic example. In order for something to be an observable, geometrically representable fact, it must correspond to a structure. The structure elevates the object from circumstances or its course. The object must then fit into a schema which presents it as a part of the world. This configuration of structure and schema is by no means obvious. It posits both an ordering as well as its circumvention. Space structures the object by defining its profile even if this structure can neither be clearly reduced to the characteristics of a thing nor to the situational constellation of spatial qualities. In this sense perceived structural qualities are neither distinguishing characteristics of an object nor characteristics of a carrier which they further qualify. If, say, black represents a quality in this sense, then the ontological position of black is not given through that ‘relational’ moment where black is the characteristic of a wound, but black is rather more a quality in space without any further relation to a wound that has black as a distinguishing characteristic. The room’s intervention is essentially subtraction, liberation, disclosure. The ability of space to act in this way does not rely in the first instance on the scalpel or the microscope, but is rather determined beforehand in the embodiment of perception. The dimensions of the exact conception and presentation are dependent on the experimental configuration of space. If the body as a thinking instrument is the spatial reference point for Descartes as well as for Immanuel Kant in his orientational thinking, with Emmanuel Levinas and Foucault it becomes clear that the suffering and pleasure-taking body, more so than the doubting body, can be seen as the condition of existence. The staging of the body determines its possibilities of development. The gaze determines the body. The clinical glance turns the body into a piece of treatable information. According to whether the body is seen as being the origin or the manifestation of this information, individuality is the biography of the illness or its disciplination. Foucault sees the clinical organic body as a three dimensional space in which the toing and froing of the gaze between the visible sign of the illness and its residence in the organ tissue creates a demarcated volume. The gaze is in the body. Anatomy is a read-

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ing through the forms which reduces the organic volumes to the area of the skin tissue and through this gaze approximates at the surface the organs to the mathematical model. The tissue surfaces are the perceptive correlate of the surface gaze. In so far as the surface is no longer the structure of the observer, but rather the figure of the observed, the gaze is imprinted into the tissue. With the creation of volume through the tactile gaze, new spaces open up with opaque masses. The principle of this gazing exercise is repetition which construes the individuality of the case from the observational process. Thereby the clinical project gives up the idea of the ‘ideal observer,’ which was inherent in the old medicine and replaces this ideality with the unlimited experience of the multitude of observers and cases. With the conception of the location of an illness, clinical empiricism becomes constituted by a different politics of location. According to Foucault, the hermeneutical practice in relation to the definite text surface corresponds to this medical empiricism.61 This pre-clinical certainty, on the other hand, prefigures today’s genetic concept of the body which reduces the bodily organization to sequence programming. Thus the gaze slinks out of the body and returns to the classic interpretation of essences. On the other hand the computerizing and genetic cartography reduces the organic body to a registration space. The experimental space demarcates body, perception, and processes from one another in such a way that the differentiation between a thing and its circumstances is possible from a particular perspective. The situatedness of the gaze, e.g. the perspective, is transposed to the object as a mode of presentation. Thus the conditions of observation pass certain contingencies on to the object so that the perceived can be disputed. The disputation presupposes a certain space which not only demonstrates the diverse aspects of corporeality, but also presents the 61

“Ce qui est modifié donnant lieu à la médecine anatomo-clinique, ce n’est donc pas la simple surface de contact entre le sujet connaissant et l’objet connu; c’est la disposition plus générale du savoir qui détermine les positions réciproques et le jeu mutuel de celui qui doit connaître et de ce qui est à connaître. L’accès du regard médical à l’intérieur du corps malade n’est pas la continuation d’un mouvement d’approche qui se serait développé plus ou moins régulièrement depuis le jour où le regard, à peine savant, du premier médecin s’est porté de loin sur le corps du premier patient ; c’est le résultat d’une refonte au niveau du savoir luimême, et non pas au niveau des connaissances, accumulées, affinées, approfondies, ajustées. […] Il ne s’agit pas du même jeu […]. L’expérience médicale va substituer, à l’enregistrement des fréquences, le repérage du point fixe […]. La notion de siège est substitué à celle de classe.” Michel Foucault. Naissance de la clinique. Une archéologie du regard médical. Paris: PUF, 1963. 139-42.

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fact of this diversity as an inner structure. Thus it defines the materiality of the disputation. The mode of presentation thereby both eliminates and articulates at the same time the physicality of the subject. In this sense the architecture of science is performative. Without anatomic theatres, the phenomenon of ‘human bodies’ as the structural equivalent of a three dimensional object turned inside out would not exist. Its mode of appearance would not be testable. There would be no collective of perception. Science differs from other forms of knowledge in its specific architecture which transforms contingency into necessity, in equating the surfaces of the object’s structure with the surfaces of the anatomic mapping. This observational standardization results from modifications of the contrast. Once the results embody the experimental spatial order,62 architecture has succeeded in automating the perceived and perception. In order to guarantee reproducibility and consistency, the stage-setting creates a place of normality free of distortion; like the baroque drama, scientific architecture attempts to universalize this normal place, i.e. to impress everyone, if possible, with an undistorted gaze. Something internal appears in this as a medium sized body contrasted with a repertoire of profiles. The possibility of a structure in space is indebted to a space in-between which is always part of perception (depending on certain curvatures and transparencies). The intermediary space as presentation of a difference between spatial view (internal) and corporeal view (external) causes the evidential experience. The architectonic experiment consists of the planned alteration of modes of presentation. In the presentation the object takes on qualitative nuances in space which it lacks in an abstract reconstruction. Seen abstractly an object can be uniformly coloured, but presented in the light it will always appear with other colours, shadows, etc. In addition, the variants in the amphitheatre forms suggest a particular political orientation of the observation, i.e. in the situation and organization of the collective observation. The observational apparatus determines the organisational form and the power to dispose of knowledge. Buildings are thus only one side of the architectonic of space and body. Consequently, we should not only see buildings as aesthetic, 62

At least six spatial sectors are thereby configured by the scientific architecture: 1. manipulation space (process, records), 2. observational space, 3. comparison space 4. application space, 5. social space (disputation), 6. literary space.

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technical or investment objects, but primarily as social forms. As forms they produce power in at least three ways: a) The form of a building produces a powerful experience (monumental, sublime: churches).63 (b) The form of the building organizes the actors by producing or structuring their relations – school and prison or strangers, visitors and inhabitants. Power arises through the asymmetries of access, control and appearance.64 (c) The form embodies knowledge (Observatoire). 63

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Three component forms can be derived from Paul Frankl. Entwicklungsphasen der Neueren Baukunst. Leipzig: Teubner, 1914. 1. Spatial composition – the geometry of space. Its medium is the plan. 2. Mass and surface, the concrete material which forms the space. Frankl’s term is ‘Körperlichkeit’ (corporeality). 3. The effect of light, colour and other optical phenomena which produce alternating images with each focal point which fuse into one sensation in the mind. Only with the combination of these three components in architecture is meaning lent to the world. In Charles Estienne’s (1545) semi-circular form of the anatomic theatre (Vitruvian model with a proscenium and even a tarpaulin roof) three classes of spectators were separated in the public area through specified outer stairways: professors of medicine were closest to the dissection table, in the second row were the examination candidates, above this with no differentiation were the medical students, surgeons and the general public interested in natural science. The octagonal vaulted theatre from the end of the 17th Century built by the royal Académie de la Chirurgie in the Parisian Rue des Cordeliers preserved an astonishingly formal approach: the main entrance to the theatre led through a distinctive fissure in the seating tiers directly to the dissection table, while the public had to find their way to their seats through two narrow side entrances. In these circumstances the anatomist made a ceremonial entrance. The steeply ascending tiers of the anatomical theatre following the Paduan model avoided obstructions and gave the audience an almost horizontal view of the action, a maximal view of the cadaver. In flatter or in completely flat lecture halls as are common in schools, maximum eye contact between teacher and pupil is demanded. The movement from the fully circular theatre to the horse-shoe to the semi-circular lecture hall corresponds to an increasing asymmetry of power. The complete circular form totally embeds the teacher in the experience shared by the public, since for each participant the centrally directed gaze takes in those sitting opposite. As soon as the audience are sitting in a quadrangle arrangement and the entrance of the teacher is connected with a private laboratory or preparatory room which remains hidden from the public, an asymmetrical power abyss emerges between the teacher, sitting at the front, and the audience who are not present to one another whether they be sitting in a reduced semi-circle or in straight rows. This spatial arrangement ressembled the liturgical lay-out where the events in the choir and at the altar were hidden by a screen, most clearly in the orthodox iconostasis which completely shielded the sanctum. Markus. Buildings & Power. 232, 240. The growth of the scientific presentation through the proliferation of the theatre and its increasing size transformed the ‘upper class theatre’ into a public spectacle which is manifest in Gondoins anatomy theatre built to accommodate 1400 spectators. So far two types of power mechanisms have been recognised in the knowledge-producing buildings. In the anatomy theatre, the relation speaker/listeners only required a segregation

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The spaces determine the scientific nature of the experiment through social and epistemic dimensions (possibility of universalism). On the other hand, it is the experiment which first constitutes with these spaces (the anatomy as) experimental science (possibility of concretizing). If the anatomical theatres of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are compared with the achievements since the anatomic theatres of the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris, then it can be seen that scientific paradigms change in accordance with their locations, but also in accordance with the recognition which may be generated by this change. It is only with the staging of experimental anatomy, with its access to experimental facts, that a cultural scheme is created which increases the probability of these facts.65 Anatomic theatres have the

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on the basis of a temporary status – no class relations, as generally speaking after the lecture the students were to be the lecturer’s equals. By contrast, the institutions of infotainment and public instruction fixed a status differential, often further accentuated through class differences when connections between financing, selection and profiling were concerned. Whereas the general public, once granted admission, were to be amused in the anatomic theatres, special spaces, and preferential seating existed there for the professorial colleagues. In a third type, however, the teacher/listener relationship changes when the scientific and social space is divided, because the ideas, theories, and experiments are being discussed amongst equals. In the prestige laden societies, academies, and institutes, members present their ideas to equally eminent colleagues in a room which is simultaneously a meeting and a lecture space. Speakers and listeners were on an equal footing, close to one another, on the same level. At the same time the presidents had a supervisory function, but this did not automatically mean he had more authority, The mutually shared knowledge is not open for dispute, and access is withheld from others which can be read from the seating arrangements squashed up against the walls for assistants and helpers; these latter tucked away in the academy niches often seemed to belong to the furniture. The essence of social spaces is imprinted in the lecture halls. In order to increase the power of these halls through impenetrable control and demonstration, it is necessary that the visitors, the spectators, catch only a glimpse at a time of a body of control-knowledge. The fragment is presented in a dramatic spectacle. The interrelation of stage architecture and presentation provokes the experimental form. The functioning of prisons does not depend upon whether or not the inmates comprehend and acknowledge their meaning. These spaces classify and punish. In exactly the same way the scientific setups do not produce knowledge through cultural meanings, but rather through social configurations and by performing experimental programs. There still exist posters that invite everyone to the anatomical theatre, who is interested to learn about the ‘structure of man’: “c’est le cas des cours d’anatomie dont certains sont publics et sont annoncés par voie d’affiche; d’autres sont ouverts à toute personne ‘désirant s’instruire sur la structure de l’homme‘ (Affiche placardée le 18 avril 1747 par le Collège de chirurgie d‘Orléans).” Charles Bedel and Pierre Huard. Médecine et pharmacie au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Hermann, 1986. 203.

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monopoly on the inner structure of the body (arbitrary). This they impart in exchange for the schema of general perception. At the same time, the architectonic definition of perception, corporeality and process define what counts as an experiment and also that it is the experiment which counts. Translation: Shivaun Conroy

WORKS CITED Archives de l’Académie des Sciences. Procès-Verbaux. Paris, 1690. Archives de l’Académie des Sciences. Registre de manuscrits. Paris, 1676. Bacon, Francis. The New Organon and Related Writings. Ed. and intro. Fulton H. Anderson. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960. Bacon, Francis. The Works of Francis Bacon. 1860. 10 vols. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989. Bedel, Charles and Pierre Huard. Médecine et pharmacie au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Hermann, 1986. Brockbank, William. “Old Anatomical Theatres and What Took Place Therein.” Medical History XII (1968): 371-84. Brodsky Lacour, Claudia. Lines of Thought, Discourse, Architectonics, and the Origin of Modern Philosophy. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. Clément, Pierre. Lettres, instructions et mémoirs de Colbert. Paris, 1861-1873. Descartes, René. Oeuvres complètes. 13 vols. Ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: Vrin, 1999. Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. 3 vols. Trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Eriksson, Ruben, ed., trans. with intro. and notes. Andreas Vesalius’ First Public Anatomy at Bologna 1540. An Eyewitness Report. Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1959. Estienne, Charles. L’Oeuvre de Charles Estienne et l’école anatomique Parisienne. Ed. Pierre Huard and Mirko Drazen Grmek. Paris: Cercle du livre précieux, 1965. Foucault, Michel. Naissance de la clinique. Une archéologie du regard médical. Paris: PUF, 1963. Frankl, Paul. Entwicklungsphasen der Neueren Baukunst. Leipzig: Teubner, 1914. Galison, Peter and Emily Thompson eds. The Architecture of Science. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Gelfand, Toby. “The ‘Paris Manner’ of Dissection. Student Anatomical Dissection in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46.2 (1972): 99-130. Herrmann, Wolfgang. The Theory of Claude Perrault. London: Zwemmer, 1973. Jardine, Nicholas. The Scenes of Inquiry. On the Reality of Questions in the Sciences. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.

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Lamy, Guillaume. Discours anatomiques […] avec des Réflexions sur les objections qu’on luy a faites contre sa manière de raisonner de la nature de l’homme et de l’usage des parties qui le composent. Rouen, 1675. Markus, Thomas A. Buildings & Power, Freedom and Control in the Origin of Modern Building Types. London: Routledge, 1993. Payot, Daniel. Le philosophe et l’architecte. Sur quelques déterminations philosophiques de l’idée d’architecture. Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1982. Perrault, Claude. Essais de Physique. Paris, 1680-88. Perrault, Claude. Les dix livres d’architecture de Vitruve. Paris, 1684. Perrault, Claude. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des animaux. Paris, 1733. Petzet, Michael. Claude Perrault und die Architektur des Sonnenkönigs. Der Louvre König Ludwigs XIV und das Werk Claude Perraults. Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2000. Picon, Antoin. Claude Perrault ou la curiosité d’un classique. Paris: Picard, 1988. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg and Michael Hagner, eds. Die Experimentalisierung des Lebens. Experimentalsysteme in den biologischen Wissenschaften. 1850/1950. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993. Roberts, K. B. “The Contexts of Anatomical Illustrations.” The Ingenious Machine of Nature. Four Centuries of Art and Anatomy. Ed. Mimi Cazort, Monique Kornell, and K. B Roberts. [Exhibit. cat.] Ottowa: National Gallery of Canada, 1996. 71103. Rückbrod, Konrad. “Das Anatomische Theater – Archetypus des modernen Hörsaals.” Medizinischer Monatsspiegel MERCK (1974): 97-114. Schiller, Joseph. “Les laboratories d’anatomie et de botanique à l’Académie des Sciences au XVII siècle.” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 42 (1964): 97-114. Schramm, Helmar. “Theatralität und Öffentlichkeit – Vorstudien zur Begriffsgeschichte von ‘Theater.’” Weimarer Beiträge 36.2 (1990): 223-39.

HANS-CHRISTIAN VON HERRMANN

Scenes of Writing: The Florentine Uffizi as Kunstkammer, Laboratory, and Stage

Historically, from both an architectural and an administrative perspective, the Florentine Uffizi mark the end of the transformation of the city republic of Florence into a dynastically governed territorial state. “The medival democratic polity” possessed in the words of Lewis Mumford an “internal weakness.” “The wide division of power and responsibility put heavy demands upon each citizen’s time; and though rapid rotation in office – six Priors of Florence served terms of only two months, the others for only a year – was a safeguard against corruption, it also undermined efficiency and was a handicap in developing a long-term policy.” Characteristic of modern statehood, on the other hand, was “a permanent bureaucracy, permanent courts of justice, permanent archives and records, and permanent buildings, more or less centrally located, for conducting the official business.” Furthermore, explains Mumford, with the tax, police and passport institutions, new forms of administration came into being which pertained to a certain territory and rendered the movement of goods and people, calculable both economically and from an internal security point of view. “To house all these new bureaucratic functions,” he continues, “a new type of building must be erected: the office building. The original model for this structure is that designed by Vasari in Florence, the Uffizi (the Offices), whose interior was once crowned with an open top floor loggia. Here is the original cliché of bureaucratic architecture at its best, fortunately modest in scale, dull but not formidable, destined to be reproduced with minor variations on a monumental scale, with grinding monotony, in the bureaucratic purlieus of Paris, St Petersburg, Washington, and their

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imitators. The repetitions and regimentations of the bureaucratic system left an even deeper mark on the city than did the new army.”1 With their rows and stacks of reception rooms, offices, clerks’ rooms and archives, the Uffizi are located at the beginning of a process during which the European secular power became ever more the anonymous machine. And as such it appears at the beginning of the 20th century in Franz Kafka’s novels, which not only deal with the bureaucracy’s resistance to narrative, but also contain a reflection on the relationship between writing and power which is extremely revealing concerning the significance of the meeting in the Uffizi of administration, Kunstkammer, laboratory and theatre. “Is it really Castle service Barnabas is doing,” wonders the land-surveyor K. in Kafka’s novel The Castle, in view of the rather unsuccessful efforts of the messenger available to him. [G]ranted, he goes into the offices, but are the offices part of the real Castle? And even if there are offices actually in the Castle, are they the offices that Barnabas is allowed to enter? He’s admitted into certain rooms, but they’re only a part of the whole, for there are barriers behind which there are more rooms. Not that he’s actually forbidden to pass the barriers, but he can’t very well push past them once he has met his superiors and been dismissed by them. Besides, everybody is watched there, at least so we believe. And even if he did push on farther, what good would it be to him if he had no official duties to carry out and was a mere intruder? And you mustn’t imagine that these barriers are a definite dividing-line; Barnabas is always impressing that on me. There are barriers even at the entrance to the rooms where he’s admitted, so you see there are barriers he can pass, and they’re just the same as the ones he’s never yet passed, which looks as if one ought not to suppose that behind the ultimate barriers the offices are any different from those Barnabas has already seen. Only that’s what we do suppose in moments of depression.2

The castle, which entangles the land-surveyor in an impenetrable dependency relationship, exhibits upon entry the form of a labyrinth of offices of which one cannot even say whether they are part of the castle or rather just its shield. They seem to line up endlessly without the centre of power ever being reachable, and thus build barriers which are not impassable border-blocks, but whose principle is rather to function as a continual postponement or as an indication of power. As Cornelia Vismann formulates in her media-history of law, Kafka’s ‘Kanzleien’ (as the offices are called in the German original) “produce and confine an 1 2

Lewis Mumford. The City in History. Its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. 404-06. Franz Kafka. The Castle. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. 228-29.

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arcane space; they exclude and establish connections. ‘Kanzleien’ are etymologically and functionally derived from barriers,”3 namely from the Roman cancelli which cut off access to the area around a political or official assembly. Kafka’s novels bear testimony to a power free of all transcendence or political theology, but the fact that the durability and effectiveness of state rule rested soley in the hands of the administration was known from the very beginning in upper Italy, the home of the invention of modern bureaucracy. And so the satirical novel Momus – which is also a treatise on the princes; Momus seu de principe – written by the secretary of the papal Curia, Leon Battista Alberti, contains a reflection on the meaning of officialdom which leaves nothing to be desired in terms of plain speaking. (Momus, just for the record, is the name of a village secretary in Kafka’s Castle-novel.) A tale related by the ferryman Charon, which is a key to the understanding of the whole text, concerns a quarrel between king Megalophos and his herald Peniplusius, who have just boarded Charon’s ferry to cross the river into the underworld, but cannot agree upon who is entitled to more space. Peniplusius, a positive counterpart to the deceitful princes’ counsellor Momus, calls both himself and his royal master “public servant[s]” (publicus servus) both of them being “subject to the laws.”4 “[Y]ou think,” he says addressing Megalophos, you are happier in your rank: let’s see whether that’s true. […] You used to spend the entire night either in wine-soaked sleep or in debauchery, while I stayed awake on watch, guarding the city from fire, the citizens from their enemies and you yourself from the plots of your own family. You authorized laws, I promulgated them. When you held a council, the people often objected loudly, but they all listened to me most attentively when I made public proclamations. On military expeditions you harangued the soldiers; I gave them the signal to fight. The soldiery used to listen to you respectfully, but when I blew the trumpet they engaged with the enemy or retreated. In short, everyone flattered you, but there was no one who disobeyed me. […] But you will say, “I was certainly able to punish opponents and do them harm. Who was more powerful and better armed than I when it came to this kind of havoc? Certainly you could have harmed one citizen or another, but not without crisis, tumult

3

4

“>Kanzleien@ erstellen und beschränken einen arkanen Raum, schließen aus, stellen Verbindungen her. Kanzleien sind etymologisch und funktional sogar aus Schranken hervorgegangen.” Cornelia Vismann. Akten. Medientechnik und Recht. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer-Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000. 34. Leon Battista Alberti. Momus. Latin-English. Ed. Sarah Knight, Virginia Brown, and James Hankins. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. 345.

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and the combined force of many other people. If I’d wanted I could have destroyed the whole city by keeping silent and sleeping.5

The prince, it is true, can introduce laws and deliver orders, but he cannot guarantee their execution or transmission, as the power which he embodies is not held up by his person but by his office, which he must fulfil like a role, whilst the effectiveness of power rests on its messengers alone. The counterposition of prince and folk in comparison to the unobtrusive operations of the public servant is a mere theatre, in which the prince seeks to cover himself through intrigues and representational efforts. “Your adherents,” continues Peniplusius, claim that you were your own master and master of all goods and treasure. In reality, I not only could have destroyed everything as I said, but I was also in charge of all goods and treasure, so that I could distribute them exactly as I pleased. Nothing happened in any province, in any public or private place, unless I wanted it to. Did any of your own goods and treasure prosper as you wished? You always wanted more than you could get, while I never wanted more from the world than there was, for I wanted everything to be just as it was, and no more. In the end, if you lost your goods you would have hanged yourself, whereas I would have laughed.6

Certainly Alberti’s administration is no Kafkaesque machine, but rather an art in the sense of the humanist artes, that is to say an art of collecting, ordering and technically metamorphosing the objects. However, the mockery directed here at the prince at a time when the institution of the modern state was being established is – all laughter aside – hardly any less grim than Kafka’s literature. When Alberti wrote his novel, the building of the Uffizi still lay in the distant future, but Florence had only a few years earlier taken a decisive step towards a modern administration. Since the end of the 13th century, wealth deriving from landed property had steadily dwindled in significance, whilst the new, mobile wealth of the merchants and artisans evaded the old tax system (the estimo). In fact by the beginning of the 14th century, numerous inhabitants of the city and surroundings no longer possessed any land whatsoever.7 On the 24th of May, 1427, it was decreed by law that a special office should be erected for the drafting of the catasto which was to record the wealth of all the citizens within the city walls and replace the taxation on landed property with a 5 6 7

Alberti. Momus. 347, 349. Alberti. Momus. 349, 351. Cf. David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Les Toscans et leur familles. Une étude du catasto Florentin de 1427. Paris: Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1978. 22-24.

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taxation on movable goods. To begin with, the decision was primarily an outcome of military considerations. In the many wars against Visconti’s Milan, Florence had adopted “a war tactic of financial exhaustion”8 and in order to continue this, it was essential to install a more effective tax system in place of the old. The record of each individual house and its wealth thus begun, marked a turning point in the Florentine administrative history, in power breaking away from the nomus of church or private landed-property and from then on residing in the anonymous operation of registration. Power, in other words, was now fully domiciled in the medium and institutionalisation of writing. The registers and balance sheets of the upper Italian merchants not only reflected this form of administration but also provided its historical role-model.9 The government, and later the prince, therefore, resembled the head of a household who has all his subordinates keep books in order to account for themselves. Hence Leon Battista Albertis’ dialogical treatise Della Familglia : Messer Benedetto Alberti used to say, and he was a prudent man not in public affairs only but also in every aspect of private civic life, that it was a good sign if a merchant had ink-stained fingers. […] He considered it essential for a merchant or anyone who does business with a large number of persons always to write everything down, to note all transactions, and to keep a record of every item brought in or taken out. As he watches over the enterprise, he should almost always have his pen in hand. I for one think this an excellent precept. If you put things off from today to tomorrow, they elude you or are forgotten, and the agent finds excuses and occasions either for dishonesty or for carelessness like his master.10

In order to fend off everyday forgetfulness and disorder, the merchant created a regime of ink and paper, as these alone allowed an insight into all the important operations in his business without himself ever being on location. In this sense, centralisation appears as an effect of a registry which ensnares everything and everyone within its confines. It is just this that a father [the head of a merchant household which comprised both private and business spheres] should do. […] You know the spider and how he constructs his web. All the threads spread out in rays, each of which, however long, has its source, its roots or birthplace, as we might say, at the center. From there 8 9 10

Cf. ibid. 20. Cf. Vismann. Akten. 145. Leon Battista Alberti. The Family in Renaissance Florence (Della Famiglia). Trans. and intro. Renée Neu Watkins. Illinois: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. 67.

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each filament starts and moves outward. The most industrious creature himself then sits at that spot and has his residence there. He remains in that place once his work is spun and arranged, but keeps so alert and watchful that if there is a touch on the finest and most distant thread he feels it instantly, instantly appears, and instantly takes care of the situation. Let the father of a family do likewise. Let him arrange his affairs and place them so that all look up to him alone as head, so that all are directed by him and by him attached to secure foundations. The father of the family should reside, then, in the midst of all, alert and quick to feel and to see everything, ready, wherever there is need of intervention, to provide it immediately.11

The regular bookkeeping installed a system of visibility and control which collected all the activities of a household in the medium of paper and ink in one single setting. Thus Albertis’ spider web and thread metaphor refers on the one hand to the rows and columns of the cashbook and register, but on the other hand to the treatise Della Pittura (On Painting) of the same author. Vision, it says here, is based upon “visual rays,” “rays that serve the sight” who “measure” the surface of objects and in this way then “carry the form of the thing seen to sense.”12 Accordingly, says Alberti, We can imagine those rays to be like the finest hairs of the head, or like a bundle, tightly bound within the eye where the sense of sight has its seat. The rays, gathered together within the eye, are like a stalk; the eye is like a bud which extends its shoots rapidly and in a straight line to the plane opposite.13

Not only does the commercial bookkeeping enable a central and comprehensive vision, but vision perspectively understood is also, conversely, an administrational access to the objects with its specific register in the painting. Alberti thus secured the geometrically exact registration of the world within the picture through the implementation of a quite non-metaphorical net or veil (velo) which was pushed between the eye and the observed object and thereby technically secured the fixation of its form on a surface for painting. “Among [his] friends” Alberti would call this invention an “intersection” (intersegatione) as it cut through the visual pyramids formed by the visual rays: It is a thin veil, finely woven, dyed whatever colour pleases you and with larger threads [marking out] as many parallels as you prefer. This veil I place

11 12 13

Alberti. The Family. 76. Idem. On Painting. Trans. with intro. and notes John Spencer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966. 45-46. Ibid. 46.

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between the eye and the thing seen, so the visual pyramid penetrates through the thinness of the veil.14

If one places such a grid over the surface for painting it becomes possible to directly transfer the outlines. Here in this parallel [of the veil] you will see the forehead, in that the nose, in another the cheeks, in this lower one the chin and all outstanding features in their place. On panels or on walls, divided into similar parallels, you will be able to put everything in its place.15

Thus commercial bookkeeping, perspective painting, and public administration all catch their objects in the same manner with nets spun from graphical operations. The trend towards centralization in republican times, especially marked in Florence, was to find both its technical administrative and architectonic consummation at the end of the 16th century in Cosimo de’Medici and Giorgio Vasari’s building of the Uffizi. In 1540, Cosimo I, duke of Florence since 1537, moved his residence from the Palazzo Medici to the Palazzo Vecchio. This move was accompanied by a whole series of building projects for the Piazza della Signoria which, however, due to the unstable political situation were not carried out.16 Nonetheless, in 1546, the partial demolition of an old dilapidated quarter of the city was begun; the area extended from the Palazzo Vecchio to the Arno and was the home to artisans and prostitutes. The broad aisle which emerged through the demolition work of 1546 was known as strada nuova and remained undeveloped until 1561. Vasari was given the contract for the design and construction of the Uffizi in 1560. This is also the year in which Cosimo officially incorporated the defeated Sienna into his own domain, thereby doubling its area. After the demolition of the last of the remaining houses on the terrain, a new building was to arise in which thirteen administrative bodies, previously spread out over the whole city, were to find residence.17 Each authority was allotted its own section in the building, with reception room, office and clerks’ rooms on the ground floor, archives in the intermediary floor invisible from the outside, and further offices on the first floor. The most important of the newly accommo14 15 16 17

Ibid. 68-69. Ibid. 69. Cf. Leon Satkowski. Giorgio Vasari. Architect and Courtier. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. 30-32. Cf. Johanna Lessmann. Studien zu einer Baumonographie der Uffizien Giorgio Vasaris in Florenz. Diss. U. Bonn, 1975. 20-32.

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Fig. 1: After Guiseppe Zocchi The Uffizi and Palazzo Vecchio (1744).

dated offices was the Magistrato dei Nove Conservatori del Dominio, a completely new institution, which was founded in 1560 through princely decree and replaced the two republican administrative bodies. For the administrative cohesion of the duchy, this was the most important office and dealt with questions of finance, economy and territorialborders. Seen from a historical architectural perspective, the Uffizi continue the line of Italian communal palaces and their modern successors – a case in point being for example Michael Angelo’s Palazzo dei Conservatori built on the Roman statehouse.18 Unique for such an administrative building is, however, the effect, disturbing in every respect, of orienting oneself in the direction of the extremely extended longitudinal axis. From here the two parallel wings of the Uffizi border an area of about 140 metres in length and about 20 metres in breadth, which one could describe as a street, an elongated plaza or as a courtyard. The almost dizzying depth-effect of the whole complex links it closely with the stage sets of the time and has prompted the history of architecture to speak of a scenographic conception of Vasari’s19 (fig. 1). If one looks 18 19

Cf. ibid. 146-54. Cf. ibid. 193-94.

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Fig. 2: Giambologna Statue of Cosimo I on the horizontal section of the Uffizi (1585).

towards the Palazzo Vecchio, the facades running towards each other have a similar effect to the wings of a perspectival stage which direct the gaze to the set’s backdrop. The old centre of republican power thus resembled a set such as those Vasari prepared in great numbers for the festive parades and theatrical performances in Florence. As for the spectators of this theatre, one discovers that these are not actually the visitors of the plaza, formed by the two longitudinal buildings of the Uffzi; the point of perspective is not at ground level, but at the height of the 1st floor where only the clerk’s rooms were situated and which was closed to the public. Nonetheless, it is exactly here in the middle of the facade of the transversal building that one comes across a sculpture by Giambologna of Cosimo I to either side of which lie two figures in allegory of the strong and the just, a decided allusion to Michelangelo’s

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design of the new vestry of San Lorenzo.20 This statue of the prince and owner of the building is the only spectator of the theatre being enacted between the two wings of the Uffizi. He is the spider within whose web – Vasari’s huge building – the visitors are visually captured (fig. 2). However, it isn’t only in the direction of the city centre that the street ravine of the Uffizi functions like a theatrical show room, but also going towards the Arno riverbank; the loggia type construction connecting both parts of the building, upon which Giambologna’s sculpture is quite appropriate, has the form of a triumphal arch such as that forming the rear closure of numerous perspectival stage sets from the 16th century. Following the distinction between three forms of stage laid down in 1545 in the second volume of Sebastian Serlios’ Archtitettura (canonical in the 16th century), one could say that the Uffizi, in view of the city of the late Middle Ages, forms the scene of a comedy (fig. 5), and in view of the transversal building and the sculpture of the prince on the other hand, a tragedy. Finally, the facades of the Uffizi facing the river – which with the views they afford of the Palazzo Vecchio, starkly recall the Scenae Frons of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza – extend the stage effect of the whole building right over to the opposite bank. The transformation of the old city into a theatre set and the centralisation of the administration in the sense of modern statehood are two occurrences which appear to be closely related in the Uffizi. In this sense Bernardo Buontalentis construction of the Teatro Mediceo – opened in 1586 in the east wing of the building – can be considered a continuation and magnification of this basic theatrical structure. The plan to erect a fixed stage in the Uffizi is said to derive from Vasari; in practice, however, it was only realized after his death in 1574 by his successor Buontalenti who had the unused assembly room in the Piano Nobile converted. The audience found their way to the theatre (which at the end of the 19th century in the course of an expansion of the art gallery once again completely disappeared) by means of the large staircase designed by Vasari running from the ground floor to the 1st floor. Today, the three doors of the former vestibule with the bust of Francesco I by Giambologna, the former entrance door to the left, through which one now enters the copper-plates’ cabinet, as well as the three roof balconies which emerged during restoration work on the Botticelli room of the gallery in 1975, are all that recall the location which was a centre of European theatre art around 1600. Theatrically20

Cf. Andreas Grote. Florenz. Gestalt und Geschichte eines Gemeinwesens. 7th rev. ed. Munich: Prestel, 1997. 393-94.

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aesthetically, the performances in Teatro Mediceo mark both the high point and the end of court theatre in the Italian Renaissance. What had begun in the 15th century in Rome and Ferrara as a philological construction of primarily ancient-Roman theatre had risen here to an art production combining drama, painting, music, song, and dance and incorporated the spectator space. Alongside hearing and sight, sometimes even the sense of smell was included with the spraying of perfumes according to the Roman model. The opulence of the performance is conveyed today in the descriptions and set plans which have been passed down to us.21 As far as technology was concerned, the Teatro Mediceo, measuring 50 metres in length, 20 metres in breadth and 14 metres in height, with its cloud apparatuses and rapid set changes, had reached a standard approaching that of the Baroque metamorphic stage. An engraving by Jacques Callot (fig. 3) shows the room during a performance in the carnival of 1617. In the background, positioned at one of the narrow sides, you can see the stage whose depth extended back 12m at first, later becoming almost 15m. The portal was about 3.5m high with a two part red velvet curtain opening out to either side which, in comparison to today’s big opera houses and theatres, corresponds to a ratio of almost exactly 1:2. Running around the three remaining sides of the room were tribunelike rows of ascending seats reserved for the ladies. The ordering of the seating rows in a longitudinal direction, clearly evident in Callos’ engraving, owed not least to the fact that during the interlude the events moved into the spectator area. The sidewalls with their sculptures, pilasters, niches and balustrades seem to have been made of marble. The ground of the spectator room dropped towards the stage by about 1.3 meters, in order to guarantee a good view from the back of the room and in the middle axis as well, there was a podium (the palco dei Principi) upon which the nobility took their seats. The remaining gentlemen grouped themselves on benches around this symbolic centre. During an opera performance in October of the year 1600, the room is said to have afforded space to 3000 men and 800 women.

21

See on this and the following Mario Fabbri et al. Il Luogo Teatrale a Firenze. Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, Parigi. [Exhibit. cat. Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Museo Mediceo, 31.03.-31.10.1975] Milan: Electa, 1975. Alois Maria Nagler. Theatre Festivals of the Medici. 1539-1637. 1964. New York: Da Capo Press, 1976.

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Fig. 3: Jacques Callot, intermedium in the Teatro Mediceo (1617, Set by Giulio Parigi).

In the years before the construction of the Teatro Mediceo, the Medici’s big celebrations took place in the Salone dei Cinquencento,

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Fig. 4: Baldassare Lanci, stage design for a performance in the Salone dei Cinquecento (1569).

the room of 500, in the Palazzo Vecchio. For a comedy performance in the year 1569, Baldassari Lanci, an engineer from Urbino in the service of the Medici, designed a stage set depicting the Palazzo Vecchio – the actual building in which the performance took place – showing it exactly as it was then, architectonically framed by the new – as yet incomplete – Uffizi building whose construction had begun in 1561. Although Lanci had already stopped using the static angle-wings, using instead the Florentine system of rotating periaktoi,22 one clearly recognises in his design the adaptation to the comedy scene model as prescribed by Serlio (fig. 5). The east wing of the Uffizi, visible on the far right, has shrunk together with the portico in height and length to the dimension of a single house. On the left hand side at the rear of the Loggia dei Lanzi, corresponding to a large extent with Serlio’s comedy 22

Cf. Nagler. Theatre Festivals. 44-46. Günter Schöne. Die Entwicklung der Perspektivbühne von Serlio bis Galli-Bibiena. Nach den Perspektivbüchern. Leipzig: Voss, 1933. 19-26.

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Fig. 5: Comic scene after Sebastiano Serlio (1545).

scene, is a burgher’s house with an open upper floor such as might have existed before the demolition of the quarter; in reality, however, the state mint was located here. Another clear deviation from the topographical actuality is the continuation of the broad lane in the direction of the cathedral plaza. Bureaucratic rationalisation and the ruler’s artistic theatricalisation appear in the Uffizi in several forms and closely connected in a way which was paradigmatical for the whole of Europe around 1600. This in fact not only applies to the Teatro Mediceo, but also to the Kunstkammer installed by Buontalentini in the gallery storey above the theatre. This consisted essentially of a newly extended arrangement of the collection of valuable objects of art and nature previously housed in Francesco de Medici’s Studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio. “The studioli” according to Detlef Heikamp in his still relevant study,

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was a uniformly decorated treasure chamber where the collection of jewels were hidden in built-in wall cupboards whose doors were actually decorated with miniature precious paintings: the chamber was secluded, the only window being hidden behind one of the paintings.

The main room of the newly installed Kunstkammer was the Tribune. Its ground plan, modelled on ancient classical precursors, was eightcornered and corresponded to the four main- and sub-directions of the winds. In its centre, corresponding to its form, was a treasury cabinet with the various fields of collection ordered in its drawers. “Here too,” writes Heikamp, it is not really monumental dimensions, but the preciousness which should affect the visitor. And here too the idea of the stored treasures is not absent. The 120 drawers lining the ebony console table were capable of accommodating an abundance of objects. Apart from these, recessed in the wall-work were two secret cupboards over whose panelled doors the console table ran. Their interiors were decked with wood and lined with red velvet; precious crystal jars stood on the intricately carved shelves. Finally, the ebony shrine harboured an abundance of aesthetic objects usually furnished with silk coverings. The arrangement of the objects in the Tribune preserved a fine line between depot and showpiece collection. One could imagine that the furniture was only uncovered when travellers of high status were granted admittance. Then the drapes would be removed from the pictures, and the treasures from chests and coffers would be presented.23

Thus alongside the ornamental character, the presentation of the collection also possessed a strong theatrical character. 23

“[Das Studiolo] war eine einheitlich dekorierte Schatzkammer, wo die Sammlung von Juwelen in eingebauten Wandschränken verborgen war, deren Türen nun freilich von miniaturhaft preziösen Gemälden geschmückt waren; das Gemach war abgelegen, das einzige Fenster ist hinter einem der Gemälde verborgen.” […] “Auch hier sind es nicht eigentlich monumentale Abmessungen, sondern die Kostbarkeit, welche auf den Besucher wirken sollte. Aber auch hier fehlte nicht der Gedanke an die gespeicherten Schätze. Die 120 Schubladen der Borde vermochten eine Fülle von Gegenständen zu fassen. Im Mauerwerk ausgespart befanden sich außerdem zwei Geheimschränke, über deren Blendtüren das Bort weiterlief. Innen waren sie mit Holz verkleidet und mit rotem Samt ausgeschlagen, auf ihren mit Schnitzerei verzierten Borten standen kostbare Kristallgefäße. Schließlich bargen die Ebenholzschreine [...] eine Fülle von Gegenständen der Kleinkunst. Gewöhnlich waren sie mit Überzügen aus Seide versehen. Die Aufstellung der Objekte in der Tribuna hielt eben noch die Mitte zwischen Depot und Schausammlung. Man mag sich vorstellen, daß die Möbel nur aufgedeckt wurden, wenn Reisenden von Stand Einlaß gewährt wurde. Dann wurden auch die Vorhänge von den Bildern gezogen und die Schätze aus Kisten und Kasten vorgewiesen.” Detlef Heikamp. “Zur Geschichte der Uffizien-Tribuna und der Kunstschränke in Florenz und Deutschland.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 26. 3/4 (1963): 205-06.

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Fig. 6: Giovanni Stradano/Jan van der Straet Francesco de’Medici in the Laboratory (1570, Studiolo of the Princes in the Palazzo Vecchio).

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Adjoining the Tribuna were not only further exhibition rooms for paintings, sculptures, maps, instruments, and weapons, but also workshops for artists and artisans as well as laboratories which provided for the alchemist passions of the grand duke (fig. 6.). In this sense, Horst Bredekamp referred to the special importance of the Uffizi in linking the history of science with the history of art. The “idea of using the Kunstkammer as an active laboratory rather than just a passive collection corresponded,” he writes, to the Promethean practise perceiving the actions of collecting, researching, and structuring as a unit. […] For emperors and nobility, active participation in research and processing of materials, such as that leading to the development on the valuable wood-tuning lathe, meant clear evidence to their absolute rule, emphasizing not only their representative dignity, but also – and in particular – their active control of the outside world. The Kunstkammer, once it was stripped of rulers’ claims, became an impetus for universities and academies as well as all institutions attempting to link theoretical reflection with practical work. The Tribuna – which was commissioned by Francesco I and, after his death in 1587, continued by his successor, Ferdinando I de’Medici – including the adjacent corridors in the Uffizi of Florence, represented a decisive stage. After the work was completed in 1589, the gallery had grown to be an unprecedented collection of Kunstkammern and workshops.24

This mode of storing the Kunstkammer’s treasures according to their respective cosmological value precipitated a procedure of collecting and ordering which was to be found in very similar form in the offices and clerks’ rooms in the lower floors of the Uffizi, also based here on desks and drawers as “Ordnungsmöbel”25 (sorting furniture). On both floors a “privilege of writing” was apparent which, according to Michel Foucault, epistemologically dominated the whole Renaissance, enabling the linking of language and objects in a common space.26 To the extent which the Uffizi in Florence were supposed to unite not only the administration of the grand duchy of Tuscany, but also its artistic and scientific production, the “offices” also represent an interest on the part of the state in these fields. However, the fact that the Medici were no longer capable of taking the next step towards the academic recognition of especially the natural sciences, becomes clear in view of the failure of the Accademia del Cimento, which in spite of its ambi24

25 26

Horst Bredekamp. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine. The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1995. 51-53. Vismann. Akten. 175. Michel Foucault. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.

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tious experimental program did not undergo a permanent institutionalisation (unlike the Royal Society in London which opened in 1663). Prince Leopoldo, the brother of the grand duke Ferdinand II, had himself studied mathematics and physics together with Vincenzio who, in the habit of describing himself as Galileo’s last pupil, was able to bind a small group of about ten researchers to the court, a group including Giovanni Alphonso Borelli. They were generously equipped with instruments; their work, however, was first made known in Europe in Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell’ Accademia del Cimento, published in the year of the group’s break up. During the ten years of their existence (1657-1667) the academy remained a “court group,” financed by Leopoldo and his brothers, “meeting solely at the will and pleasure of its royal master.”27 The meeting of Kunstkammer, laboratory, and stage in the Uffizi had its inner logic in the ‘privilege of writing’ which found its bureaucratic expression in the lower floors of the building. Thus the building, in all its different functions, corresponded fully to the ‘historical Apriori’ (Foucault) of the collection, which means a simultaneous material and symbolic representation of the order of things at the seat of power. To sum up, it can be said: viewed under the epistemological portent, the Uffizi organises a space of knowledge in which an institutionalised differentiation is not yet evident. Rather, technology, experiment, and art present themselves, in the sense of the humanist artes, as not yet being fundamentally separated. To recall this connection today means not only to confront science of the modern with its origins but also to sharpen the contours of a present day rationality which no longer finds in the artificial its opposite, but rather more its foundation. Translation: Shivaun Conroy

27

Rupert A. Hall. “Introduction.” Essays of Natural Experiments. Made in the Academie del Cimento. Under the Protection of the Most Serene Prince Leopold of Tuscany. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1964 [Facsimile of the edition 1684]. VIII. See also W. E. Knowles Middleton. The Experimenters. A Study of the Accademia del Cimento. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971.

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WORKS CITED Alberti, Leon Battista. The Family in Renaissance Florence (Della Famiglia). Trans. and intro. Renée Neu Watkins. Illinois: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting. Trans. with intro. and notes John Spencer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966. Alberti, Leon Battista. Momus. Latin-English. Ed. Sarah Knight, Virginia Brown, and James Hankins. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. Bredekamp, Horst. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1995. Fabbri, Mario et al. Il Luogo Teatrale a Firenze. Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, Parigi. [Exhibit. cat. Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Museo Mediceo, 31.03.31.10.1975] Milan: Electa ed., 1975. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Grote, Andreas. Florenz. Gestalt und Geschichte eines Gemeinwesens. 7th rev. ed. Munich: Prestel, 1997. Hall, A. Rupert. “Introduction.” Essays of Natural Experiments. Made in the Academie del Cimento. Under the Protection of the Most Serene Prince Leopold of Tuscany. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1964 [Facsimile of the edition 1684]. VII-XVI. Heikamp, Detlef. “Zur Geschichte der Uffizien-Tribuna und der Kunstschränke in Florenz und Deutschland.” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 26.3/4 (1963): 193-268. Herlihy, David and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Les Toscans et leur familles. Une étude du catasto Florentin de 1427. Paris: Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 1978. Kafka, Franz. The Castle. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. Lessmann, Johanna. Studien zu einer Baumonographie der Uffizien Giorgio Vasaris in Florenz. Diss. U. Bonn, 1975. Middleton, W. E. Knowles. The Experimenters. A Study of the Accademia del Cimento. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. Mumford, Lewis. The City in History. Its Origins, its Transformations, and its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. Nagler, Alois Maria. Theatre Festivals of the Medici. 1539-1637. 1964. New York: Da Capo Press, 1976. Satkowski, Leon. Giorgio Vasari. Architect and Courtier. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Schöne, Günter. Die Entwicklung der Perspektivbühne von Serlio bis Galli-Bibiena. Nach den Perspektivbüchern. Leipzig: Voss, 1933. Vismann, Cornelia. Akten. Medientechnik und Recht. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000.

WERNER OECHSLIN

“Mentalmente architettato” – Thoughts in Physical Form: Immutable or Dynamic? The Case of the Library I. “Il y a trente ans que je travaille à un livre de douze pages, qui doit contenir tout ce que nous sçavons...” (Montesquieu) “Verstand und Sinnen haben ihre Gräntzen...” (Stolle)

On being asked about his relationship to Adorno, Jacques Derrida, who was awarded the Adorno Prize in September 2001, replied that he dreamt of a book whose first chapter would contain “about 10,000 pages.”1 Closer to reality was the preface Charles-Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu wrote to his “Temple de Gnide”: “It is thirty years now, that I have been working on a book with twelve pages which is supposed to include everything that we know about metaphysics, politics and morals, as well as everything that the great authors have forgotten in the volumes they have given to science so far.”2 In their different ways, both assessments go too far: in their length and in their brevity, and in their suspension of judgement regarding a reasonably proportioned assignment of content and external dimensions of form. More is needed to be able to justify the first sentence of the “Stol1 2

Uwe Justus Wenzel. “Infinite justice: Jacques Derrida erhält den Adorno-Preis.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 24 Sep., 2001. 29. “Il y a trente ans, que je travaille à un livre de douze pages, qui doit contenir tout ce que nous sçavons sur la Métaphysique, la Politique & la Morale, & tout ce que de très-grands Autheurs ont oublié dans les volumes qu’ils ont donnés sur ces Sciences-là.” Charles-Louis de Montesquieu. “Préface du Traducteur.” Le Temple de Gnide. Revu corrigé et augmenté. London, 1742. 7-8.

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lischen Bibliothek” of 1733: “Books do indeed have their benefits.”3 The justification that follows is perfectly clearly oriented – contrary to the provocative statements quoted above – to the quantity, more exactly to the limits of knowledge and how knowledge is obtained: Never can all knowledge be acquired by one’s own experience and contemplation. Our understanding and our senses have their limits; and our life, though it is long, nevertheless only lasts a short while and I do not want to say [that it permits us] to learn everything, but only as much as we need. Accordingly we have to rely on the insights of others. A hundred eyes see more than two, and many thinkers will accomplish more than one alone, even if that one is as acute as Leibnitz in his theoretical and [as sharp] as Thomasius in his practical truths. So if we wish to become quite learned, we need to listen to others, nay not only listen to them but read their writings and books. This is the reason why books are called our mute schoolmasters.4

Although Gottlieb Stolle takes man’s limitations as his starting point, he nevertheless arrives at the horizon of a boundless knowledge assured by the book which outlives its author, and by the library. Immediately after doing so, however, he asks himself: “But how? shall one read all books? that is impossible.”5 It is obviously not possible without some sort of preplanned boundaries, systematic selection, and recommendations of all kinds, since as he states at the outset, “our understanding and our senses have their limits.” The management of knowledge, and perhaps even more, the economical use of the physical forms of knowledge preservation in books and libraries, proves to be the true task and presents itself as mediator between the desire for total, boundless knowledge of everything, individual experience, and – much more precisely – the finite length of an individual human life (fig. 1). The speculative and provocative utterances from Montesquieu to Derrida are therefore more reminiscent of the fears and actions of librarians and information managers in their attempts to square the circle by accommodating unlimited knowledge for an infinite period in a finite space – and in a physical, concrete manner.6 A history of the library which 3

4 5 6

“Bücher haben allerdings ihren Nutzen.” Gottlieb Stolle. “Vorrede.” Kurtze Nachricht Von den Büchern Und Deren Urhebern In der Stollischen Bibliothec, Der erste Theil. Jena, 1733. i. Ibid. Ibid. ii. Werner Oechslin. “‘Et Visui Et Usui’/’comparanda eruditio’ – auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Ordnung der Bücher und ihrem Sinn.” “... am literarischen Webstuhl...”: Buchhändler, Verleger, Antiquar, Mäzen 1847-1935. Ed. J. Jung and Ulrico Hoepli. Zurich, 1997. 327. Idem. “Die Bibliothek und ihre Bücher – des Menschen Nahrung” Scholion 0 (2001): 7-39.

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Fig. 1: Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey Conseils pour former une Bibliothèque peu nombreuse, mais choisie... (Berlin, 1756).

extols, for example, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who knew all the books in his library inside out, only idealizes and avoids the problem. It is more helpful to read in Eratosthenes how such an ideal relationship between presence and true possession of knowledge comes into being and can be assured. As Paolo Maria Paciaudi, antiquarian and librarian at Parma, observed regarding Hyginus: “avea quasi dipinti nella sua immaginazione >...@ tenendo presente il sito, ove hanno ad esser collocati.”7 Tools of the imagination are proposed for the purpose of regulating the relationship, or even overcoming and compensating the feared out-of-relationship by intelligent mental gymnastics. Paciaudi is one of the many librarians who specifically confronted this problem 7

Paolo M. Paciaudi. Memoria ed Orazione intorno la Biblioteca Parmense. Parma, 1815. 60.

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and attempted to solve it. In his view, there is a need for: “il più sistematico rapporto che i libri hanno fra loro” and “il più regolar collocamento di essi in una numerosa Biblioteca.”8 The ultimate aim is to combine an internal classification (of the books) with an external order in such a way that they serve each other and that the entirety serves the economical and practical management of knowledge. A catalogue of books – as a concrete form of collected and systematized knowledge – is arranged to be accessible by both content and form: “col pensiero e poi coll’opra.”9 However, that is not enough. Nobody, according to Virgil’s verse on the sibylline texts, will admit to satisfaction with the sealing of books: “Illa manent immota locis, neque ab ordine cedunt.”10 Knowledge is not static but dynamic, changing endlessly; this is also an inevitable result of the expectations inherent in a model of knowledge which transcends individual and natural limitations. These fixed orders, these ‘wholes’ of the most comprehensive sort represent a goal; the means of arriving at them is crucial.11 “Curaeque, catenatique labores”!12 The intelligent combination of knowledge (in books and libraries) or – in the old metaphor – the interlinking of corresponding physical objects, even when these are only bookcases and shelves, is the true challenge: the goal is not a mere collection of books but an arrangement of the books which reflects their contents.13 In this respect, Paciaudi has identified the two most important, and in his opinion, essential aspects: there will always be works which will be singled out as “definitive” in view of their quality and validity and which Paciaudi describes as “idee archetipi ed esemplari;” on the other hand, there are not only changes 8 9 10 11

12

13

Ibid. 57. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Friedrich Schlegel. “Über Lessing.” Charakteristiken und Kritiken. Vol. I. Königsberg, 1801. 223: “Wollt ihr zum Ganzen, seid Ihr auf dem Weg dahin, so könnt Ihr zuversichtlich annehmen, Ihr werdet nirgends eine natürliche Gränze finden [...]” Werner Oechslin. “Das Ganze: Wege und Irrwege.” Scholion 1 (2002): 19-20. Paciaudi. Memoria ed Orazione. 60: “E giacchè le scienze e le discipline nelle loro diramazioni possono avere diversi rapporti, è d’uopo che il Bibliotecario fissi una volta per sempre quelli, che crede più naturali e più atti a costituire questa corrispondenza delle parti col tutto che avrà mentalmente architettato: nel quale affare può dirsi, che ricercansi curaeque, catenatique labores.” In earlier times it was common to combine the concept of an “aurea catena” with the “universa Mundi fabrica,” thereby allowing God and the “materia prima” as “firmissima universae Naturae fundamenta” to be underpinned by such a ‘chain.’ Scipio Gabrielli. Aurea Mundi. Catena and Siena, 1604. 1.

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but also gaps which hinder or even jeopardize the insight into a “sensible” ordering of such a postulated whole: “spesso mancano gli anelli intermedj per conservare questo rigoroso concatenamento.”14 Paciaudi discovers an interpolative method for solving such “interinalmente” bindingly, even if only temporarily and approximately. And recognizing the arbitrariness of this contribution to an all-embracing system of knowledge he adds: “Come può!”15 The reconciliation of internal and external order in relation to books is a difficult and hazardous undertaking. But it possesses the conspicuous advantage that even within the scope of those human limitations (Gräntzen) regarding space and time – and in specific recognition of this limited economy of knowledge – with perceptive foresight something solid is counterposed, so that the individual does not drown in the sea of boundless information. “Mentalmente architettato” is the corresponding metaphor.16 One yearns for a firm foundation and a solid edifice of ideas on which one can build further. With this conception of implementation in a library, “architectonics” as the science of systems becomes entirely concrete, physical, and capable sense-perception.17 It is advantageous that by these means knowledge and the systematization of knowledge are not separated but intermeshed and related to each other in the same way instruments and tools are related to the material which they process and from which the form emerges. Forms of knowledge therefore, enter into the field of vision in a special way. In this respect one suddenly finds oneself in a hermeneutic situation akin to the humanistic objectives with their recognition of the inevitability of change and historicity.18

14 15 16 17

18

Paciaudi. Memoria ed Orazione. 60-61. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 60. In the third main section of the ”Transcendental Doctrine of Method” Kant gives the following definition: “Ich verstehe unter einer Architectonik die Kunst der Systeme” and relates it to a whole which is “gegliedert (articulatio) und nicht gehäuft (coacervatio).” Immanuel Kant. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Werkausgabe. Vol. 3 and 4. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. 696 (B 861). For J. H. Lambert’s “Anlage zur Architectonic” see below. For characterization of the philosophy as DUFLWHNWRQLNK. Iohann a. Wower. De Polymathia Tractatio. Basel, 1603. 229-30. Recalling Edmund Husserl’s postulate of a “Wissenschaft, die ohne alle indirekt symbolisierenden und mathematisierenden Methoden, ohne den Apparat der Schlüsse und Beweise, doch eine Fülle strengster und für alle weitere Philosophie entscheidender Kenntnisse gewinnt.” Edmund Husserl. “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft.” Logos I (1910/11): 289-90, 341.

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II. “...ex communi consensu...” (Valerius Probus)

Concealed behind all this is a comprehensive cultural-historical reality in which the book and the library play a very special role. The question now arises as to the ‘how’ of the relationship between internal and external order; and ‘how,’ despite the abundance and confusion of the parts, should the need to attain the whole be satisfied? That longest of all abbreviations which was found ‘in Arcu quodam’ in Rome and deciphered by Bede is put into the perspective of a sibyl: the study of such inscriptions is a necessity, as one reads at the beginning of the relevant text “De Notis Romanorum Interpretandis” of Valerius Probus19 (fig. 2). These inscriptions are introduced with the comment that such abbreviations are an aid to faster comprehension (“ut celeriter comprehenderunt.”20) On the other hand, this presupposes a corresponding understanding and consensus regarding the meaning of abbreviated words and terms: “ex communi consensu”!21 (To this end, Valerius Probus points out that the ability to read was not widespread anyway and that the convention of representing words by their initial letters was commonplace.) The mnemonic tradition is similar in that everything is related to everything by means of such ‘signs’ or ‘conventions’ so that the whole, including its deeper meaning, is recognisably refound in the details and vice versa. With this aim in mind, Giulio Camillo searches for an “alcun artificio ridotto all’universale,” a binding method.22 For this purpose he draws on Galen and medical diagnosis, since the hallmark of a good physician is that in every individual case he makes a diagnosis which is as precise as possible to achieve the objective of healing, and in doing so does not content himself with generalized medical beliefs. By this process Giulio Camillo arrives at the requirement: “unirlo talmente con quelle, & quelle con lui; che dell’universal artificio, & della particolar materia havesse a riuscire un corpo solo, pieno di corrispondenze...”23 19

20 21 22 23

Marcus Valerius Probus. De Notis Romanorum. Venice, 1525. Fol. (a iv) verso: “Romae in Arcu quodam Sibylla inscribi iussit has literas, quas postea Beda interpretatus est.” Ibid. Fol. 1 r. Ibid. Giulio Camillo. Due Trattati [...] l’uno delle Materie, [...] l’altro della Imitatione. Venice, 1544. Fol. 11 recto. Ibid. Fol. 11 verso.

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Fig. 2: The sibylic inscription deciphered by Beda on a Roman arch from Marcus Valerius Probus De Notis Romanorum... (Venice, 1525).

Such concepts and models can be taken as the starting point when the objective is to determine the “Partitio Universalis Doctrinae Humanae” not by means of a coarse separation of disciplines but by continuing the separation into the things themselves.24 Only afterwards will it be decided whether a book is simply a “Storehouse” of “Things New and Old” or something ‘more,’ although the author of the book with this title, John Spencer, “a lover of learning and learned men,” excuses himself with the observation that every book is in any case derived from others, and must therefore be suspected of plagiarism: “Some Mens Books, are indeed meer Kites-nests, a collection of stolen things, 24

This is the formulation of Francis Bacon as explained in detail in “in Historiam; Poesim; Philosophiam” and the explanation – taken over for its descent from the Encyclopédie – “Secundum tres Facultates Intellectus; Memoriam; Phantasiam; Rationem.”

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Fig. 3: The artificio spatial order of ‘mental’ contents; scheme from Giulio Camillo Due Trattati... l'uno delle Materie... l'altro della Imitatione (Venice, 1544).

such are pure Plagiares, without any grateful acknowledgment...”25 Whether we like it or not, there are always conditions, be they a ‘system,’ “artificio” or indeed – just – a “storehouse,” which, as the archi25

John Spencer. “To the Reader.” Kaina kai Palaia. Things New and Old. Or, A Store-house of Similies, Sentences, Allegories, Apophtegms, Adagies. London, 1658.

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Fig. 4: Design-Correlation, Frederick Kiesler’s model-library developed at the Columbia University.

tectonic metaphor indicates, hint at least at a minimal ‘structure’ (fig. 3 and 4). Ultimately, that challenges the satyrs to more than is necessarily found between two covers, in a bookcase, or in a library. Woe betide, if this apparent harmony should disintegrate, if this “manent immota” be called into question, which it can only be! In his treatise on the creation of libraries, Claude Clément used the image of the Trojan Horse to extol the uniting of the heroes, of the “Antistites bonarum atrium,” of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and Socrates beyond the boundaries of space and time.26 In Jonathan Swift they release themselves from the uncomfortable predicament in the wooden belly in which they find themselves – Aristotle next to Descartes of all people and “poor Plato between Hobbes and the Seven Wise Masters.”27 This degenerates into the “Battel between the Antient and the Modern Books” which is then fought out in “St. James’s Library” in London (fig. 5). Homer avenges himself as heroically as his own hero Achilles: having lifted Perrault 26 27

Claude Clément. Musei sive Bibliothecae tam privatae quam publicae Extructio, Instructio, Cura, Usus. Lyon, 1635. 9. Jonathan Swift. A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To which is added, An Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St.James’s Library. 5th ed. London, 1710. 260.

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Fig. 5: Illustration to Jonathan Swift’s Battel between the Antient and the Modern Books.

out of the saddle he “then hurl’d him at Fontenelle, with the same Blow dashing out both their Brains.”28 So disorder is hazardous, creating order the difficult task needing to be undertaken. It consists of doing everything necessary to enable orientation in the impending chaos. That is how Lull’s “Ars brevis” is to be read. It is to be understood as a “tool” for comprehending complex-

28

Ibid. 283.

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ity faster and more easily: “ut ars magna facilius sciatur.”29 And to do this it makes use of one hundred ‘forms’: “Nam per formarum diffinitiones intellectus quidem erit conditionatus ad discurrendem illas per principia & regulas...”30 So there is a – reliable – method, a corresponding basis, and a possible consensus for arriving there. The reader is assumed to know what an “entitas” and a “pluralitas,” a “simplicitas” and a “compositio” are, and how they differ, as well as the meanings of “fantasma,” “receptio,” and “appetites.” The book embodies a brief aphoristic abridgement of an entire philosophical tradition: completely in keeping with the underlying objective which was defined for this “Ars brevis.” Abridgement and concretization are expressly included in their recipes (“applicatio”). So “implicite” becomes “explicitum,” “abstractum” is transformed into “concretum,” and “quaestio” is answered by “ad loca” and literally ‘verortet’ (put into place).31 A ‘key’ (“clavis”) in the form of a simple matrix helps to relate all of these things to each other and understand them as a network corresponding to the “corpo solo pieno di corrispondenze” of Giulio Camillo.32 In 1630, Johann Heinrich Alsted emphasised in his encyclopaedia that such operations are not an end in themselves. Just as Giulio Camillo used for his model the diagnosis of Galen, which is precisely adapted to the respective patient, so Alsted, in order to emphasise the concrete relationship to the object, the ‘fundamentum in re,’ in contrast to a purely mental, speculative construct, formulates in relation to the now binding term ‘encyclopaedic’: “Non Cyclus In Cartis Loquitur, Sed Circulus Artis.”33 The relationships which are shown are more than mere symbols: they exist in the things themselves and connect them together. Emphasizing this, he prefaces his “Encyclopaedia” with an “Enyclopaedia De Seipsa” according to which anyone – by special application of the gnwqi sauton – will find in his head the “recta methodus,” in his breast the “virtutis décor” and in his belly the “amoena varietas.”34

29 30 31 32 33 34

Raymund Lull. Raymundi Lullii Opera Ea Quae Ad Adinventam Ab Ipso Artem Universalem, Scientiarum Artiumque Omnium [...] pertinent. Strassburg, 1617. 1. Ibid. 25-26. (De Centum Formis. Cap. XXIII). Ibid. Opera. 24-25. De Decima Parte, Quae Est de applicatione. Cap. XII. Lull. “Tabula ad Artis Brevis.” Opera. Inserted twice, at the beginning and 44. Johann-Heinrich Alsted. Encyclopaedia Septem tomis distincta. Herborn, 1630. N. p. (following after the Praefatio). Ibid.

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Fig. 6: Johann Heinrich Lambert Anlage zur Architectonic oder Theorie des Ersten und Einfachen... Vol. II (Riga, 1771).

All of the different systems of classification and ramifications, but especially the systèmes figurés, are thereby given all necessary means of plausible justification. Viewed in this manner, it is irrelevant if, in allusion to the divine act of creation, Francis Bacon invents a “Solomon’s House, or The College of the Six Days Works,” or J. H. Lambert and subsequently Kant single out “architectonic” to be the art of systems (fig. 6).

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III. “Ordinat incertis/ ars renovata metris.” C. C. Osio

The question, therefore, increasingly addresses itself to the ‘how’ of such arts of classification and ordering. Such ‘ratio’ is most obviously fulfilled by geometry itself. “Ordinat incertis/ ars renovata metris” rhymes the Milan mathematician C. C. Osio and announces what the whole world long believes and obeys: the rationalization more geometrico.35 But even this requires more detailed explanation. The potential for independent symbolization and meaning inherent in this process is already clearly recognized by Roger Bacon: “per artificium juvans naturam, possunt fieri ea quae mundus capere non potest.”36 Giulio Camillo naturally viewed it the same way with his “artificio.” And with regard to the relevance of such ‘creative approaches’ to reality, they are both of the same opinion: “quod de scientiis jam ostensum est, potest de rebus manifestari.”37 Judgment is therefore suspended to the extent to which ‘systems’ represent themselves or, at a much deeper level, are models of reality. In other words: this world of ‘knowledge systems’ draws sustenance from being simultaneously the manifestation of the creative sprit as well as those things which are threaded with it. Long after the myth of the labyrinth, the image of the ‘thread’ as a symbol of the regulating function of geometry has survived into modern times. In Claude Bragdon’s “The Frozen Fountain,” Sindbad encircles the space around him with lines in geometrical patterns, which causes the author to comment: “(He) protects himself by means of regulating lines.”38 The return to the symbolic meaning of geometry is never far away, “le seul langage que nous sachions parler,” as the architect Le Corbusier, fascinated equally by order and poetry, cried out on beholding a stone column at Delphi.39 Le Corbusier himself will propose the “tracés régulateurs” as a regulating and proportioning means of defining form, but

35 36 37 38 39

Carlo Ceesare Osio. “Preface.” Architettura Civile. Milan, 1661. Roger Bacon. Opus Majus. 1733. Ed. Samuel Jebb. Venice, 1750. 50. Ibid. 48. Claude Bragdon. The Frozen Fountain Being Essays on Architecture and the Art of Design in Space. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1932. 36. Le Corbusier. Une Maison – Un Palais. A la recherche d’une unité architecturale. Paris, 1928. 12: “La géométrie qui est le seul langage que nous sachions parler, nous l’avons puisée dans la nature car tout n’est chaos qu’au dehors; tout est ordre au dedans, un ordre implacable.”

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also as a point of reference for the eye and the senses.40 Abstract and sensuous conceptualization remain interlinked. Moreover, it must be remembered that the relationship to geometry was often much more direct and concrete. Justice is not done to the formal complexity of ‘baroque’ architecture by simply augmenting straight lines – in abstracto – with curves. To understand something of that concreteness, it must be remembered how in hylomorphism, the interplay of form and matter, geometry and arithmetic, as “qualitas” and “quantitas,” were related to the creation of form. In 1669, Gilles François de Gottignies, who taught in Rome at the Collegio Romano, describes very precisely in his “Elementa Geometriae Planae” how this relationship is to be understood: “Geometria finis... quantitatem mensurare, sive invenire quoties ac qualiter quantitas, quae pro mensura asservitur, in quantitate mensurandae contineatur.”41 In his analysis, de Gottignies takes this known interplay of geometry and arithmetic even further, and characterises geometry as a point of reference and comparison: “vix unquam absoluta, sed plerumque respectiva sit, ac comparativa.”42 The constant relationship to concrete bodies and – expressed in modern terms – the materialisation of formal characteristics result in “rectitude,” “curvitas,” “inclinatio,” and “apertura,” in concrete dimensions which are visible and tangible to everyone in the buildings of Borromini. There is therefore no need to doubt the abstract and psychologizing a posteriori terms of art history as Alois Riegl once did. (“Jenes Ausserordentliche, das die Barockkunst darstellt, verstehen wir nicht, es überzeugt uns nicht, enthält einen Widerspruch, wirkt unwahr, wir finden es daher wunderlich.”43) On the contrary, such things can be even literally ‘embraced.’ The relationship between form and material is indispensable and expresses itself concretely, which – according to the aforementioned quotation from Roger Bacon – is the basis for the thesis that whatever can be theoretically proved also “potest de rebus manifestari.” Looked at from a different point of view, intellectual benefit acts on and remains part of things, something which 40

41 42 43

Le Corbusier. “Tracés régulateurs.” L’Architecture Vivante. Printemps/été 1929. 13-14, 18: “Les tracés dont il est parlé ci-dessus [...] intéressent directement ce que l’oeil voit.” “[...] si l’oeil voit, c’est pour transmettre immédiatement à l’esprit des images presque toujours déformées que l’esprit reconstitue automatiquement dans leur intégrité.” Gottignies, Aegidius Franciscus de. Elementa Geometriae Planae. Rome, 1669. 16-17. Gottignies. Elementa Geometriae. 24. Alois Riegl. Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom. Vienna, 1908. 3.

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in earlier times was known to everyone – for purely logical reasons – from the ‘Aristotelian’ sentence: “Universale manet in actuali praedicatione.”44 Such convictions are the basis for all models which contain not only the individual book or library, but which make the total knowledge contained within them physically tangible and directly representable. IV. “Architectemur Musarum domicilium & sacrarium Sapientiae.” (Claude Clément)

Visualisation! That extends far into theological and metaphysical theses and questions and in recent times continues as an ergonomic issue in the library. According to Picinelli, “Invisibilia Dei per ea quae facta sunt.”45 His “Mundus symbolicus” ultimately serves the communication of this fundamental truth of divine revelation in God’s works themselves, from which by human reasoning God can be deduced. Again and again in the most diverse ways there are pointers to the ‘real’ world and Vico’s “verum et factum convertuntur.” Such arguments can also be applied – as by Alsted – against the risk of disconnected book learning. On the title page of his search for truth entitled “Pseudodoxia Epidemica” Thomas Browne quotes Scaliger’s warning that trust in books and their authors is dangerous, but adds that: “Rerum ipsarum cognitio vera e rebus ipsis est.”46 Truth lies in the things themselves, no matter whether this is understood to mean the divine creation or finally the books themselves, which in their physical reality, complete with their contents, have become ‘res.’ Whatever the case, the often described connections present themselves for such thoughts, the ‘embodiments’ of ideas have long become reality. It is again Roger Bacon – this time referring to Hieronymus – who provides the appropriate formulation: “viae corporales significant vias spirituales & loca corpo-

44

45 46

Such theses for example in Johann Georg ab Ullersdorf. Pacis Monarchicae Tractatus Secundus Polemicus. Prague, 1730. 234-35. There also thesis V.: “Objectum materiale sunt mentis operatione.” Filippo Picinelli. “Preface.” Mondo simbolico o sia Università d’Imprese scelte, spiegate, ed illustrate. Milan, 1653. Thomas Browne. Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or, Enquiries into Very many received Tenents, And commonly presumed Truths. London, 1646.

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Fig. 7: “Et Visui Et Usui,” Frontispiece from Johann Jakob Leibnitz Inclutae Bibliothecae Norimbergensis Memorabilia... (Nuremberg, 1674).

ralia significent terminos viarum spiritualium.”47 Signposts turned physical! What else do libraries offer other than such “loca corporalia” or even “terminos viarum spiritalium”! Each bookcase such a signpost! With knowledge of this physicality, Johannn Jakob Leibnitz can display the “et visui et usui” on the frontispiece of his “memorabilia” of the Nuremberg Library.48 Almost three hundred years later, the Department of Design Correlation of the School of Architecture at Columbia University is endeavouring, under the headship of Frederick Kiesler, to define optical and haptic access to its books so precisely as to create a 47 48

Bacon. Opus Majus. 85. Joh[ann] Jacobus Leibnitzius. Inclutae Bibliothecae Norimbergensis Memorabilia [...]. Nuremberg, 1674.

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Fig. 8: The reach of haptic and optical perception as the calculation-basis for the ideal library according to Frederick Kiesler.

‘physically related’ and ‘physical’ library49 (fig. 7 and 8). In doing so, the accent has perhaps moved somewhat away from the “viae spirituals,” but the understanding that man addresses himself to the ‘res,’ which embody knowledge according to the capabilities of his sensory perception, has remained. All of this must be taken into consideration when approaching the library in the dual sense not only of the mere building but also, and much more, the collected knowledge within, in its physical, necessarily restricted order. For Claude Clément, the author of probably one of the most comprehensive theories of the library, “Musei sive Bibliothecae tam privatae quam publicae Extructio, Instructio, Cura, Usus,” it is selfevident to begin his considerations with the totally concrete role of the library building. He therefore starts with the “extructio” and the invita-

49

Vito I. Latis. Libri nella Casa, Quaderni di Domus 1. Milan, 1945. 72-73.

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tion: “Architectemur Musarum domicilium & sacrarium Sapientiae.”50 In a manner similar to other buildings and “moenia civitatis,” only the housing allows it to fulfil its primary function and raison d’être as “utilitas publica” or service to the public,51 and to fulfil the condition of learning being passed down from hand to hand through generations (“Eruditio quasi per manus tradenda posteris, solo publicae utilitats, & divinae gloriae respectu...”). With the publicness of the library the – binding – publicness and universality of knowledge is reinforced. This, because there is truth in the observation that: “Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter,”52 which Clément then embraces within the second purpose of his “Eruditionis ostentatio.” Learning disseminates itself through being – culturally – embedded in the public. The situation is similar for the third purpose of “comparanda eruditio” which describes metaphorically the principle of the further distribution of knowledge beyond the random limitations of time and space to universal horizons. In this light – and in accordance with a common analogy – it is entirely legitimate to apply to Plato the epithet of the Attic Moses. And needless to say, with one single search the user of the library can recall and compare the Apollonian oracle, Pythagoras, and the genius of Aristotle. “Perlege quodcumque est memorabile.”53 Thus far, no limitation is imposed. And so the further recommendations and cautions which follow pay constant heed to the universality of the library – despite its obvious physical boundaries. The boundaries are compensated by the benefits of concrete transmission of information – as if from hand to hand: “eruditio quasi per manus tradenda posteris”!54 V. “...d’attacher des signes à tous ces objets, pour les reconnoître mieux, et s’en faciliter de nouvelles combinaisons...” (Condorcet)

It would be wrong to think that these ideas are simply long-outdated ‘baroque’ traditions. That many of those libraries in which the books are displayed as models of order and systems of knowledge are being 50 51 52 53 54

Claude Clément. “Liber Primus Musei, seu Bibliothecae Extructio.” 1. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 4.

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replaced cannot be overlooked. That often did, and still does, take place with the argument of an overabundance which can clearly no longer be mastered by recipes of order and arrangement. What remains, or even takes their place – as demonstrated by the most recent prominent example of the former British Library in the rotunda of the British Museum, where a hastily assembled reference library has been introduced which could perfectly well be replaced by a computer! – mostly falls into the category of ‘loss.’ Those written unities which have developed through history and tradition (as well as convention) into instruments of learning are by no means so randomly and arbitrarily assembled as may appear at first sight. More probably, the compulsion to order and limitation was also a compulsion to density of content and cultural reliability. It is from this point of view that Johann Heinrich Lambert’s “architectonic” must be compared with Lull’s “Ars brevis.” When doing so, it will come as no surprise that Lambert also assigns “Bestimmung, Realität, Ähnlichkeit, Einerley, Wesen, Affectiones, Eigenschaft, Modification” to abstractions such as “metaphysical unity, truth, goodness, and finally to questions such as “quale, quantum, numerabile, possible, cogitabile.”55 “Von der Anwendung der Categorien auf Gegenstände der Sinne überhaupt”56 also long remains an issue in the Kantian tradition, and the question can be asked as to what sort of progress it represents to throw all of this onto the scrap heap of history in favour of such a ballast of emancipated, disconnected ‘pure facts.’ It cannot be denied! For those old mental gymnastics, sometimes used ‘mnemotechnically’ and sometimes just generally ‘systematicallyphilosophically’ within that hylemorphotic economy, still enjoy use in some fields of life today. Perhaps all of this sounds more familiar if a ‘modern’ formulation is used. Like many others before him, Condorcet begins his “Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain” with reflections regarding the dependence on the human “faculté de recevoir des sensations.”57 As always, dependence on the senses 55

56 57

Johann Heinrich Lambert. Anlage zur Architectonic, oder Theorie des Einfachen und des Ersten in der philosophischen und mathematischen Erkenntniss. Vol. II. Riga, 1771. §519, 136-37: “Man fängt bei dem Unterschiede des Etwas und Nichts, das will sagen, des Gedenkbaren und des bloss symbolischen (§288) an, und machet den Satz des Widerspruchs zu der Gränzlinie zwischen beyden (§502).” Kant. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Sec. 1, book 1, §24. Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat de Condorcet. Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. Paris, Ans III [1794-95]. 1.

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encourages inventiveness. “Retenir,” “reconnoiter,” “combiner,” “conserver ou rappeler dans sa mémoire” and much more: “comparer entr’elles ces combinaisons,” are the tools one uses to expand one’s mental space beyond one’s limited horizon, beyond the limits of space and time, and wherever possible to experience and interpret it as a whole.58 This becomes culture at the point (somewhere between simple “choses extérieures” and natural laws) where relationships to structures come into being which are “indépendents de lui.”59 These occur, as Condorcet also knows, “par des moyens artificiels” which essentially correspond to the “artificio” of a Giulio Camillo and, even earlier, to Roger Bacon’s “per artificium juvans naturam.”60 In ‘baroque’ terminology, that is where ‘argutezza,’ the real stimulus, challenge, and ultimately proof, of intelligence lies: namely, in using this artificial system in such a manner that it serves the purpose of a desired systematic or otherwise ordered model representation of the whole, while the truth of its content is assured through the order being in the things themselves. Therein lies the true explosiveness and difficulty of the attempt at order: it must under no circumstances be arbitrary, but must be truly “e rebus,” deduced from the things, in order to be able to represent (abbilden) them properly. “Saisir ce qu’elles ont de commun et ce qui les distingue,” remarks Condorcet in relation to the systematic comparison, so as to be able to subject such attempts at order to even more stringent proof.61 The prescription – as in Galen’s diagnosis – is therefore: “d’attacher des signes à tous ces objets, pour les reconnoître mieux, et s’en faciliter de nouvelles combinaisons.”62 The latter have done more than postulate and describe “Selbsttätigkeit” (automation) and “Selbstbewegung” (automotion) of the mind. It is an old as well as a new insight that here the one is related to the other. Automotion in judgement and grappling with the related concepts go hand in hand. “Der Begriff setzt eben den mitgetheilten Inhalt in den ihm eigenen Theilen als Begriff heraus,” is how Gustav Biedermann interprets this Hegelian process in his “Wissenschaft des Geistes” of 1878.63 And he deduces the necessity of “Anerkennung der Gesetzlichkeit dieser auferlegten Denknöthigung” (“acknowledgment

58 59 60 61 62 63

Ibid. 1. Ibid. 2. Ibid. 2. Ibid. 1. Ibid. 1. Gustav Biedermann. Die Wissenschaft des Geistes. Prague, 1878. 15.

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of the legality of this superimposed coercion to think”).64 That comes as no surprise to a hermeneutician – nor to a library systematician if the recommendations of, for example, Paciaudis and the host of mnemonic systems and their many uses are recalled: wherever collected knowledge in the physical reality of book and library is under consideration. VI. “Pour qui? Quand? Et où?” (Hervé Bazin)

Bearing this in mind – and apparently transcending the imposed limitations – we can devote ourselves to all those games which are associated with the conception of a “Bibliothèque idéale” (fig. 9). However, the reader of the corresponding survey and publication by Raymond Queneau will rapidly discover how forced and artificial most of the answers were. The 200 writers let themselves be all too hastily seduced into putting onto paper ‘their’ ideal libraries and conceptions of completeness in lists which should be limited to one hundred titles “que tout ‘honnête homme’ se devrait avoir lu.”65 From them it becomes apparent how difficult it is to create in a clear and reasonably definitive manner anything approaching completeness in relation to the book and the library. Perhaps this is the reason for a rather disturbing insight: not only order seems to have been lost but also the sense of a cultural instrument which is more than an indiscriminate accumulation of knowledge whose very structure represents a cultural reality no matter how much this may be in a state of constant (auto-) motion. Too many of those surveyed responded to Raymond Queneau’s request with abundance, quantity and attempted completeness, submitting lists which were much too long, or deviously included the entire bible or whole series of books as a single item. One of these was Georges Simenon who listed as items 1 and 2 respectively the Greek and Latin series of the ‘Collection Budé’ and as item 51 the complete Collection La Pléiade.66 Others addressed the fundamental question of the possibility or impossibility of a “bibliothèque idéale.” Hervé Bazin finally capitulates in irritation: “Je ne connais rien d’essentiel, rien de

64 65 66

Ibid. 15. Raymond Queneau. Pour une Bibliothèque Idéale. Paris: Gallimard, 1956. Ibid. 292-93.

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Fig. 9: Raymond Queneau. Pour une Bibliothèque Idéale [...] (Paris, 1956).

négligeable.”67 To answer Queneau’s question would be to identify with one of the most pernicious tendencies “de la mentalité moderne” which oversimplifies everything and replaces “le sport par des Cerdan ou des Coppi,” “le cinéma par ses vedettes,” “la politique par un leader,” “la littérature par une oligarchie de chefs-d’oeuvre.” How would he answer the question “Quel est le meilleur gouvernement?” According to Hervé Bazin, a wise man would have answered: “Pour qui? Quand? Et où?”68 So he returns to what – instead of a ‘premature answer’ – has to be done to develop and construct an “artificio,” an order: the prudent search for the question on which such a “corpo solo pieno di corrispon67 68

Ibid. 38. Ibid.

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denze” could be based. So the question of systems of order in libraries can only be done justice by immersing oneself in the question sufficiently to understand it and relate it to the “choses extérieurs,” where everything is in a permanent state of flux, “col pensiero e poi coll’ opra.” Translation: Robert Jones

WORKS CITED Alsted, Johann-Heinrich. Encyclopaedia Septem tomis distincta [...]. Herborn, 1630. Bacon, Roger. Opus Majus. 1733. Ed. Samuel Jebb. Venice, 1750. Biedermann, Gustav. Die Wissenschaft des Geistes. Prague, 1878. Bragdon, Claude. The Frozen Fountain. Being Essays on Architecture and the Art of Design in Space. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932. Browne, Thomas. Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or, Enquiries into very many received Tenents, And commonly presumed Truths. London, 1646. Camillo, Giulio. Due Trattati [...] l’uno delle Materie […] l’altro della Imitatione. Venice, 1544. Clément, Claude. Musei sive Bibliothecae tam privatae quam publicae Extructio, Instructio, Cura, Usus. Lyon, 1635. Condorcet, Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat de. Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. Paris, Ans III [1794-95]. Gabrielli, Scipio. Aurea Mundi Catena [...]. Siena, 1604. Gottignies, Aegidius Franciscus de. Elementa Geometriae Planae. Rome, 1669. Husserl, Edmund. “Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft.” Logos 1/3 (1910/11): 289341. Kant, Immanuel. “Kritik der reinen Vernunft.” Werkausgabe. Vols. 3 and 4. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. Lambert, Johann Heinrich. Anlage zur Architectonic, oder Theorie des Einfachen und des Ersten in der philosophischen und mathematischen Erkenntniss. Vol. II. Riga, 1771. Latis, Vito. I Libri nella Casa, Quaderni di Domus 1. Milano: Editorale Domus, 1945. Le Corbusier. Une Maison – Un Palais. A la Recherche d’une unité architectural. Paris: Crès, 1928. Le Corbusier. “Tracés régulateurs.” L’Architecture Vivante. Printemps/été (1929). Leibnitzius, Joh[ann] Jacobus. Inclutae Bibliothecae Norimbergensis Memorabilia [...]. Nürnberg, 1674. Lull, Raymund. Raymundi Lullii Opera Ea Quae Ad Adinventam Ab Ipso Artem Universalem, Scientiarum Artiumque Omnium [...] pertinent. Strassburg, 1617. Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat de. “Préface du Traducteur.” Le Temple de Gnide. Revu corrigé et augmenté. London, 1742. Oechslin, Werner. “‘Et Visui Et Usui’/’comparanda eruditio’ – auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Ordnung der Bücher und ihrem Sinn.” Ulrico Hoepli 1847-1935: ‘…

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am literarischen Webstuhl…’: Buchhändler, Verleger, Antiquar, Mäzen. Ed. Joseph Jung. Zurich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1997. 327-38. Oechslin, Werner. “Die Bibliothek und ihre Bücher – des Menschen Nahrung.” Scholion 0 (2001): 7-39. Oechslin, Werner. “Das Ganze: Wege und Irrwege.” Scholion 1 (2002): 19-51. Osio, Carlo Cesare. Architettura Civile. Milan, 1661. Paciaudi, Paolo Maria. Memoria ed Orazione intorno la Biblioteca Parmense. Parma, 1815. Picinelli, Filippo. Mondo simbolico o sia Università d’Imprese scelte, spiegate, ed illustrate. Milan, 1653. Probus, Marcus Valerius. De Notis Romanorum [...]. Venice, 1525. Queneau, Raymond. Pour une Bibliothèque Idéale. Paris: Gallimard, 1956. Riegl, Alois. Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom. Vienna: Schroll, 1908. Schlegel, Friedrich. “Über Lessing.” Charakteristiken und Kritiken. Vol. I. Königsberg, 1801. Spencer, John. Kaina kai Palaia. Things New and Old. Or, A Store-house of Similies, Sentences, Allegories, Apophthegms, Adagies [...]. London, 1658. Stolle, Gottlieb. Kurtze Nachricht Von den Büchern Und Deren Urhebern In der Stollischen Bibliothec. Der erste Theil. Jena, 1733. Swift, Jonathan. A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To which is added, An Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St.James’s Library. 5th ed. London, 1710. Ullersdorf, Johann Georg ab. Pacis Monarchicae Tractatus Secundus Polemicus. Prague, 1730. Wenzel, Uwe Justus. “Infinite justice: Jacques Derrida erhält den Adorno-Preis.” Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 24 Sep., 2001. 29. Wower, Iohann a. De Polymathia Tractatio. Basel, 1603.

CLEMENS RISI

The Operatic Stage as an Experimental Space for Affections: About the Concepts of Affections Asserted by Athanasius Kircher and Claudio Monteverdi

The miraculous effects of music in theatre today in Rome are indescribable; the affection is often so strong that the auditores begin to loudly scream/ sigh/ cry/ particularly in casibus tragicis […].1

In this quotation from 1650, Athanasius Kircher describes a successful experiment – the apparently productively completed search for appropriate musical means to be used in the representation of, and above all, provocation of strong affections. This relationship between music and affections, and between the representation and the provocation of affections, are explored in the following. The correlative influences of music theory in confrontation with the concept of affections as put forth by Kircher in his Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650), as well as the dramatic and theatrical musical research practices of the first decade of the seventeenth century (for example, those of Claudio Monteverdi), have been taken into consideration. I wish to explore the question of how, in the light of the evolving understanding of science and the concept of experimentation, musicians and music theorists arrived at their insights. It will become 1

Andreas Hirsch, ed. and trans. Philosophischer Extract und Auszug aus Welt= berühmten Teutschen Jesuitens Athanasii Kircheri von Fulda Musurgia Universali. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1988 [Facsimile of the edition Schwäbisch-Hall, 1662]. 134: “was aber die Scenische Comödien-Music noch heutigs Tags zu Rom vor Wunder-Würckungen habe/ das ist nicht zu beschreiben: die Bewegung ist oftmal so groß und hefftig/ daß die auditores überlaut anfangen zu schreien/ seufzen/ weinen/ sonderlich in casibus tragicis […].” Translation of: Athanasius Kircher. Musurgia universalis sive ars magna consoni et dissoni. Rome, 1650. 546. The German translation by Hirsch mistakenly reads “autores” instead of “auditores.” Rolf Dammann. Der Musikbegriff im deutschen Barock. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1995. 228.

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clear that in the first half of the 17th century, a cross-over and blending of different theoretical interpretations and positions can be observed. The turn from the 16th to the 17th century plays a pivotal role in the history of European music in many ways. One of the principle reasons for the importance of this date is the creation of the new genre, opera. The central theme of this new genre is affection, the representation of extreme passion. Beginning in the 1570s, a circle of Florentine intellectuals (including Vincenzo Galilei, father of Galileo Galilei) met regularly in an effort to realize an ambitious project: the revival of the ancient practice of declamation. The project was intended to then become recognizably independent and lead to a completely new art form – the “in armonia favellare” (Caccini 1601)2 or “parlar cantando” (Monteverdi 1616),3 that is, sung speech or spoken song, to be performed according to the immediate human emotional condition. Parallel to this, madrigal composition of the time shows a growing estrangement from contrapuntal, imitative vocal polyphony (exemplified by the development of Monteverdi’s madrigal works), a direction which eventually led from an accented upper voice over combined lower voices to a solo voice accompanied by figured bass. And finally, in the pool of factors which contributed to the initial state of the new genre of opera, the Renaissance “intermedi,” with their musical theatre components, should not be overlooked. The entire repertoire of musical theatre resources at last came together in Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo, which was premiered in Mantua in 1607. Monteverdi himself writes the following on the subject of music and affections: “I know that it is the contradictions (of affections) which greatly move our minds and hearts; the goal of good music must be to be moving.”4 The same interpretation can also be found in Kircher. What interests him is, “whether, why and in what way music has the power to move 2 3

4

Giulio Caccini. Le nuove musiche. 1601, quot. from Silke Leopold. Claudio Monteverdi und seine Zeit. 2nd ed. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1993. 59. Claudio Monteverdi in a letter dated Dec. 9, 1616 to Alessandro Striggio, quot. from: Sabine Ehrmann. Claudio Monteverdi. Die Grundbegriffe seines musiktheoretischen Denkens. Musikwissenschaftliche Studien 2. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1989. 71. “Sapendo che gli contrarij [dei passioni, od’affetioni, del animo] sono quelli che movono grandemente l’animo nostro, fine del movere che deve havere la bona Musica.” Preface to Monteverdi’s eighth madrigal book [1638], quot. from: Ehrmann. Claudio Monteverdi. 143-44, also 157.

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the human soul.”5 In the phrase “ad animos hominum commouendos,” or “movere l’animo nostro,” a decisive change manifests itself from the aesthetic musical interpretation of the Renaissance period to that of the Baroque. The goal is no longer only to represent affections in the sense of “demonstratio, repraesentatio or significatio.”6 “Affectum exprimere”7 is replaced by “excitare,”8 the stimulation of affections in those who are listening and watching. Music begins to strive to put people off balance, to unsettle them (“animam extra se rapere”)9. Similar statements are found in Kircher, as well as in connection with Monteverdi. Kircher describes reactions which he has witnessed to certain “actores”: the “auditores” often cannot control themselves (“contineri nescij”). They are unable to contain their screams (“clamores”), wails (“gemitus”), sighs (“suspiria”) and tears (“lachrymas”). Their bodies are compelled to movement (“exoticos corporum motus erumpentes”), as inner excitement (“interiorum affectuum”) reveals itself externally (“signis extrinsecis”).10 Federico Follino, general director of the 1608 festivities in Mantua, reports something very similar on the occasion of the wedding of Francesco Gonzaga with Margaret of Savoy, for which Monteverdi composed and premiered his opera Arianna, a work which has been almost completely lost: The Lamento was performed with such deep affection and in such a heartrending fashion that there was no one listening who did not feel his heart soften, not a lady who didn’t let a few tears spill over her beautiful face.11 5

6 7 8

9 10 11

“Vtrum, cur, & quomodo Musica vim habeat ad animos hominum commouendos.” Kircher I 549, quoted from: Ulf Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) als Musikschriftsteller. Ein Beitrag zur Musikanschauung des Barock. Studien zur hessischen Musikgeschichte 2. Marburg: Görich & Weiershäuser, 1969. 215. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 221, 225-26. Ibid. 227. Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. I, 579: “affectum excitare, affectus concitare” (quoted from: Dammann. Musikbegriff. 225). Cf. Gioseffo Zarlino. Le Istitutioni armoniche. Venetia, 1558. Cap. 8: “mouer l’animo & disporlo a uarij affetti.” Quot. from: Dammann. Musikbegriff. 225. Cf. Descartes’ programmatic beginning of his Compendium musicae from 1618: “Compendium musicae renati cartesii. Hujus objectum est Sonus. Finis ut delectet, variosque in nobis moveat affectus.” Quot. from: Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 218. Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. II, 202. Quot. from: Dammann. Musikbegriff. 227. Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. I, 546-47. Quot. from: Dammann. Musikbegriff. 241. “[il] lamento […] fù rappresentato con tanto affetto, e con sì pietosi modi, che non si trovò ascoltante alcuno, che non s’intenerisse, nè fu pur una Dama, che non versasse qualche lagrimetta al suo bel pianto.” Quot. from Heinz Becker, ed. Quellentexte zur Konzeption der europäischen Oper im 17. Jahrhundert. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981. 27.

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Yet how could such reactions occur? How did the composer succeed in finding the proper means to stimulate these affections? And above all, with which physiological assumptions can one explain the occurrence of the emotional transfer to the listener? The question of how a composer should find his means to move his listeners is closely related to the question of whether a composer’s own, personal emotional involvement should be assumed as a requirement for finding a successful means for moving others. Here again, one finds parallel statements from Kircher and Monteverdi. Kircher describes in detail how the composer should proceed when confronted with the “affectus doloris,” or pain. In order to represent painful affections by use of harmonic movements [“harmonicis modulis exprimantur”], you must examine the degree of the pain and the growing turmoil of the soul when experiencing the pain in relation to yourself. According to that, you must construct similar harmonic movement [“similes motus harmonicos”] and then you will attain your goal.12

Monteverdi is also of the opinion that he himself must first tune in on an affection before he can convincingly represent it musically. He rejected the opportunity to set the Favola Marittima Le Nozze di Tetide by Scipione Agnelli to music because winds converse with one another in it. Since he was not moved by the favola, he could not find moving music for it: The favola moves me not at all and I understand it only with difficulty, nor do I feel that it carries me in a natural way to a conclusion that moves me. With their means [those of the winds], how am I supposed to move affections?13

Yet how did the affections reach the listener? Kircher informs us about this in detail. He refers to the pathology of humours and the study of 12

13

“Um solche dem Schmerz ähnliche Affekte in harmonischen Bewegungen darzustellen [‘harmonicis modulis exprimantur’], mußt du die Heftigkeit des Schmerzes und die in der Seele aufsteigenden Bewegungen im Zustand des Schmerzes selbst vergleichend betrachten; diesen entsprechend mußt du die gleichartigen harmonischen Bewegungen [‘similes motus harmonicos’] einrichten und du wirst damit dasjenige erfüllen, was du beabsichtigst.” Quot. from: Dammann. Musikbegriff. 328. Cf. Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. I, 600: “primò doloris energiam, motusque animi in dolore se exerentes comparatos habeas oportet...” Quot. from: Dammann. Musikbegriff. 328. “La favola tutta […] non sento che ponto [today ‘punto’: not at all] mi mova et con dificoltà anco la intendo, ne sento che lei mi porta con ordine naturale ad un fine che mi mova.” “come potrò io con il mezzo loro [degli venti] movere li affetti!” In a letter to Alessandro Striggio, dated Dec. 9, 1610. Quot. from: Ehrmann. Claudio Monteverdi. 70.

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temperaments which date back to Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), and whose tradition was carried on by Galenus (129-199 A.D.). According to these theories, human beings are composed of four fluids or humours (phlegm, yellow bile, black bile, blood), each of which in turn is composed of two of the four qualities moist, dry, hot or cold. The mixture of qualities which comprises the fluid determines the corresponding temperament (phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric, melancholic). In addition, Kircher assumes the mediaeval scholastic understanding of the organization of the cosmos according to measure, number, and weight (“in mensura et numero et pondere”14). The macrocosm and microcosm correspond to similar proportions and/or relationships between numbers.15 Using this premise, he has no difficulty in explaining the transfer of affections: Music, as the image of the godly creation (and therefore functioning in the numerical proportions designated by God), meets hearing. An external movement of the air touches the eardrum, which carries the vibration impulses to the internal air. This inner air affects the spirit and the soul; the soul, which is itself represented by a numerical relationship (“anima dicta sit numerus numerans”16), counts the impulses, appraises air vibrations as the sensation of tone, and compares the proportions.17 The influence of the vibration impulses in the external air upon the internal air and the subsequent release of affections were imagined in the following way: in the body, air is present in the form of small particles (spirits of life or “spiritus animales”18). These particles are in motion, and the frequency of this motion is dependent upon the temperament of the person in question. These vibrations can be affected by outside influences. When musical vibration meets the eardrum, it is transmitted to the spirits of life, which in turn communicate the vibrations to the brain, and the brain then determines the production of the appropriate humour. The fluid thus produced dissolves into steam, mixes itself with the spirits of life and at last creates the affection. An 14 15 16 17

18

Salomo’s Book of Wisdom 11, 21. Cf. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 14, 62. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 24. Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. I, 422. Cf. Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 164-65. The concept of a soul counting affections as impulses continues into the 18th century. In 1712, Leibniz wrote: “Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi.” (“Music is an arithmetical exercise of the soul, from which the awareness of counting remains hidden.”) Quot. from: Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 82. Cf. also Dammann. Musikbegriff. 78-79. Cf. Descartes’ “esprits animaux.”

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acceleration of the spirits of life leads to joyous affection, while slowing them down brings pain and sorrow. The feelings of the soul are communicated to the heart, the center of the spirits of life. The spirits stream from the heart into the muscles and provoke outward and visible physical reactions.19 As for the communication of vibrations to the eardrum, Kircher offers a very clear parallel when he describes a phenomenon he experienced in the cathedral in Mainz (between 1624 and 1628). He noticed that when certain tones were played on the organ, the strings on a lute hanging on the wall produced a tone, as well, without being touched.20 He also observed the same phenomenon later in two stringed instruments, situated not too far from one another, when one was stimulated and the other sounded.21 Kircher’s real accomplishment, however, was that he was the first to undertake an attempt to collect and list in detail the factors which contributed to a concrete relationship between physiologically-explained affections and the musical means by which it could be stimulated. According to Kircher, there are eight basic affections which can be expressed musically (“Octo potissimum affectus sunt, quos Musica exprimere potest”).22 A comparison to Descartes’ classification cannot be avoided; his Passions de l’âme appeared the year before Kircher’s Musurgia. However, in reference to the connection with Monteverdi which is dealt with here, it is even more interesting to note that Kircher, 19

20 21

22

Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 222-24. Before Kircher, Gioseffo Zarlino endeavored to explain in his Institutioni harmoniche how music achieved its effect with the help of the spirits of life or the humours. Gioseffo Zarlino. Le Istitutioni armoniche. Venetia, 1558. Vol II, Chapter 8. Cf. Ehrmann. Claudio Monteverdi. 9. Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 31, 157. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 248. This procedure also made it evident to what extent music could be used for therapeutic purposes – knowledge which was applied already in antiquity and especially since the 15th century. The symptoms of melancholy and irascibility were treated with the help of musical influences. The alleged power of music to cure the poisoning from a tarantula bite became famous. In this therapy, music supposedly physiologically excited the subject into motion so that he began to dance and sweated out the poison. Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 214, 279, 282, 284. These are the following affects: “1. Amoris [love], 2. Luctus seu Planctus [sorrow or manifestation of pain], 3. Laetitiae & Exultationis [joy or outburst of happiness], 4. Furoris & Indignationis [anger or indignation], 5. Commiserationis & Lacrymarum [sympathy or emotion], 6. Timoris & Afflictionis [fear or depression], 7. Praesumptionis & Audaciae [presumption or audacity], 8. Admirationis [admiration].” Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. I, 598. Quot. from: Dammann. Musikbegriff. 320.

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in summarizing the eight basic affections into three fundamental affections, obviously refers to the way in which Monteverdi categorized affections in the introduction to his eighth madrigal book in 1638. In Monteverdi’s writings, we find the three fundamental affections “ira” (anger), “temperanza” (temperance) and “humiltà” (humility).23 For Kircher, the three fundamental affections are “laetitia” (happiness) which could express itself as love (controlled happiness) or as anger (uncontrolled happiness), “remissio” (calm, harmonious balance), and “misericordia” (sympathy).24 Kircher listed an abundance of musical guidelines to be followed in order to represent and stimulate individual affections. For example, to produce the affection of joy, major thirds, purposeful intervallic leaps in major, accelerated tempos, triple dance meters, bright tones and high registers, energetic dynamics and arpeggios should be employed.25 Sorrow was considered to be an unusual affection; therefore, for its musical representation, it required unusual means, such as dissonance, inharmonic relationships, prohibited intervals (“intervalla prohibita”), and/or distant chord progressions with proportions which are remote from the “unitas.”26 As the smallest interval in use and the shortest distance between tones, the half-step was of particular interest to Kircher. According to his theory, chromatics and enharmonics draw the spirits of life together and slow their movement. The uniquely tender, matt, lethargic, relaxed effect of the half-step makes it appropriate for the expression of the affection of sorrow.27 Therefore, it hardly seems surprising that in the only surviving piece from Monteverdi’s opera Arianna – the Lamento d’Arianna “Lasciate mi morire” – chromatics and atypical dissonances play a meaningful role in evoking the affection of sorrow. Arianna has just been forsaken by Theseus and finds herself alone on the island of Dia(s), which will later be called Naxos. In the famous Lamento “Lasciate mi morire,” she pleads for death to take her. What makes this piece musically extraordinary is its use of dissonance, for Monteverdi takes far greater harmonic liberties for the purpose of expressing and

23 24 25 26 27

Quot. from: Ehrmann. Claudio Monteverdi. 143. Cf. Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. II, 142. Quot. from: Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 227-28. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 258. Ibid. 258, 386. Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 255. Cf. also Dammann. Musikbegriff. 274: “vicinitas ad unisonum mollitiem inducit.”

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communicating affections than his contemporaries, i.e. the use of extraordinary means to express the extraordinary affection of sorrow.28 Upon examination of Kircher’s principles of belief about affections, which he formulated to be universally valid, several contradictions become obvious. These inconsistencies have to do with Kircher’s admission that the communication of affections can subjectively achieve varied levels of success.29 Kircher observed, for example, that different people can react very differently or perhaps not at all to a particular affection, dependent upon their temperamental disposition. The climate of a country can play an equally decisive role in the effect a specific affection will have upon someone. Sometimes, it could be the key of the music which independently affects the listener, according to its compatibility or incompatibility with his or her individual temperament. Kircher tells us of an experimental setting designed to find out whether the same “objecta” provoke the same “affectus” in different people: To research the differences between affections/ the author thought of something courageous. Different affections are to be found in humans/ and the same objecta cannot move the same subjecta to identical affections. To get to the source of this discrepancy,/ the author has dared to do something unusual and choose the eight most distinguished affectus/ love/ regret/ joy/ anger/ lamentation/ sorrow/ pride/ desperation./ About these affections, he found in the holy scriptures much text or themata, which he excerpted and sent to eight of the most excellent composers in all of Europe, with the request that each of them take these 8 themata and set them to music according to all of the rules of art/ therein always taking into consideration the affections the author had in mind/ and striving to express them in the best means possible. Thereby he hoped to learn/ to which affections each and every spirit,/ first the composer himself,/ then his listeners,/ would be inclined;/ whether all Nationes, Italia, Germania, Anglia, Gallia, would agree upon the same affections/ or if they would disagree/ and in what ways such discrepancies come into being./ And thus did he want to arrive at the complete restauration of musica pathetica, but because the composers took so long to respond, the author’s work was published without their compositions/ but another book including them will follow.”30

28

29 30

In reference to the musical form of Lamento d’Arianna, cf. Leopold. Claudio Monteverdi. 152-60. This Lamento exists in various editions; Monteverdi himself prepared an edition for five voices and published it in his sixth madrigal book. Claudio Monteverdi. Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci. Venetia, 1614. For the following examples, cf. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 252-53, and Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 230, 246. “Den underschied der Affecten zu erforschen/ hat sich der Autor etwas dapffers underfangen. Unterschiedliche Affecten finden sich bei den Menschen/ und ei-

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The experiment failed because the composers took too long to respond to his request! Strictly speaking, the insight into the subjectivity of perception does not bring the systems of temperaments, sympathetic resonance, transferral of affections, etc. in general into question. The problem, however, is that the standardization of the rules of composition becomes impossible under these conditions. Kircher’s directions to the composers that they should personally experience pain in order to find the proper means of expressing it31 became fatal to his argument, because naturally each composer, according to his individual temperament, would have found a different way to experience the affection of pain. The design properties of the performative space are also responsible for whether musica pathetica can unfold in an effective, convincing manner worthy of its name. Kircher names three types of localities which are inappropriate for the musical communication of affections: 1) rooms which are too small or narrow or which have panelled walls; here, voices become muddled and lose power; 2) rooms which are too full (of people, carpets, books, maps); here, voices break and throats become tight; 3) rooms which are too large (open fields, empty churches); here, the tone disappears into the space. Best suited would be the golden mean between spaciousness and narrowness, with smooth walls covered by a fine layer of plaster; here, the reflection of sound would be even, thus enabling the emotional im-

31

nerlei objecta können nicht einerlei subjecta zu gleichen Affecten bewegen; die Ursach diser Discrepantz zu ergründen/ hat der author etwas sonderbares understanden/ hat 8. vornehmste affectus erwehlet/ als Lieb/ Leid/ Freud/ Zorn/ Klagen/ Traurigkeit/ Stoltz/ Verzweiflung/ u. vor dieselbe hat er aus der Heil. Schrift so viel Text oder themata, so sich auf diese Affecten ziehen/ ausgezogen/ hats 8. der allervortrefflichsten Componisten in gantz Europa überschickt/ und gebeten/ ieder solte diese 8. themata setzen nach allen Kunst=Regeln/ und darinnen die gedachte Affecten wohl in acht nehmen/ und sie bester massen exprimiren; dardurch hat er erfahren wollen/ zu welchen Affecten eines ieden Geist/ erstlich die Componisten selbsten/ darnach ihre Zuhörer/ incliniren würden/ ob alle Nationes, Italia, Germania, Anglia, Gallia, in dergleichen Affecten überein stimmen/ oder wider einander seyn würden/ und worinnen solche Discrepantz bestehe/ und dardurch hat er zur völligen restauration der Pathetischen Music kommen wollen: aber weil die Componisten gar lang verzogen/ ist sein Music=Werck ohn ihre Composition heraus gangen/ sollen doch in einem absonderlichen Buch hernacher folgen.” Hirsch. Philosophischer Extract. 156-57. Cf. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 328.

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pact to be transmitted.32 In regard to the proper room and time of day, however, Kircher found a solution to the contradictory nature of his argument by declaring these two categories to be unalterable quantities in the emotional process. This means that the room and the time of day must be selected in careful consideration of which affections one is striving to excite.33 This type of experiment is obviously not interested in observing what results can be achieved by employing a certain combination of variables; instead, the result is already known and the goal is to arrange all variables in such a way that the predicted result will be obtained. In addition to the variables which he admittedly recognizes in the results of his experimental procedures (results which should actually be very predictable, being dependent upon what he believed to be universally valid proportions), Kircher must still consider the two additional factors of performer and listener. According to him, the number of audience members must be as small as possible. The listener may not be passive; he must through recognition of the nature of the music prepare himself for the affections it will evoke: The listeners should conscientiously confront the theme with an open mind in order to see what sort of affections are inherent in it or are stimulated by it. This predisposition must soften the heart so that the music can better maintain its influence and power.34

The performer, that is, the singer, must be well versed in the physiology and psychology of affections. He must prepare his performance, because otherwise, he could ruin the effect through negligence or exaggeration.35 Kircher describes how such an exaggeration might have appeared: So prevalent even in [music] is the vice of vanity – commonly called singers’ temperament – which in certain people is the greater the less their education. Some of them join to their want of skill or aptitude an insufferable arrogance, which makes them value themselves so highly that in a large choir they wish 32 33 34

35

Hirsch. Philosophischer Extract. 154. Cf. also Dammann. Musikbegriff. 316-17, and Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 271. Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 272. “die auditores [sollen] mit einem praeparirten Gemüt […] das thema […] fleißig durchgehen und sehen, was für Affecten darinnen enthalten sich auch darzu gemählich excitiren: dann diese vorgehende dispositio muß das Hertz erweichen damit die Music ihre impression und Kraft desto besser erhalten kann.” Hirsch. Philosophischer Extract. 155, as in Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. I, 580. Cf. also Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 269-70. Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 267.

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only their own voice to be heard; hence they are wont quite deliberately to drown out those of the rest with indiscriminate noise, straining their voices so disgustingly that you think you are listening to the music we hear when the bray of asses accompanies bleating sheep; which in all ways offends against the laws of decorum. I shall say nothing here of the absurd bodily posture that singers display while singing; you can see a number of them purporting to beat the time by moving their whole bodies in the most unseemly manner. You may see some now raising their heads at each interval, now bowing them, now shaking and twisting them from side to side – you would say they were actors – and, so as to omit no unseemliness in a seemly practice, you may not without laughter espy them changing the appearance of their mouths, now round like a cooking-pot, now protruded like a trumpet, and distorted into one shape after another. If to this should be added that most unsightly movement of the eyes, and the capricious puckerings of the brows, one can hardly say to how much laughter, guffawing, and mockery they expose a composition otherwise beautiful and skilfully written; so that some people were right to hold that musicians should be shut away and not seen by anyone.36

Kircher himself gave this most emphatic example of how even the best or most well-meant adherence to his principles of belief about affections could be destroyed by the performative reality. His pure doctrine of the affections and his harsh critique of the reality of performance contradict each other. Under such conditions, how can a doctrine of the affections be effective? To resolve the conflict, it would be worthwhile to look at the situation from the opposite viewpoint; that is, it is only the performative reality which is capable of expressing and communi36

“Adeo etiam hac in re non deest ambitionis vitium, vulgo cantorum morositas vocatur, quae tanto apud quosdam maior est, quanto sunt indoctiores; Quorum nonnulli imperitiae et ineptitudini coniungunt intolerabilem quondam arrogantiam, qua tantum sibi tribuunt, ut in multorum concentu suam tantummodo vocem audiri velint; unde incondito clamore reliquorum voces data opera obtundere solent, tam insulsa vocis intensione, ut eam te musicam audire putes, quam dum balantibus ovibus ruditus consonat asininus, percipimus; quod utique cum decori legibus pugnat. Nihil hic dicam de ridiculo corporis habitu, quem dum canunt, cantores exhibent; videas nonnullos ab ipsa totius corporis indecentissima commotione cantus mensuram affectare. Quosdam nunc ad singula intervalla caput erigere, iam illud inclinare, modo in utramque partem vibrando detorquere; mimos diceres; et ut nihil indecorum in decoro negotio omittant, quosdam non sine risu aspicias, os iam in formam cacabi rotundum, modo in tubae modum productum, distortumque iam in alias et alias formas transfigurare. Quibus si accedat turpissimus ille oculorum motus, variaeque superciliorum contractiones, dici vix potest, quot risibus, cachinnis ludibriisque exhibeant melothesiam coeteroquin pulchram et cum ingenio compositam: Unde recte nonnemo iudicabat, musicos claudi et a nemine spectari debere.” Kircher. Musurgia. Vol. I, 561-62. Trans. Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Stevens. The Perfect Musician. Practica Musica 3. Krakow 1995, 64-67. Cf. also Scharlau. Athanasius Kircher. 322.

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cating an affection. This should not be interpreted to mean that the negative examples which Kircher presented would be capable of communicating a particular affection, but the illustration exaggeratedly focuses on what is being discussed here: Beyond the performative moment, no effective communication of affections can exist. A communication of affections occurs only while the performance is taking place, and it is this insight upon which one must base his or her own beliefs about a doctrine of performatively realized affections. It is characteristic of Kircher that he notates the two most significant contradictions – 1) clear directions for the singer versus the experience of bad habits and 2) clear emotional guidelines versus individual stimulation or stimulation dependent upon the situation – but then comes to no conclusion about them. Monteverdi confronts this basic stipulation of performative processes in a surprising and unique way. His eighth madrigal book contains a version of Lamento della Ninfa which was very unusual for the 17th century, in that it was printed partially in the form of a musical score. (The practice of the time was to print a separate booklet for each of the individual voices.) In this piece, a nymph who has been abandoned by her lover asks Amore to return her lost love to her or to kill her. She is accompanied by two sets of three voices, one set of which accompanies the frame narrative and is printed in individual booklets, as was the norm. The other set, which accompanies the nymph’s solo entrances (which at first are limited to sighs of the word “Amore”), is printed in score form. Why? Monteverdi knew that only through the different interpretations of these sections of music during each performance and by each singer – that is, the individually felt affection and the individual performance it would produce – could the desired effect be attained. He therefore leaves determinations of tempo entirely up to the person singing the part of the nymph. The way the affection is expressed and thus also communicated is determined by the singer’s individual choice of tempo and rhythm. To enable the accompanying voices to find their entrances – difficult to achieve if the tempo is fluctuating significantly – Monteverdi had these sections printed in score form, so that the accompanying voices could follow the solo voice in their music (see Figure 1). In the preface to his work, Monteverdi clearly instructs: How this piece should be performed: The three parts which do not sing during the Nymph’s lamentation are printed separately because they are to be sung at the tempo of the hand [directed/conducted]. The other three parts, which commiserate sotto voce with the Nymph, are printed in score form so that they can

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Fig. 1: Claudio Monteverdi. “Lamento della Ninfa.” Madrigali guerreri, et amorosi con alcuni opuscoli in genere rappresentativo […]. Libro ottavo. Venetia, 1638. (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Scrin. A/661).

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follow the tempo of her lament, which will be sung according to the tempo of the affection of the soul and not to that of the hand.37

Here, an individualization of the sensation and structure of affections surpassing all coded doctrines of the affections is actually written in the score. This juxtaposition and comparison of Kircher’s Musurgia with Monteverdi’s interpretation of affections is intended to demonstrate that the concept of a “fixed affection” as an “objective quantity” – an idea which is repeatedly expressed in literature about Baroque opera in order to differentiate it from the Age of Sensibility in which the “stationary representation of affections” would evolve into a “dynamically fluctuating emotional process of feeling”38 – is, at least for the beginnings of the new genre of opera, not applicable. For the experimentation with and the explanation of affections, the category ‘space’ is especially significant, since it is in space that the audiovisual, performative process of representing and experiencing affections happens. This is a process which doesn’t allow itself to be reduced to conceivable abstraction and rational, understandable music. Affections in opera (understood as singing and acting bodies) can only be experienced in the presence of both actors and listeners, and can only be explained in the context of the location and the actual moment of the performance. Monteverdi, in the example of Lamento della Ninfa, entrusted the process of the communication of affections to the singer and her public; indeed, felt that he must of necessity entrust it to them. With the beginning of the 17th century, the musically oriented person became interested in the phenomena which occur within the body and soul when listening to strongly emotional music. Here again, it is the space which plays a pivotal role in arousing this new interest. The defining nature of the space makes the listener a component part of the musical process. How the space is arranged – to represent affections, in order to stimulate affections – awakens an interest in finding an explanation for what is happening inside the listener. 37

38

“Modo di rappresentare il presente canto. Le tre parti, che cantano fuori del pianto dela Ninfa; si sono cosi separatamente poste, perche si cantano al tempo dela mano; le altre tre parti, che vanno commiserando in debole voce la Ninfa, si sono poste in partitura, acciò seguitano il pianto di essa, qual ua cantato a tempo del’affetto del animo, & non a quello dela mano.” See figure 1; cf. also Leopold. Claudio Monteverdi. 287. Cf. Dammann. Musikbegriff. 497.

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Precisely this new direction toward confrontation with affections in the new genre of opera caused many things to be seen in a new light. There was much to be tested, many new possibilities to be tried (for example, the freedom taken with dissonance or the flexibility in tempo), to the degree that it is even explicitly notated in a score that the primary purpose of the composition (the representation and excitement of affections through song) is entrusted to the performer at the moment of performance; that is, it is left to the performative variable. In Kircher’s writings, what might possibly seem to be a rigid doctrine of the affections is actually pure rhetoric, which he himself undermines at other times by stressing the subjectivity of perception and the influence of the performer himself. In order to speak of an experiment, it must be taken for granted that, as Jürgen Daiber writes, “the listener changes the parameters of the observed phenomenon in accordance with a specific goal” and doesn’t simply “collect facts.”39 Thus, every composition and each performance of it represents a change of parameters in view of the goal “stimulation of affections.” The representation of sorrowful affection, especially, finds itself on the wrong side of the musical realm of possibilities, the dissonant, shadowy side, and for it, new means had to first be conceived and proven. In this sense, the famous debate between Monteverdi and Artusi about the limits of the use of dissonance to communicate affections40 can be read as a discussion about, or result of an empirical experimental process. As the case of Lamento della Ninfa has shown, in the arena of interaction between experientia and experimentum,41 it is exactly the performative excess in the experimentum which brings about ever new experientia. Translation: Joneva Kaylen

39 40 41

Jürgen Daiber. Experimentalphysik des Geistes. Novalis und das romantische Experiment. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001. 263. Concerning this debate, cf., e.g., Leopold. Claudio Monteverdi. 57-67, and Ehrmann. Claudio Monteverdi. 22-27. Concerning this coupling of terms, cf. Daiber. Experimentalphysik. 274.

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WORKS CITED Becker, Heinz, ed. Quellentexte zur Konzeption der europäischen Oper im 17. Jahrhundert. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981. Blackburn, Bonnie, and Leofranc Holford-Stevens. The Perfect Musician. Practica Musica 3. Krakow, 1995. Daiber, Jürgen. Experimentalphysik des Geistes. Novalis und das romantische Experiment. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001. Dammann, Rolf. Der Musikbegriff im deutschen Barock. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1995. Ehrmann, Sabine. Claudio Monteverdi. Die Grundbegriffe seines musiktheoretischen Denkens. Musikwissenschaftliche Studien 2. Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1989. Hirsch, Andreas, ed. and trans. Philosophischer Extract und Auszug aus deß Welt = berühmten Teutschen Jesuitens Athanasii Kircheri von Fulda Musurgia Universali. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1988 [Facsimile of the edition Schwäbisch-Hall, 1662]. Kircher, Athanasius. Musurgia universalis sive ars magna consoni et dissoni. Rome, 1650. Leopold, Silke. Claudio Monteverdi und seine Zeit. 2nd ed. Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 1993. Monteverdi, Claudio. Il sesto libro de madrigali a cinque voci. Venetia, 1614. Monteverdi, Claudio. Madrigali guerreri, et amorosi con alcuni opuscoli in genere rappresentativo […]. Libro ottavo. Venetia, 1638. Scharlau, Ulf. Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) als Musikschriftsteller. Ein Beitrag zur Musikanschauung des Barock. Studien zur hessischen Musikgeschichte 2. Marburg: Görich & Weiershäuser, 1969. Zarlino, Gioseffo. Le Istitutioni harmoniche. Venetia, 1558.

DORIS KOLESCH

The Cartography of Emotions: Power, Play, and the Politics of Love in 17th Century France This paper focuses on two specific arenas of knowledge in France in the seventeenth century. First, I will delineate the salons as a cultural, social and political world that served as a counter to court society. I will then introduce a product of the salons, namely the famous map of the land of Love, the Carte de Tendre from Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s novel Clelie from 1654. Maps are always representations of power, knowledge and space. But the representation of the land of Love evokes structures of power and knowledge (whereby I understand knowledge to include both the emotional and the cognitive, and the intersection of the two) as well as social practices and configures them as spatial structures. This representation thus refers to a fundamentally spatial dimension of community and social interaction. The cartographic delineation of the land of Love represents a non-existent territory made up of overlapping yet separate cultural spaces, sign systems and experiences in the hybrid, impure dispositive of the map. The Carte de Tendre creates an interface of cartographic and military technologies with real and symbolicmythical strategies of travel, conquest and discovery, as well as social forms of interaction in the salons, in particular social games and new gender roles that were to replace the outdated heroic-knightly behavior patterns of the aristocracy. In the following, I would like to show that the Carte de Tendre was not only a space for representing knowledge, but more importantly an arena for the presentation and the constitution of knowledge. The map delivers key scenarios, codes and patterns of processes that condition a specific emotional behavior and indeed bring this behavior about. The map of the land of Love creates a visible, exterior space that is discursively constructed as the representation of an invisible and allegedly antecedent, psychological interior. The map thus necessitates a consideration of the relationship between a ‘psychological interior’ and exterior

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signs or ‘expression.’ A semiotic or symptomatic understanding that reads exterior or bodily gestures and signs as representations of an internal, generative emotion thus becomes impossible. ‘Interior’ moods and feelings seem instead to be the after-effects of ulterior strategies, technologies and patterns of behavior. This is all the more important considering that the map was created at a time when the reigning experiential knowledge derived from the traditional teachings on affect had become problematic, and a concept of expression and propriety grounded in psychology was gradually being developed. In this paper, the seventeenth century will not be viewed as the century of Descartes but as a period of transition or passage in which a new Cartesian impulse in analysis and representation rivaled the previous elements of a culture of presence, and during which it had not yet been settled as to which direction would prevail.1 The salon as well as the Carte de Tendre embody this aspect of being a transitional and hybrid in-between space. In order to understand the structures and functions of the salon at the end of the seventeenth century in France, one must divorce oneself from an idea that has gained ground since the end of the eighteenth century, namely that the salons represented a frivolous and luxurious pastime for an increasingly disempowered and bored aristocracy. Contrary to this widespread view, the salons must be explored as a countermodel to court society that was largely shaped by women and as a place of social refinement, aesthetic education as well as political opinionmaking and political resistance. In the year 1610, Marquise de Rambouillet began establishing a counter-arena, an alternative stage to the court of Louis XIII, because she found the lack of social manners and intellectual exchange unacceptable among what she deemed a very rustic court society. She had a passageway of connecting rooms constructed that opened spectacularly to the last room, the chambre bleue. The Marquise held court in this room. This salon soon advanced to become a new center of power that developed preferentially in the direction of conversational and rhetorical-literary aptitude. The Hôtel de Rambouillet and the salons that followed filled many different functions. Firstly, they represented spaces of social education and refinement in which permissible and obligatory behavior was 1

On the culture of presence Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. “Produktion von Präsenz, durchsetzt mit Absenz.” Ästhetik der Inszenierung. Ed. Josef Früchtl and Jörg Zimmermann. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001. 63-76.

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demonstratively embodied. The social distinction of the aristocracy was conditioned, codified, and perpetuated in and through discrete manners of behavior, speech and posture under mutual observation by the salon members. Secondly, the salons functioned as centers for cultivating aesthetic and cultural tastes, including many areas that went far beyond the literary education focused on in much of the research to date on salons. Thirdly, the salons were a place of political fermentation and rebellion in relation to the court. This is particularly true for the reign of Anna of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV, while her son was still a minor and – at its highpoint – for the period between 1648 and 1653 when the Fronde, the rebellion of the aristocracy against Cardinal Mazarin and the court, occurred. A further political effect of the salon should also not be overlooked. Paradoxically and in contradiction to the intentions and views of many aristocratic salon members, the salons contributed to the opening up of the aristocracy to members of the lower classes – in particular writers, artists and scholars. Put bluntly, one could say that the salons served less to preserve the old aristocratic order than as a place where an almost imperceptible democratization of French society occurred. And finally, it must be emphasized that the salons were a counterarena largely shaped by women and thus served as a counterpoint to the Académie Française, founded in 1634, which did not admit women. The salonières were responsible for the topics and the style of their salons, and they determined who became a member and which characteristics and rituals shaped the salon, etc. This form of influence in the alternative social world of the salons with their anachronistic as well as utopian characteristics should not be underestimated. Joan DeJean emphasizes: During the Fronde French women – especially two noted figures, the great Mademoiselle and the duchess of Longueville – had a military role unsurpassed since. They led battles and armies, defended strongholds, and, when Paris was under rebel control, even ordered the canon of the Bastille to be used against the royal army. Once the nobles were defeated and the king’s administration was in control of the kingdom, salon activity had to be radically redefined.2

2

Joan DeJean. “Salons, ‘Preciosity’, and the Sphere of Women’s Influence.” A New History of French Literature. Ed. Denis Hollier. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. 301.

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Mlle de Scudéry (1607-1701) and her Carte de Tendre also contributed to this process of redefinition. In relation to the arena of knowledge in the seventeenth century, it seems significant to me that the term ‘salon’ used today has a relatively recent origin. The word was probably used for the first time with this meaning by Mme de Staël, one of the last great salonières, in 1807 in her novel Corinne. In the seventeenth century, contemporaries referred to the non-royal academies by place name or temporally. The day of the week they took place became the name for many of the salons (for example Samedis referred to Mlle de Scudéry’s salon); or other spatial or architectural terms were used, for example the ‘chambre bleue’ mentioned above, or the ‘ruelle.’ The French word ruelle literally means a little street, but at the time it was used to refer to the space between the bed and the wall, where guests gathered; salon patrons often received guests from their (parade or lying-in-state) beds. Terms such as ruelle, chambre bleue or Samedi show that the salons represented a world counter to the court in time and space, a parallel world and parallel action, with their own laws, rules, activities, patterns of behavior and time regimes. The Carte de Tendre, as a product of Madeleine de Scudéry and her famous salon, the Samedis, created its own order of time and space that concentrates on education and the formation of patterns of human behavior and experience in the period following the loss of political power when the Fronde was defeated. The social formation and shaping of passions takes on the guise of social amusement, a game. In August 1654, one and a half years after the Fronde was put down, the first volume of a novel hotly awaited by its audience was published: Clelie, histoire romaine, by Madeleine de Scudéry. The episode recorded by the Roman historian Titus Livius from the life of the legendary Roman Cloelia served as an antique foil for a detailed description of salon life and the lifestyle of the French aristocracy in the mid-seventeenth century.3 Although this is a historical novel, no action is narrated; instead literary portraits are presented, as are salon conversations and other ‘jeux d’esprit,’ in particular games and wordplay involving casuistic and psychological principles of love. 3

In addition to its many historical references, de Scudéry’s novel is characterized by a narrative mixture of genres, including the Hellenistic novel (in particular Heliodor’s Aithiopika), the pastoral novel, and the novels of chivalry. Gerhard Penzkofer. “L’art du mensonge.” Erzählen als barocke Lügenkunst in den Romanen von Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Tübingen: Narr, 1998.

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The precious concept of love is developed in literary and conversational games, through which historical models (riddles from the Old Testament, the ancient symposium, maxims or adages, as well as treatises and dialogs) are introduced with new elements from contemporary life (for example techniques and strategies of improvisation that developed in the salons) and thus adapted to new social needs. The games synthesize agonal and entertaining components, although, in accordance with the aristocratic maxim of plaisir, the emphasis is on the latter. Belonging to a social group as well as competency in love depends primarily upon the practice and mastery of quasi-ritualized rules and moves. The rules of the game provide the appropriate form for articulating and embodying what is to be constituted and shaped as a new idea of love. “Game” thus can be understood as a serious, rulebound and dynamic form of producing sociality, whereby the players are challenged to choose from a limited spectrum of possible behavior that behavior which most promises success in a given exchange. The Carte de Tendre from Clelie is a cartographic drawing of the land of precious Love. As it is explicitly described in the text, the map is the result of an improvisation by Clelie – the literary alter ego of Mlle de Scudéry – during a game: “elle a trouué lieu de faire vne agreable Morale d’amitié, par vn simple jeu de son esprit.”4 The map, which is included in the novel as a visual-topographical representation of the land of “Tenderness,” figures as a popular success in the novel itself. It is the topic of conversation for days in the land that serves as its setting, and all the men want to acquire it (or a copy of it). The map also played a central role in the contemporary reception of the novel. Besides numerous commentaries and poems addressed to the Carte de Tendre, between 1654 and 1670 more than 15 imitations and parodies were published, including Carte du Royaume de la Coquetterie (1654), Carte du Royaume d’Amour (1659) by Tristan l’Hermite, Carte géographique de la Cour (1668) or Carte du Pays de Braquerie (1670) by Bussy-Rabutin.5 The Carte de Tendre served as a sociable game in

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Madeleine de Scudéry. Clélie. Historie romaine. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1973 [Facsimile of the edition Paris, 1660]. 405. Some of these are actual maps, some literary cartographies and descriptions of landscapes (for example Bussy-Rabutin’s Carte du Pays de Braquerie). See the exhibition catalog of the Bibliothèque Nationale: Jean Adhémar, ed. Les salons littéraires au XVIIe siècle. Au temps des précieuses. [Exhibit. cat.] Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1968. Esp. chapter VIII: Cartes des royaumes imaginaires des Précieuses. 41-43. And Jean-Michel Pelous. Amour précieux, amour galant

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both the novel and its reception in the salons, and it can be understood as an early form of the parlor games still played today, for example ‘I’m going on a trip.’ In the following I would like to explore the map as an arena in two different senses: the Carte de Tendre serves as a stage on which there is something to see; it is a scene, an image, a projection surface. In this context, the patterns of visualization and epistemological models the map is based upon must be explored. Building on this, in a second move I would like to show that the map is a stage upon which something is not only shown, but on which something happens. The visual space becomes a place of action that contains a challenge to communicate and to take part in a particular dynamic, which spans the visible and the invisible, stasis and movement, sign and performance. What is there to see in the Carte de Tendre? The map represents an allegory of the imaginary ‘Land of Love.’ The ‘code tendre’ and the ethos of the ‘tendresse’ are the precious Love terms for the form of love to be aimed for and practiced, which goes against previously valid models of gender. De Scudéry’s early-Enlightenment and feminist critique of contemporary experiences of marriage and the realities of marriage, marriages of convenience and misogamy, comes across in this representation.6 The map drawn up by Clelie gives a few chosen men – as well as her male and female audience – an overview and a concrete representation of “vn Païs dont personne n’auoit encore fait le Plan.”7 A completely unknown and unexplored land is thus presented for the first time and simultaneously sounded out. The map offers a course in honorable courtship and love – from a woman’s perspective. Both permitted and forbidden, successful and unsuccessful acts are prescribed visually as well as literarily, and thereby men are promised orientation concerning how to win a woman’s heart, but also how hearts can be lost or remain forever inaccessible. The map is both an object and a figure, text and image, discourse and performance in one. The Carte de Tendre is framed, and it stands out from its frame as if it were a painting. It is thus closed off like a

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(1654-1675). Essai sur la représentation de l’amour dans la littérature et la société mondaines. Paris: Klincksieck, 1980. 13-34. Renate Baader. Dames de lettres. Autorinnen des preziösen, hocharistokratischen und “modernen” Salons. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986. 104-131. Scudéry. Clélie. 393.

Fig. 1: Carte de Tendre. From: Madelaine de Scudéry. Clélie, histoire romaine (1654).

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stage and becomes an arena of theatricality. This theater gives representation to a human realm, the world of feelings, from a non-human perspective: the sovereign perspective of an overview. It is a view that controls and dominates, with the land of Love spread out before it. It is a panoramic view that constitutes an omnipotent, absolute perspective from above, from an Archimedean point beyond the map and its territory. It is not a coincidence that this perspective is also described as a cavalier or military perspective, familiar from the military use of maps. In his Cours de mathématique nécessaire à un homme de guerre from 1693, Jacques Ozanam (1640-1717) wrote: To represent fortification grounds, one uses a perspective […] called the cavalier or military perspective, which requires an eye endlessly far removed from the image. [….] And although this is impossible in nature because the power of seeing cannot penetrate into an endless distance, it still has its effect.8

The cartographic sketch shows different flat or undulated terrain, oceans, rivers, seas, rocks, trees and towns in relief. On the lower righthand edge of the map there is a legend showing distances measured in “lieues d’amitié,” or friendship miles. On a small bank on the righthand corner there is a group of two men and two women in antique attire. The women, who are standing with their backs to the ‘pays du Tendre,’ are saying goodbye to the men, who are leaving on foot for a journey to the land of Tendre, equipped with walking sticks and a bag of provisions. Like these four figures, the spectators also take on a theatrical ‘king’s perspective’ in relation to the kingdom of Love. This brief description of what can be seen on the Carte de Tendre demonstrates that speaking about a map always means taking action. What the map cannot show, it must enact. Bending over a map, handling it, means constructing a narrative scenario. Maps become maps because we use them to help us tell stories. Human figures, buildings, stylized views of mountains or waters appear as ‘storytellers,’ representing that which denominations or lines cannot express: The ship on the left edge of the map, for example, tells of the ocean and its dangers.9 At this point I am anticipating the next stage of my argument, as this performative dimension turns the map into a stage of action. Before en8 9

Quot. from: Christine Buci-Glucksmann. Der kartographische Blick der Kunst. Berlin: Merve, 1997. 27. Our Translation. Paul Zumthor. “Mappa Mundi und Performanz. Die mittelalterliche Kartographie.” ‘Aufführung’ und ‘Schrift’ in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. DFG-Symposium 1994. Ed. Jan Dirk Müller. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996. 321.

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tering into a deeper discussion of this aspect of the map, I would first like to delineate the central techniques of representation and the epistemological models which make up the Carte de Tendre. I will show that the map is an attempt to create a hybridization of knowledge and visualization strategies that had long been debunked in de Scudéry’s time – for example medieval, symbolic maps or humoral pathology – mixed with new models of knowledge, primarily those related to the episteme of representation. Thus the map must be considered an impure space of knowledge that reflects a paradigmatic conflict of the seventeenth century: It oscillates, in other words, between ‘modern’ influences traceable to Descartes and numerous innovations in the area of science and technology, on the one hand, and on the other the ‘traditional’ elements of knowledge culture and social practice. Initially the geographical model of the map seems to demonstrate an abstract, geometrical mode of representation. The diffuse and various areas of phenomena related to affective states of being and corresponding social behaviors, which are often difficult to recognize and distinguish in social reality, are simultaneously spatialized and temporalized. The spatial arrangement of the topoi of courtship implies a fixed and non-exchangeable point in the chronological course of the journey. The map suggests that one finds oneself in a familiar, stable and manageable terrain. Love is conceived of as the performative completion of a designated path, which is regulated by ethical and social norms. Love appears as the result of a highly directed and orderly execution of a sequential pattern of behavior. The taxonomical science of geography serves to systematize a diffuse area of phenomena. The Carte de Tendre thus participates in the emerging social need in the seventeenth century for analysis, order, and classification. The map differentiates between different forms of ‘love,’ and it also indexes and represents a certain structured order of ‘love.’ This is in turn the result of excesses in verbal classification and order. The following explications by Clelie are what bring Herminius to ask her to provide him with orientation in the inscrutable maze of “amitié” and “tendresse,” thereby inspiring her to create the Carte de Tendre: En effet i’ay de ces demis Amis, s’il est permis de parler ainsi, qu’on apelle autrement d’agréables connoissances; i’en ay qui sont un peu plus avancez, que ie nomme mes nouveaux Amis; i’en ay d’autres que j’apelle simplement mes Amis: i’en ay aussi que ie puis apeller des Amis d’habitude; i’en ay quelques-uns que i’apelle mes Amis particuliers; mais pour ceux que ie mets au rang de mes tendres Amis, ils sont en fort petit nombre; & ils sont si avant dans mon cœur, qu’on n’y peut jamais faire plus de progrés. Cependant je dis-

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tingue si bien toutes ces sortes d’amitiez, que ie ne les confonds point du tout. Eh de grace, aimable Clelie, s’ecria Herminius, dittes moy où i’en suis.10

In this quote, the act of differentiating as an act of naming and speaking becomes obsessive: there are half friends, new friends, friends, special friends, friends who tend to be affectionate, etc. According to Foucault, “[t]he fundamental task of Classical ‘discourse’ is to ascribe a name to things, and in that name to name their being.”11 The order of the (social) world is an effect of language rules, which we realize are relative, dependant upon context, and historical (“qu’on apelle autrement”). Given the dominance of speaking and naming – not only in Clelie, but also in the Classical episteme in general – it is hardly surprising that the men who ask the heroine for the “Carte d’vn Païs dont personne n’auoit encore fait de Plan” anticipate receiving a literary map, a letter in which the terms ‘map’ and ‘land’ appear metaphorically.12 They are thus very surprised to be presented with a literal, drawn map: Mais nous fusmes bien estonnez, lors qu’Herminius apres auoir veû ce que Clelie, luy venoit d’enuoyer, nous fit voir que c’estoit effectiuement vne Carte dessignée de sa m[a]in, qui enseingoit par où l’on pouvoit aller de Nouvelle Amitié à Tendre: & qui ressemble tellement à vne veritable Carte, qu’il y a des Mers, des Rivieres, des Montagnes, un Lac, des Villes, & des Villages...13

The dame of hearts surprises them not with veritable feelings, but with a veritable map. The topographical technique of visualization does not yield information about Clelie’s emotions; instead, it sends her gentlemen admirers on a journey and instructs them on how to reach their destination. The feelings of the heroine are inscribed onto a static topography in the shape of an external, discrete and fixed place. The map thus sketches the territory of the feminine, representing woman and her feelings as a terrain to be explored and conquered. The map provides the place of the other, another place, that awakens the desire of the other. Acts of interpersonal behavior are visualized as a seg-

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Scudéry. Clélie. 391. See also the similarly complex and nuanced expositions on “amitié” und “tendresse.” 204-14. Michel Foucault. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. 120. “Nous ne nous imaginasmes pourtant alors autre chose, sinon que Clelie escriroit quelque agreable lettre, qui nous instruiroit de ses veritables sentimens.” Scudéry. Clélie. 393. Ibid. 396.

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mented territory that constitutes the stage, the theater of male actions and dispositions.14 References to a segmented, structured feminine territory point to another taxonomic science that has found its way into the map alongside geography: anatomy. The Carte de Tendre blends geographical-topographical and anatomical ideas and visualization strategies. The Rivers of Affection, Recognition and Respect and the border areas of the Dangerous Ocean, the Sea of Enmity and the Lake of Indifference topographically present a physiology of love that is related to seventeenth century concepts of bodily fluids and humoral pathology. The medical science of the seventeenth century was still dominated by these concepts, which can be traced to ancient teachings on bodily fluids and in which a correspondence between the anatomy of the body (as a microcosm) and the cosmography of the world (as a macrocosm) was posited and certain organs, such as the liver and agitations of the gall bladder, are identified as the location and origin of love.15 The influence of humoral pathology on the visualization strategies of the Carte de Tendre is played out not only in space and through the visual differential quality granted to the oceans and rivers, but also in the symmetrical order of the three rivers “Reconnaissance,” “Inclination” and “Estime” and in the representation of their flowing together into the delta of the “MER DANGEREUSE.” This representation bears astounding resemblance to 14

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In this sense, the emancipatory quality of this model as emphasized in the research of recent years (among others by Nicole Aronson, Renate Baader and Renate Büff) is clearly limited. Luhmann explains how the tension between the concept of the conquest of a woman and that of submitting oneself to the will of the lover, which is also virulent in Clélie, was used to reconstruct gender. Niklas Luhmann. Love as Passion: the Codification of Intimacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. 77-78. This is according to Charles Estienne in his famous anatomical treatise La Dissection des parties du corps. Paris: Cercle du livre précieux, 1965. 195-96. [Facsimile of the edition Paris, 1546]. On the dominance of this concept all the way into the “Enlightened” eighteenth century: Heinz Schott, ed. Der sympathetische Arzt. Texte zur Medizin im 18. Jahrhundert. Munich: Beck, 1998. The discovery of the circulatory system by William Harvey. Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. Frankfurt a. M., 1628, had an effect, of course. Descartes’ texts Les Passions de l’Ame and Traité de l’Homme attest to the reception of Harvey’s enormously controversial theories. In formulating his new positions, Descartes also made use of traditional terminology that had been employed since Galen to theorize and speculate on the relationship between psychology, physiology and cosmology. Claude Filteau. “Le pays du Tendre: l’enjeu d’une carte.” Littérature 36 (1979): 55. And Thomas Fuchs. The Mechanization of the Heart: Harvey and Descartes. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001.

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contemporaneous seventeenth century anatomical representations of the liver, specifically the biliary duct and the hepatic portal vein (in today’s terminology), for example as they appear in Glisson’s Anatomia hepatis (1654). De Scudéry’s cartography of love is closely tied to an anatomy of the body and a Ptolemaic cosmography.16 Contemporaneous seventeenth century ideas about the human body serve as the foundation for a purportedly “natural symbolic system”17 that evokes the social and atmospheric fluidity of emotions through an analogy of bodily fluids. The topographical representation is based on a fiction of clear and fixed boundaries and evokes the relationship between dispositives of emotionality and inclusion/exclusion. Cultural boundaries – for example differentiations between permitted and forbidden feelings or behaviors, the known and the unknown, self and other – are made selfevident and naturalized by making the ocean and river banks, mountains and seas enclose the territory of Tendre and thus serve as purportedly “natural borders.”18 Cultural achievements are thus naturalized and mythologized as self-evident facts. Finally, I would like to reflect on the map as a space of action. The process of drawing and reading the map represents an imaginary repetition and at the same time a projection of cultural practices and different orders of space. The map holds the landscape still so that the spectator or reader can move around on it. The map serves as a challenge to knowledge and to action. The Carte de Tendre, which does not show a familiar area but rather creates an unfamiliar space in representation that must be traversed, cannot be conceived of or visually deciphered without movement. The static signs of the map must be visually traversed and progressed through. The map must be transformed into a 16

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The map is thus a reécriture of the Ptolemaic axis of coordinates (Occident/Orient as the horizontal and North/South as the vertical line), which is replaced by the axis coordinates Enmity/Indifference (horizontal) and Amitié/Plaisirs (vertical). “Tendre sur Inclination” lies exactly in the center where the lines cross. On the influence of the Ptolemaic model in cartography into the seventeenth century, Lothar Zögner, ed. Von Ptolemaeus bis Humboldt. Kartenschätze der Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Ausstellung zum 125jährigen Jubiläum der Kartenabteilung. [Exhibit. cat.] Weissenhorn: A. H. Konrad, 1984. The relationship between psychology, cartography, and anatomy is addressed by Louis van Delft. Littérature et anthropologie. Nature humaine et caractère à l’âge classique. Paris: Presses Univ. de France, 1993. Mary Douglas. Ritual, Tabu und Körpersymbolik. Sozialanthropologische Studien in Industriegesellschaft und Stammeskultur. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1981. 2. Arnold van Gennep. Übergangsriten. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 1986. 26.

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chronological course and a set of behaviors that follow from one another; it is thus an object of constant translation efforts. The individual topoi of courtship allow for progression to the next place only when they have been successfully and publicly demonstrated and enacted. The path from “Nouvelle Amitié” to “Tendre” appears as a journey of initiation and as a transition from one social and emotional status to another, which must be played out in front of an audience and for an audience – first and foremost for the lady who is being courted. Earlier I had already mentioned that this éducation sentimentale masquerades as a form of game, and that the map becomes a model and at the same time an object of the game. The map thus takes on not only an aesthetic but also a tactical and strategic dimension. In its construction, naming and figuration, it is at one and the same time an appropriation and an acquisition of the land of Tendre. Ultimately, the ‘commerce des femmes,’ as social intercourse with women was called in the seventeenth century, was very much about economic as well as social and political power relations and property relations. The topographical physiology of love outlined by Mlle de Scudéry in Clelie is grounded in an assumption of a simple linking of and an apparently self-evident association between certain behaviors and affective conditions. This conforms to the traditional teachings on the affects, which emphasized changing conditions and the overturn of one passion into another more than a dynamic process. But this aspect also points to the limits of topographical representation itself: the visual and verbal signs of the map are accompanied by a significant absence, an empty space that suggests the non-representability of bodily performances. The visible projection ultimately makes the course of possible movements invisible as well as the gradual approach and occasional straying that initially made the projection itself possible. The Carte de Tendre’s space of knowledge creates its own dimension of forgetting. The trace of signs replaces social practice. This seems to constitute the price of making social action readable, manageable and containable. Translation: Christina M. White

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WORKS CITED Adhémar, Jean, ed. Les salons littéraires au XVIIe siècle. Au temps des précieuses. [Exhibit. cat.] Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1968. Baader, Renate. Dames de lettres. Autorinnen des preziösen, hocharistokratischen und ‘modernen’ Salons. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1986. Buci-Glucksmann, Christine. Der kartographische Blick der Kunst. Berlin: Merve, 1997. Büff, Renate. Ruelle und Realität. Preziöse Liebes- und Ehekonzeptionen und ihre Hintergründe. Heidelberg, 1979. DeJean, Joan. “Salons, ‘Preciosity’, and the Sphere of Women’s Influence.” A New History of French Literature. Ed. Denis Hollier. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989. 297-303. Delft, Louis van. Littérature et anthropologie. Nature humaine et caractère à l’âge classique. Paris: Presses Univ. de France, 1993. Douglas, Mary. Ritual, Tabu und Körpersymbolik. Sozialanthropologische Studien in Industriegesellschaft und Stammeskultur. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer TaschenbuchVerlag, 1981. Estienne, Charles. La Dissection des parties du corps. Paris: Cercle du livre précieux, 1965 [Facsimile of the edition Paris, 1546]. Filteau, Claude. “Le pays du Tendre: l’enjeu d’une carte.” Littérature 36 (1979): 3760. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Fuchs, Thomas. The Mechanization of the Heart: Harvey and Descartes. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001. Gennep, Arnold van. Übergangsriten. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 1986. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. “Produktion von Präsenz, durchsetzt mit Absenz.” Ästhetik der Inszenierung. Ed. Josef Früchtl and Jörg Zimmermann. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2001. 63-76. Harvey, William. Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. Frankfurt a. M., 1628. Luhmann, Niklas. Love as Passion: the Codification of Intimacy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pelous, Jean-Michel. Amour précieux, amour galant (1654-1675). Essai sur la représentation de l’amour dans la littérature et la société mondaines. Paris: Klincksieck, 1980. Penzkofer, Gerhard. “L’art du mensonge.” Erzählen als barocke Lügenkunst in den Romanen von Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Tübingen: Narr, 1998. Schott, Heinz, ed. Der sympathetische Arzt. Texte zur Medizin im 18. Jahrhundert. Munich: Beck, 1998. Scudéry, Madeleine de. Clélie. Historie romaine. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1973 [Facsimile of the edition Paris, 1660]. Zögner, Lothar, ed. Von Ptolemaeus bis Humboldt. Kartenschätze der Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Ausstellung zum 125jährigen Jubiläum der Kartenabteilung. [Exhibit. cat.] Weissenhorn: A. H. Konrad, 1984. Zumthor, Paul. “Mappa Mundi und Performanz. Die mittelalterliche Kartographie.” ‘Aufführung’ und ‘Schrift’ in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. DFG-Symposium 1994. Ed. Jan Dirk Müller. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996. 317-27.

JAN LAZARDZIG

Universality and Territoriality: On the Architectonic of Academic Social Life Exemplified by the Brandenburg Universität der Völker, Wissenschaften und Künste1 (1666/67) Salomon’s House, Francis Bacon’s archetype of a modern scientific organisation, was a makeshift structure right into the 18th century.2 Thus the founding of the Royal Society in the 1660s took place in the room of a founding member in Gresham College and it was here that the society took up rudimentary lodgings until 1666 (and once again from 1674).3 The German academy of natural scientists in Halle, the Leopoldina, was a wandering academy for a long period after its founding in 1652. Up until 1878, administration, books and collections were brought to the prevailing president’s place of work. The later Preußische Societät der Wissenschaften und Künste,4 founded in 1700, was housed in the royal stables of the ruler, with the “royal horses and mules.”5 1 2

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Brandenburg University of Peoples, Sciences, and Arts. Cf. Tilo Schabert. “Die Architektur der Welt.” Eine kosmologische Lektüre architektonischer Normen. Munich: Fink, 1997, 38-39. Further examples of the ‘wandering’ of academies are also to be found here. Cf. Steven Shapin. “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth Century England.” Isis 79 (1988): 381. Prussian Academy of Sciences and Art. Alexander Amersdorfer. Der Akademie-Gedanke in der Entwicklung der Preußischen Akademie der Künste. Ein Vortrag. Veröffentlichungen der Preussischen Akademie der Künste 2. Berlin: Hermann & Co, 1928. 10. An overview of the European academy movement can be found in the recent work of Claudia Valter. “Akademien der Wissenschaften.” Erkenntnis – Erfindung – Konstruktion. Studien zur Bildgeschichte von Naturwissenschaften und Technik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Ed. Hans Holländer. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000. 121-142. See also Hurel, Daniel-Odon and Gérard Laudin, eds. Académies et sociétés savantes en Europe (1650-1800). Paris: H. Champion, 2000. Klaus Garber and Heinz Wismann, eds. Europäische Sozietätsbewegung und demokratische Tradition.

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The efforts to give 17th century science – which was taking on an institutional form – its own residence, to literally install it on new foundations in the truest sense of the word, and to provide the learned men with a building worthy of their aspirations failed in the beginning. At the same time a peculiarly characteristic architecture of academic sociability emerged which found in the multiple and mostly short-lived societies, scholarly communities, and academies a hybrid, albeit strictly regulated, form.6 On the other hand the architecture reflected the instability of social, confessional, territorial and political borders, particularly in Germany where it acquired an “expression of utopianism.”7 The utopian took on a certain inevitability particularly when it was a case of staking out a territory intended to designate the location of universal knowledge. The difficulty lay not just in designing an architecture of science, but in including an architecture of knowledge which reflected a new kind of organisation of knowledge and discoveries.

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2 vols. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996. Definitive as ever: Martha Ornstein. The Role of Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928. Accordingly Sophie Forgan only begins her observations on the architecture of the “scientific institutions” in the 18th and 19th century. Cf. Sophie Forgan. “Context, Image and Function: a Preliminary Enquiry into the Architecture of Scientific Societies.” BJHS 19 (1986): 89-113. The extent to which epistemological and architectonic construction coincides has been investigated by Tilo Schabert. According to him “the academy’s architecture becomes transparent and can be seen for what it is: the appearance of science. Science is world knowledge – universal knowledge of the object, the reality – and the academy – the free union of scholars for the sole purpose of learning – is the ‘world’ in which the world – as acknowledged by the scientists – appears.” Schabert. Architektur. 37. Jörg Jochen Berns. “Zur Tradition der deutschen Sozietätsbewegung im 17. Jahrhundert.” Sprachgesellschaften, Sozietäten, Dichtergruppen. Arbeitsgespräch in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, 28. bis 30. Juni 1977. Vorträge und Berichte. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 7. Ed. Manfred Bircher and Ferdinand van Ingen. Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1978. 57-58. On the German development see Fritz Hartmann and Rudolf Vierhaus, eds. Der Akademiegedanke im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 3. Bremen: Jacobi, 1977. From the perspective of the history of ideas or the programmatic perspective: Walther Artelt. “Vom Akademiegedanken im 17. Jahrhundert.” Nunquam otiosus. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Präsidenten der Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstag des XXII. Präsidenten Kurt Mothes. Nova Acta Leopoldina N. F. 198 = Vol. 36. Ed. Erwin Reichenbach and Georg Uschmann. Leipzig: Barth, 1970. 9-22. Gerhard Kanthak. Der Akademiegedanke zwischen utopischem Entwurf und barocker Projektmacherei. Zur Geistesgeschichte der Akademiebewegung des 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1987.

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This tension is expressed in the suggestions for a Universitas Brandenburgica Gentium, Scientarium et Artium proposed to the Prince Elector of Brandenburg by the former Swedish privy councellor and l’Homme des Lettres, Bengt Skytte, in early 1667. Thus in one of his numerous applications to the court, Skytte, in the extravagant rhetoric of a Baroque ‘projector,’ promised that Ir. Chr. Fr. Dtt. [your princely highness] can have in your country in one place what other rulers must find at great expense and effort in very remote places and indeed can hardly find and even less keep. What an unsurpassable treasure it is to have the best and most artistic goods in his highness’s country and in one place; that is optimal; and goes beyond all treasure-art cabinets and rarities; can never become dilapidated or be stolen or plundered as often happens unfortunately with dead treasures and rarities; so it is only feasible to turn to a living and immortal art nation instead of a dead and transient one: since the living will not only be able to serve Your Chr. Fr. Dtt. with various dead rarities and art cabinets, but the wise and experienced people of the universities with living relations and counsel from all places in the world; which Your Chr. Fr. Dtt. will wish to use more than all the […] rarities.8

What Bengt Skytte promised the Brandenburg Elector was nothing less than a new centre of world academia. At the same time, this new city of scholars was to be equipped with extensive privileges, and as a politically neutral location was intended to be a gathering point for the most outstanding and scholarly men in Europe. This living treasury – already Bacon was using the term ‘treasury’ for Salomon’s House – which Skytte, constantly developing the ground plan with new measurements and complementary or contradictory memoriae, envisioned as an ideal urban utopia in the sands of the old Marches, remained a ‘paper architecture’ which can be viewed today in the Prussian secret state archives.

8

Das also Ir. Chr. Fr. Dtt. in ihro landt in einem Ort haben können, was andere potentates mit größten unkostung undt mühe finden mußen an weit abgelegenen orten, undt doch nicht wol finden, weniger behalten können. Was das nun für ein Inoptimabel Schatz ist, die besten und kunstreigsten Güter in seynem landt undt an einem orte zu haben; das ist optimabel; undt geht über alle Schatz-kunstkammer undt Rariteten; Kann auch nimmer verbraucht oder weggestohlen oder beraubt werden wie mit thote Schetzen undt rariteten oft leider geschit; darumb billich nur auf eine lebendige undt unsterblich Kunststat zu wenden, undt halten als auf eine tote [...] wie auch vergengliche: weil die lebendige nicht allein mit unterschiedliche tote rariteten undt Kunstkamer Ihro Chr. Fr. Dtt. bedinen können nicht werden, sondern die Weisen undt erfahrenen personen der universitet mit lebendiger relationes undt consilien, von allen Orten der Welt; dessen sich Ihro Chr. Fr. Dtt. nützen wünschen, als alle die [...] rariteten. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. 1, fol. 9, 9 verso [my italics].

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In a first step, using some of the most striking programs on scientific organisation, the relation of symbolic and material order underlying this architecture shall be extrapolated here. This cursory view of Andreae’s Christianopolis, Bacon’s Salomon’s House, Comenius’s design of a world academy and Leibniz’s early society plans will then serve to describe the backdrop of tension against which Skytte’s plan took shape and help us understand the expectations he tried to fulfil. Finally, I would like to describe the Brandenburgian society plan of 1666/67 as an architecture of science which tries to reconcile universal and territorial spaces, thus offering a pragmatic form of public architecture. 1. The Worldliness of the Academy Since Francis Bacon’s design of an Instauratio magna, at the latest, concepts of space and models of knowledge seem to be closely linked together in the program of the New Sciences. The positioning of knowledge acquisition within the institutionalisation process of the academies, societies and scholarly communities takes place between two poles. On the one hand it concerns a symbolic location of universal knowledge, which is reflected above all in language and didactics and whose most common metaphor is the diffusion of ‘light.’ This symbolic location has an imaginary core which could be born of the late Middle Ages’ definition of God as a circle whose periphery is nowhere and whose centre is everywhere.9 Once this light forms the ‘nucleus’ of the architecture, the individual withdraws from it. On the other hand, it is about a place in the world, an architecture which serves both as a functional as well as a representational space for science. Both places permeate the program to such an extent that one could speak of an architectural order of knowledge.10 This architecture is the expression of a problem which can apparently only be resolved in an utopian manner, namely through the ‘accommodation’ of a religiously motivated universalism (which manages without the individual) 9

10

On the connection between natural research and spiritualism, i.e. between the external revelation through the observation of nature and the internal revelation as ‘becoming light’ cf. Karl Hinrichs. “Die Idee des geistigen Mittelpunktes Europas im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert.” Das Hauptstadtproblem in der Geschichte. Festgabe zum 90. Geburtstag Friedrich Meineckes. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1952. 93. See respective references in Peter Galison. “Buildings and the Subject of Science.” The Architecture of Science. Ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. 2-4

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within a truly restricted territory (which should serve to protect the individuals living within it). It is thus no surprise that the proposals for society buildings developed first along the lines of monastic-like buildings and that universal concepts fell back on a religiously defined, spatially social substitute.11 The ‘utopian solution’ of the problem, namely the territorial defining of universal knowledge consisted firstly in the mathematical, thus rational, construction and organisation of the realm of human situatedness, secondly, in the construction of an ideal urban microcosm which is dependent on the worldly macrocosm. Already with Johann Valentin Andreae’s Christian social utopia of the island state Christianopolis (1619) this staking out of territory presents a double process of colonisation. Andreae has his ‘ship of fantasy’ stranded in front of the island of Capharsalama whose city state recalls the basic form of colonial cities of antiquity and the Middle Ages.12 This internal colonization culminates in the spatial and at the same time spiritual and political centre of the ideal city – a ‘citadel’13 which includes the market place and church. Library, laboratory, pharmacy, dissecting room, collections of physical and mathematical exhibits, printing works, painting and instrument workshop, but also the armoury and city treasury all lie within the citadel walls. The spacious “bright and cheerful” lecture halls are situated on the floor above. Andreaes’ educational program, the mental and physical formation of the youth, fuses here with the spatial formation of the class rooms: This is not, by Heavens! at all like the shameful example of the world, which appears to value its children very highly but frequently confines them in some dingy, unhealthy and indeed unclean place like a workhouse, where they are infected by filth and grow accustomed to endure prisons. Here, however, everything is open, bright and cheerful.14

The external colonisation expresses itself in the ‘Zuhandensein’ (‘athandedness’) of the world which is grounded in the ties of the island state with foreign trade: “so that we may gaze upon the special endowment of each part of the earth, and put them all into a common stock.

11

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For example, the monastically conceived college-design for the Royal Society by John Evelyn 1659. Cf. Michael Hunter. “A ‘College’ for the Royal Society: The Abortive Plan of 1667-1668.” Establishing the New Science. The Experience of the Early Royal Society. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989. 156-184. Hinrichs. “Idee.” 86. Johann Valentin Andreae. Christianopolis. Trans. and intro. Edward H. Thompson. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. 203. Ibid. 218.

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Thus although we are in one place, we may seem to enjoy the whole globe of the earth.”15 This ‘visual’ participation ‘in the whole globe of the earth’ receives in the Baconian island kingdom New-Atlantis an instrumental intensification. In Francis Bacon’s Opus imperfectum, the third fragmentary part of the Instauratio, written in 1624 and only posthumously published, this colonial intervention in the world determines the symbolic location of Salomon’s House. As “the very eye of this kingdom,”16 the island of Bensalem sends its visual rays in the form of thoroughly trained mercatoris lucis around the earth’s sphere. The espionage tasks of the dispatched ‘merchants of light’ are performed in an indirect mode: only when masked and with a new identity can they gain knowledge.17 They ensure that while “the eye of this kingdom” remains “hidden und unseen to others,” it has “others open and as in a light” to it.18 The panoptical view of the earth’s sphere which the ‘society of the House of Salomon’ amounts to an instrumental use of calculated deception.19 It reduces the sphere of the earth to a field of investigation. The spatial exclusivity and paradisical purity of the island state become here the prerequisite for the possibility of knowledge, as both the status of moral-religious immaculacy as well as the objectivity of experimental intervention in the world are thereby secured.20 The ‘invisible’ centre of the earth’s sphere, the island of Bensalem, is distinguished by the set-up of its human relations which obey rational and mathematical principles.21 This ‘mathematical’ grounding of the 15 16 17

18 19

20

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Ibid. 167. Francis Bacon. Works. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Vol. 3. London: Longman, 1858. “Now for me to tell you how the vulgar sort of mariners are contained from being discovered at land; and how they that must be put on shore for any time, colour themselves under the names of other nations; and to what places these voyages have been designed; and what places of rendez-vous are appointed for the new missions; and the like circumstances of the practique; I may not do it.” Ibid. 146. Ibid. 140-42. Cf. Charles C. Whitney. “Merchants of Light: Science as Colonization in the New Atlantis.” Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts. “The Art of Discovery Grows With Discovery.” Ed. William A. Sessions. New York: AMS Press, 1990. 255-68. Bacon already anticipates here the concept of the noble savage: “thus Bacon intends through the experience of the text, by his analogising of English religion to his text’s ideology, (in which science represents holiness) to prepare the reader – now become alien to his old European world – for his own new task. He could be ‘elect’ in a new world to come.” W. A. Sessions. Francis Bacon Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996. 152. Compare for instance the reception of the ‘father of Salomon’s House’ by the

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social has the religious-moral effect of predictability and reliability of social behaviour, which can thus consciously renounce deception and mistrust. Also built upon this foundation is the college of scholars who embody systematically applied induction for the study of all creation and the investigation of the origins of all things. The true location of Salomon’s house seems to lie in the hierarchically developed interaction of the brethren.22 The numerous functional buildings can roughly be subdivided into research centres, workshops and houses, which serve collection, systematizing as well as experimental purposes; together they present a spatial organisation of the quest for knowledge. Nature is systematically measured from the high regions (towers on mountains) to the depths (constructions in caves). At all levels the principle of Imitatio naturae as a process of appropriation and submission dominates the investigative practice. So located in the diagonals are numerous workshops as well as buildings and facilities which serve as alienated artificial sensory apparatus for the freezing and functional separation of sensory perception.23 Through these buildings, the sensory process qua arrestation becomes a perception process; physiological seeing, hearing and tasting becomes an exemplary model of knowledge acquisition. Here, the systematic architectural conquest of the regions of the island kingdom is accompanied by the empirical conquest in optical and acoustic workshops as well as in smokehouses and scent houses and taste houses (bakeries). The altered consciousness which science has of its own role finds hyperbolic reflection in a long representational gallery which is filled with wooden, stone or metal statues of “all principle inventors.”24 Here the Baconian scientist receives his own self-image by means of the gaze, turned monument, directed at him: The Imitatio historiae already anticipates his possible future.25

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town inhabitants: “The street was wonderfully well kept: so that there was never any army had their men stand in better battle-array, than the people stood. The windows likewise were not crowded but everyone stood in them as if they had been placed.” Bacon. Works. Vol. III, 155. Hinrichs (“Idee”) speaks of an spiritual centre. I would place the shared practical experience, the common work, in the centre. From this perspective the ‘House’ consists in the contained harmonious community interacting within it. Cf. Bacon. Works. Vol. III, 159-164. Ibid. 165. On the scientist’s new consciousness of his role see Joseph Ben-David. “Scientific Role: Conditions of its Establishment in Europe.” Minerva IV.1 (1965): 45. On the heroic staging of the scientists using the example set by New Atlantis compare John M. Steadman “Bacon and the Scientist as Hero.” Studies in the Literary

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The Bohemian pansoph Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670), a student of Andreae defines in his Via lucis the symbolic location of his “house of wisdom,” a “world academy,” as a ‘round table’ which should pave the way to the universal enlightenment of mankind. This “Salomonic drama,” Comenius remarks in allusion to the holy scripture, deals with the wisdom which builds a house, slaughters its fattened beast and mixes its wine, lays the tables and sends its maids out to the faculties and eminent places in the city (the world) to invite even the simple and the crazy to dine and drink (Aph. 9,1 f.). Hereby the objects of knowledge are prepared as dishes which are each arranged in their own volumes and doused with the wine of different charms. Accordingly, the schools represent the tables laid for the meal. The maids, however, who invite the guests to this holy ‘banquet of wisdom’ will be the members of the faculty who call the pure and virginal senses of all mankind to the feast of the holy wedding which the bride wisdom is celebrating. New and effective invitation formulae will be provided by that new language which is easy to understand for everyone.26

The panoptic view of the world is not, as it was for Bacon, indirect and defined by isolation, but is rather expressed through the paradox of a heterotopic centering. The house of wisdom is located in all “eminent places in the world” held together by the power of ritualised get-togethers. As a ‘round table’ it forms and models the community and controls the exchange of experience since to know something because another person has supplied the reasons is not knowledge but belief. So “to chew with the mouth of another” does not mean to chew, but to watch someone else who is chewing. I do not taste the cake which you eat nor the wine which you drink.27

If the access to the world is synchronized at the symbolic level by ritualised actions, Comenius on the other hand plans his ‘world academy’ as a universal, centrally organised gathering point.28 As wisdom has been dispersed by God, it is necessary, he explains, to create a college (from lat. colligere – collect) where wisdom is systematically adminis-

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Imagination 4.1 (1971): 40-44. Steadman concentrates especially on Bacon’s narrative strategy which he thinks can be incorporated into the narrative tradition of the heroic. From the perspective of historical motive he is interested in the linking of the figure of the scientific discoverer with that of the geographical explorer. Johann Amos Comenius. “Via Lucis.” Opera Omnia. 1642. Ed. Ludvík Svoboda. Prague: Academia, 1974. 339. Ibid. This, says Comenius, is to be accomplished in memory of Bacon “who was the first to reflect upon how a universal renewal of the sciences can take place.” Ibid. 349.

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tered: “because a multitude of the wise will be the salvation of the earth.”29 For the headquarters of the academy he singles out England, as England is so situated that it can be reached by sea from all regions of the world, and from there all regions of the world can be directed. Minute rules for postal correspondence throughout the world are drawn up by Comenius with the aim of securing the collegial cohesion of the community. By comparison, the sectarian behaviour of the individual would indicate a state of disorder. Comenius opposes this with the motif of inversion taken from the prophetic tradition: “out of dispersion into unity, out of confusion into order, from opinions to truth, from the peripheries of things to their centres, from ourselves and from the creatures to God.”30 The unity itself becomes the architecture of wisdom and the members of the college are at the same time the craftsmen and architects of this new order: “he who intends to construct a building […] requires an architect and craftsmen who can put these plans into action. Incumbent upon us is the task of renewing the whole educational system.”31 Symbolic and material order succeed in a final complete reversal in Comenius’s Panorthosia (Universal Reform) when the project of a world academy with headquarters in England has lost all hope of realization. Here the ‘round table’ moves once again into the foreground which through the merging of all scholarly communities into a “college of light” (he mentions by name the Accademia dei Lincei in Italy, the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft in Germany and the Rosen in France) allows a cohabitation in spirit and in deed.32 Being far more concrete than the Comenian world academy in terms of clarity and utility, the early society projections of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz surprise us with their vigorous versatility. They are not confined to a modelled static, even though they are of a programmatic nature like the utopian projections.33 Leibniz’s plans for society do not 29 30 31 32 33

Comenius explicitly refers to this meaning of the word college. Ibid. 349. Ibid. 351. Ibid. 347. Johann Amos Comenius. Panorthosia or Universal Reform. Trans. A. M. O. Dobbie. Glasgow: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Leibniz’s society plans are comprehensively dealt with in Ines Böger. “Ein seculum…da man zu Societäten Lust hat”: Darstellung und Analyse der Leibnizschen Sozietätspläne vor dem Hintergrund der europäischen Akademiebewegung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. 2 vols. Munich: Utz, 1997. I refer to the academy projections from the pre-Paris time. Societas Philadelphica (1669), Societas Confessionum Conciliatrix (1669?), Grundriß eines Bedenkens von Aufrichtung einer Sozietät in Deutschland zu Aufnehmen der Künste und Wissenschaften (first and

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stand isolated alongside his philosophical projections, they rather reflect “the most general principles of his thought in the specific medium of sciences and the educational system.”34 It is not difficult to recognise the contours of the monad as a unifying force, as Repraesentatio mundi, as universal cohesion for a world in the process of functional differentiation, because the “isolation of the individual sciences would surely be fatal, since the unity of the world in its reflection in consciousness would thereby be destroyed.”35 In one of his early society plans, Societas Philadelphica, which remained unpublished during his lifetime, Leibniz presents two interlocking spaces in whose functional dependency the society is situated: that of the trade and capital currents and that of colonial expansion. As an organisation extending throughout the world it is intended to rule the world “for the general good:” The society can […] easily attain a position in which there is no longer anyone whom it must fear, where it sits at the helm of the state, since it has also been equipped to prove itself as a seminar […] for the people who are useful for the state. The military leaders can also be duty bound to the society, [...] ships and settlers can be sent to America, the whole of the earth can be subjugated not through violence, but through goodness […]. Finally the whole of mankind will be ennobled, since until that time more than half of them were underdeveloped. The society will even be our referee in wars and easily provide security to the earth against unlawful violence since above all [the members] shall occupy the most important posts and be closely bound with the people and be in control of the regional powers.36

Contrary to Bacon’s way of thinking, Leibniz’s colonialism takes on a cosmopolitan appearance, backing as it does international and interconfessional reconciliation and not spatial isolation. The binding force of capitalism acts against this geographically border-free society (§16). As a space for trade and capital, the society secures not only a living for its members (§20), but by means of cash payment it also regulates and sanctions their character formation (§16). In the Grundriß eines Bedenkens von Aufrichtung einer Sozietät in Deutschland zu Aufnehmen der Künste und Wissenschaften, which appeared two years later, the idea of education is more obviously pronounced. The society is to be the place of the most rational teaching and learning methods and aims

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second version 1671). All of them printed in: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Politische Schriften II. Ed. and intro. Hans Heinz Holz. Frankfurt a. M.: Europ. Verl.Anst., 1967. Hans Heinz Holz. “Einleitung.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Politische Schriften II. Ed. and intro. Hans Heinz Holz. Frankfurt a. M.: Europ. Verl.-Anst, 1967. 10. Ibid. 10. Leibniz. Politische Schriften II. 26. Cf. Böger. Ein seculum. 80-81.

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for a new order of social, political and religious life within its sphere of influence.37 Here the ideas which Leibniz conceived in his Altdorf dissertation (written 1666, anonymously published 1667) as “a gradual […] forming of habitus”38 are shown to advantage. Nuremburg, famous for its craftsmanship, could have provided him with the best illustrative material.39 Due to the Leibniz’s utilitarianism, the space for his society 37

38

39

Thus from a society to be established in Germany he expects “many fine and useful ideas, inventions and experiments, […] means […] of keeping the nutrition within the country, creating factories therein […] attracting commerce, in time workhouses and prisons, to put idlers and wrongdoers to work, to invest, to set up warehouses whose […] leasing […] produces a secure income, […] to bargain for stocks, to encourage the Germans to take to sea for trade purposes, […] to improve the schools, to teach the youth spiritual exercises, languages, and the reality of the sciences at home, […] to facilitate craftsmanship with benefits and instruments, to be able with perpetual inexpensive fire and movement to test and produce everything in chemistry and mechanics, with glassmakers , perspectives, machines, water arts, clocks, lathe works, painting, printery, dye works, weaving mill, steel and iron works, to keep privileges within the country for everything, to obtain [privileges] abroad for new inventa, [to have] a theatrum naturae et artis or cabinets of art, curiosity and anatomy for the easy learning of all things, […] to draw the essence from books, to collect manuscripta, opera posthuma, relations which are getting lost, experiments, letters of correspondence, to provide order and indices for everything, […] to keep in the country and to give work […] to poor people whose art is used to find bread, […] to protect them and their own from sin, shame and corruption of the soul. Leibniz. Politische Schriften II. §24, 40-41. Whilst Leibniz in Societas Philadelphica still describes an elitist, almost mystical community, which is promoted to the true director of the state, in Bedenken von Aufrichtung einer Akademie oder Sozietät in Deutschland (1671) the nation is addressed. For the society location he suggests Holland: “since for many reasons I wish that the residence, so to speak, of the society should be Holland.” Leibniz. Politische Schriften II. 24. See Böger. Ein seculum. 78 footnote 159. As an international center of science, economy and trade “Holland” offered the conditions which best accorded with Leibniz’s society concept. Hubertus Busche. Leibniz’ Weg ins perspektivische Universum. Eine Harmonie im Zeitalter der Berechnung. Hamburg: Meiner, 1997. 179. Busche describes the Nova methodus discendae docendaeque jurisprudentiae (1667) as a sketch of “philosophy of education.” Ibid. 172. This recalls the Unio Christiana of Andreae and Harsdörffer’s Pegnesischen Blumenorden. See on this: Richard van Dülmen. “Sozietätsbildungen in Nürnberg im 17. Jahrhundert.” Gesellschaft und Herrschaft. Festgabe für Karl Bosl zum 60. Geburtstag. Munich: Beck, 1969. 153-90. The influence of the Nuremburg societies on the society plans of the young Leibniz is an interesting field not yet researched. Ibid. 182. There are no clues to be found in Böger either. Böger. Ein seculum. Alone Leibniz’s alleged membership in a secret alchemist society gave rise to an abundance of speculation. See e.g., Ludwig Keller. “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz und die deutschen Sozietäten des 17. Jahrhunderts.” Mitteilungen der Comenius-Gesellschaft. Berlin: Weidmann, 1903. Idem. “Gottfried Wilhelm

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is not a secret, inwardly directed one, but rather experiences a lifting of borders and becomes a universal method for a life guided by reason; that is to say, the architecture of his society arises from the attempt to amalgamate action space (action postulate) and method space (method postulate). The expectations of an architecture of science as an architecture of knowledge reaches a climax with Leibniz. The difficulty of conceiving this architecture can be summed up in the following constellation of problems: First of all it was necessary that the latent worldliness of the academy and its universalistic program be given expression through the assertion of a core of the world. This requirement is manifest in symbolic substitution, for example in Bacon’s ‘eye of the kingdom.’ Herein a universal orientation and territorial restriction (e.g. as a postulate of action) can be harmonized. Secondly, the architecture of the academy is always an architecture of a particular image of a community, i.e. the space of the academy must not only accommodate this community; it must at the same time form this community, model it, and subject it methodically to its own programmatic self-image. 2. The Plan for a Brandenburg Universal University (1666/67) Before going on to examine these inherent tensions using the Brandenburg Universal University as a case in point, I will give a brief description of the background against which the Swedish projector Skytte presented his project.40

40

Leibniz und die deutschen Sozietäten des 17. Jahrhunderts.” Mitteilungen der Comenius-Gesellschaft (1903): 1-15. The literature on the plan of a Universitas Brandenburgica Gentium, Scieniarum et Artium is now relatively comprehensive. The reference point for almost all authors is the thorough study by Fritz Arnheim. “Freiherr Benedikt Skytte (16141683), der Urheber des Planes einer ǥUniversal-Universität der Völker, Wissenschaften und Künste.’” Beiträge zur brandenburgischen und preußischen Geschichte, Festschrift zu Gustav Schmollers 70. Geburtstag. Ed. Verein für Geschichte der Mark Brandenburg. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1908. 65-99. See also his shortened contribution which also contains futher sources: Fritz Arnheim. “Die Universal-Universität des Grossen Kurfürsten und ihre geistigen Urheber.” Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft für Kultur und Geistesleben 20. N. F. 3 (1911): 19-35. The older literature is summarised in Kanthak. Akademiegedanke. 7-13. Differing perspectives on the plan are offered by Ernst

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Brandenburg-Prussia distinguished itself in the second half of the 17th century through a science-friendly atmosphere. Alongside the founding of universities in Duisburg and Halle (1655, 1667) Berlin developed into a “center of the most diverse sciences, extending from library sciences, to sinology, through the botanical sciences and chemistry to experimental medicine.”41 At the same time, the situation in Berlin was still very restrictive and “for more specialized printing questions” the scholars required “contact with the highly developed towns in the western part of the empire and in the Netherlands.”42 The cultural engagement of the Prince Elector Friedrich Wilhelm was reflected above all in his collection of books, whose 90,000 printed volumes (1688) provided the basic stock for the Preußische Staatsbibliothek.43 Many of the Prince Elector’s plans for constructing a cultural and scientific centre fell through owing to the latent shortage of financial resources at a court which was administering a terrain particularly adversely affected by the Thirty Years’ War. When in autumn 1666, having fallen out with the Swedish court, Bengt Skytte, the former Swedish privy councellor and intimate of Queen Christine, presented (with the help of his friend, the Elector’s personal doctor Nicholas Bonnet) Friedrich Wilhelm with the plan of a “Universal University institution,” the latter initially took a favourable view of “such a noble design.”44 As a friend and admirer of Johann Amos Comenius, who possessed a good reputation at the Brandenburg court, the highly educated Skytte had the opportunity to develop the idea of a city of scholars during his first hand experience of the founding of the

41

42 43 44

Opgenoorth. Friedrich Wilhelm. Der Große Kurfürst von Brandenburg. Eine politische Biographie. Zweiter Teil: 1660-1668. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1978. 60-61. Hinrichs. “Idee.” 97-102. Barbara Beuys. Der Große Kurfürst. Der Mann, der Preußen schuf. Biographie. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1979. 305-09. Ludwig Hüttl. Der Große Kurfürst. Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg. Munich: Heyne, 1984. 344-347. Conrad Grau. Die Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Eine deutsche Gelehrtengesellschaft in drei Jahrhunderten. Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademie Verlag, 1993. 37-39. Böger. Ein seculum. 366-67. Rolf Winau. “Der Hof des Großen Kurfürsten als Mittelpunkt wissenschaftlicher Forschung. Vorschläge zur Edition der Werke der Leibärzte (Gesamtausgabe Christian Mentzel).” Werkstattgespräch “Berliner Ausgaben” Ed. Hans-Gert Roloff. Bern: Lang, 1981. 31. An overview of scientific research and publications at the Brandenburg-Prussian court is to be found in: Peter Bahl. Der Hof des Großen Kurfürsten. Studien zur höheren Amtsträgerschaft BrandenburgPreußens. Cologne: Böhlau, 2001. 310-22. Bahl. Hof. 320. Ibid. 300-02. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit M II fasc. 1, fol. 3.

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Royal Society and to present it to Colbert before the Societé des Sciences was founded in 1666.45 He was rejected by the latter and in January 1667 the polyglot cosmopolite Skytte appeared in Berlin to an audience with Friedrich Wilhelm. The paper architecture of the Brandenburg city of scholars ran to a total of fifteen applications and letters from Skytte to the privy counselor Georg von Bonin, the Prince Elector, and his minister Herr von Schwerin. One year later, it was published in Latin as Friedrich Wilhelm’s foundation charter in the Diarium Europaeum.46 In the form of an invitation, it addresses all “lovers of elegant muses,” “respectable and honourable men, whatsoever their nation, profession or religion,” furthermore the “lovers of the freedoms” and those who for noble reasons are “cast from their fatherland” and find pleasure in “educated society and scholarly circles.” They are promised that they will find in this university the Parnassus, the honour of the sciences and arts, the embellishing freedom of conscience and all fine free things. Comfort for the downtrodden, asylum and refuge for the banned, a community of outstanding souls, the friendship of good minds and the pleasure of the more educated and excessively wise of the human race.

Not only are Calvinists, Arminians, Lutherans, Romans and Greek Catholics, but also Jewish and Arabic scholars along with other “unbelievers” called to join the “seat of the muses, temple of the sciences, [the] workshop of the arts, [the] home of the virtues and […] the palace of the best and most sublime sovereign in the world, wisdom.” In seventeen points this place is granted extensive privileges, including perpetual exemption from taxation and free accommodation for the most outstanding scholars and artists, ‘eternal’ political neutrality towards the neighbouring countries, exemption from the billeting of soldiers and their marches through the area, as well as a largely independent administration and jurisdiction. In Skytte’s rhetoric this “place of freedom in the world” possessed in itself no worth, but existed primarily for the 45

46

On the relation between Comenius and Skytte see Milada Blekastad. Comenius. Versuch eines Umrisses von Leben, Werk und Schicksal des Jan Amos Komensky. Oslo: Univ.-forl., 1969. 553, 605-06, 656-55. Anders Grape. “Comenius, Bengt Skytte och Royal Society.” Lychnos, Lärdomshistoriska Samfundets Årsbok (1936): 319-30. Hinrichs. “Idee.” 99-100. Diarium Europaeum. Vol. XVI. Appendix II. Frankfurt a. M., 1668. 11-13. The following quot. from: Georg Daniel Seyler. Leben und Thaten Friedrich Wilhelms des Großen, Churfürstens zu Brandenburg. Frankfurt a. M.: Knochen, 1730. 8083. Many thanks to my colleague Dr. Angelika Lozar for her kind assistance with the translation. Without her help the contribution would not have the present form.

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purpose of elevating the Elector to the “Salomon of Christianity.” His entry into “all chronicals […] as if you had won many battles” was assured, claimed Skytte.47 In the inscription on the academy seal at the end of the patent, the core of the world becomes the symbolic location of the new foundation: “Fundatore Friderico Wilhelmo Elect.[ore] Brand.[enburgiensi] Nobilis sic orbis in orbe.”48 The fact that the project was not realized in the end is probably to be attributed primarily to the costs anticipated in the development of the town of Tangermünde. (Thus, shortly before negotiations were broken off, the town Ziesar was mentioned as an alternative location for the academy). Furthermore, the projector Skytte’s reputation was severely sullied by the Swedish ambassador who brought to the Elector’s attention the fact that Skytte was acting as a private man, since he had been deprived of all his titles.49 To boot, his actual position did not correspond with the privileges, particularly that of the directoral post with corresponding remuneration which Skytte claimed for himself (and his relatives). Finally Bonin expressed uneasiness concerning the kind of person the generously pronounced asylum would tempt into the country.50 Skytte, insisting ever more impatiently on the plan’s realization, was finally equipped with a gratification for his efforts and sent off on a journey to promote the planned academy.51 3. Universality and Territoriality The architecture of science which the Swedish projector Skytte designs is eclectic in its orientation towards an ideal, utopian city, but at the same time considers the local, territorial conditions of the BrandenburgPrussian state. The search for a suitable place for the founding of the “living and immortal art city”52 is the thread running through Skytte’s relations at the Brandenburg court. He is above all occupied with a realm of privileged legal status, which besides being an ideal external 47 48 49 50 51

52

All quotes: PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 9. Cf. Hinrichs. “Idee.” 101. Grau. Akademie. 38. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. 1, fol. 68 The Swede’s relations at the Brandenburg court receive a tragicomic aspect when Bonin advises the Elector to pay the – in the meantime unwelcome – guest not with money, but rather with some “rich and rare thing.” It was the polite way to dismiss this increasingly selfish projector. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 9 verso.

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fortification at the same time should secure internally the conditions for direct personal communication or scholarly exchange. A place, thus, “which one could call Universitatem Universitatum Hominum et Scientiarum praecipuarum Mundi […] within which all of rank, means and scientifically gifted persons […] can live freely and converse with one another.”53 This first “foundation [consists] for the most part in privileges, will not cost any money; as it gives freedom to those people who […] cannot have their freedom.” The Elector would have nothing more to lose “than a paper; and still [would have] the honour.”54 The generously granted privileges fashion this place into a universal, centrally organized gathering point in Comenius’s sense. For Skytte the worldly incentive for this assembly rests above all in the granting of extensively conceived political and religious asylum, to be granted, albeit, to only the best and most distinguished persons (fully in the sense of Leibniz’s elite). Thus the relationship between spatially-ideal and personal exclusivity is harmonized only through a scientist-type which was only just then emerging. The exclusivity of the space as a scholarly enclave in the territorial state of Brandenburg was intended to be a stimulus for scholarly conversation and manners. Thus Skytte attempted to weaken the multiple obiectiones conjecturing: that your majesty couldn’t be stimulated by shepherds and meadow cutters and thus would prefer more distinguished people around his residence than such coarse people, who even if they do have their uses is not, Your Wisdom, to be compared with the others.

After all “enough farmers [would] stay in the land.”55 In the end the Sophopolis found its material foundation, its ‘location’ in the old Marches town of Tangermünde (fig. 1). To begin with, the university was to be accommodated within the castle and later was supposed to emerge “as from a Trojan horse”56 to transform the town and its surroundings into a city of scholars. The town, lying in the old Marches to the south-west of Berlin, with its location on the Elbe and connection to the main postal route to the Cölln residence, offered good infrastructural conditions. Skytte would have known the fortress town above all as the headquarters of King Gustav Adolf, for whom he had 53 54 55 56

PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 5. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 10 verso. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 11 verso. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 43 verso. At the last moment, probably owing to the anticipated costs of developing and renovating the war-torn castle/town, the town Ziesar was discussed, at the suggestion of Georg v. Bonin, as an alternative site. See PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 48.

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Fig. 1: View of the town Tangermünde. From: George Gottfried Küster. Antiquitates Tangermundenses. (Berlin, 1729).

Fig. 2: View of the town Tangermünde. From: F. Kugler, F. E. Meyerheim, and J. H. Strack. Architectonische Denkmäler der Altmark Brandenburg. (Berlin, 1833).

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traveled Europe in his capacity of envoy.57 The castle, formerly the emperor’s residence, had been destroyed in the end by Swedish troops (1640). The town of Tangermünde was also severely affected by the war: the town was the headquarters for generals fourteen times; it was conquered seven times and once completely ransacked. From more than six hundred inhabited burger houses at the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the middle of the century only about half of these were inhabitable, much less inhabited58 (fig. 2). With few exceptions, all that was left standing of the castle were the walls, so that the investment in the Skyttian project found additional argument in the reconstruction of a formerly important residence. From the ruined town of Tangermünde a city of scholars should arise, with regularly planned streets and squares, with palaces for the Elector’s family and spacious buildings for the scientists and university officials. The differentiation between public and private buildings meant in the first instance nothing other than the nature of their financing. The private buildings were to be privately financed or respectively supported out of the ruler’s pocket, the public buildings on the other hand were to be financed through the Elector’s donation.59 Thus included amongst the public buildings were the private sanctums of the Elector and the administrators. Along with curiosity cabinets and laboratories, printing houses and artists’ studios were planned, as well as houses of experiment, prayer houses, lecture halls, an orphanage, a hospital, and even a zoo.60 The planning for the generous garden arrangements was begun very early on. In Skytte’s plan the moving-in process was to run parallel to the building construction; the scholars and artists were to take re57

58 59 60

Fritz Arnheim. “Skytte.“ 70. Whether Skytte himself was ever in Tangermünde is not known. On the role of the town and fortress of Tangermünde in the Thirty Years’ War see: George Gottfried Küster. Antiquitates Tangermundenses. Berlin, 1729. August Wilhelm Pohlmann. Geschichte der Stadt Tangermünde seit Gründung derselben bis zu dem laufenden Jahre 1829. Stendal, 1829. On the history of the fortress after its partial destruction 1640 see: Ludwig Goetze. Geschichte der Burg Tangermünde. Stendal: Franzen & Grosse in Comm., 1871. Fig. 1 appears to be a view from the 18th century, as the castle (to the right of the large church tower above the confluence of Tanger and Elbe) appears as a restored ‘customs office.’ On this see also: Paul Kleinert. Vom Anteil der Universität and der Vorbildung für öffentliche Leben. Rede bei Antritt des Rektorats ... der Kgl. Friedrich Wilhelm Universität am 15. Okt. 1885. Berlin: Vogt, 1885, 6-7. Cf. Wilhelm Zahn. Geschichte der Altmark. Stendal: Schindler, 1892. 64. Indeed in a declaration of the 12th of March, 1667, the Elector had granted 15,000 talers for the restoration of the Tangermünde castle, but soon withdrew his assent. Cf. PgStA, I. HA Rep. 9 K lit. M II fasc. I, fol. 37-39.

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sponsibility for the construction of their own houses, the necessary building materials and craftsmen would be put at their disposal. This town was to be inhabited by a huge posse of secretaries, scribes and treasurers, with chemists and doctors, cooks and vintners, stable boys and night watchmen frolicking amongst the Skyttian papers. Following Bacon’s collection of busts, Skytte devised a golden book in which all achievements would be recorded for posterity. The contradictions which arose from the universal postulate of an architecture of knowledge on the one hand and the concrete plans (financial, infrastructural, personal etc.) on the other modify the programmatic aspirations of a science in the process of constituting itself. ‘Public knowledge’ is first realized behind the walls of a castle; the fortification is, so to speak, built before the formation of the community or respectively proceeds hand in hand with it. The esoteric circle of the scientists and artists, which embodies the universal claim to knowledge is also exclusive in the material sense. William Eamon has convincingly presented the way in which science in the 17th century increasingly marked a certain form of the public sphere, which developed in accordance with editorial techniques and new institutions of scientific cooperation and investigation as well as their protection: “Secrecy, however, is in principle universally rejected in modern science. Free and open communication of research is regarded as a sine qua non of scientific progress and a major component of the ‘ethos’ governing science.”61 This basic assessment seems to speak the language of the Universal University’s own aspirations. Thus point 15 of the foundation charter states: And in order that it is free for each one to practice and teach each science and this without any impediment or demands, no-one who researches or discovers certain secret things of nature or the sciences will be forced against his will to declare this. If, however, of his own free will, he feels the desire to share one or another thing, it shall not be forbidden to receive praise and reward for this.62

61

62

Cf. William Eamon. “From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge.” Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. Ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 333. “Et uti liberum omnio erit unicuique quamcunque liberalem artem exercere, docere, idque sine illo incommodo & exactione, ita quoque nemo horum, qui arcane quaedam naturae vel artis vel scrutatur, vel invenit, invitus illius propagare cogetur. Si vero libera voluntate Vnum vel Alterum illuis participem facere voluerit, mercedem & pretium pro eo accipere non erit prohibitum.” Seyler. Leben. 83.

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But this aspiration to make the city of scholars a public place for the exchange and trade of knowledge (a clear parallel with Leibniz) stands in remarkable contradiction to the material situation of the location. In the first place it’s about an architecture designed for defence – protective – an architecture enabling the very existence of the scholars (in a very vital sense when one considers the granting of asylum). The ideology of openness is defeated above all at the symbolic level in which the city of scholars is shifted into the center stage of the world. On the other hand, at the material level a very pragmatic architecture of scientific openness emerges. Its possibility is directly bound to the fortress surrounding it; it is in fact produced by the fortress. Translation: Shivaun Conroy

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WORKS CITED Amersdorfer, Alexander. Der Akademie-Gedanke in der Entwicklung der Preussischen Akademie der Künste. Ein Vortrag. Veröffentlichungen der Preussischen Akademie der Künste 2. Berlin: Hermann & Co, 1928. Andreae, Johann Valentin. Christianopolis. Trans. and intro. Edward H. Thompson. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999. Arnheim, Fritz. “Freiherr Benedikt Skytte (1614-1683), der Urheber des Planes einer brandenburgischen ‘Universal-Universität der Völker, Wissenschaften und Künste’.” Beiträge zur brandenburgischen und preußischen Geschichte. Festschrift zu Gustav Schmollers 70. Geburtstag. Ed. Verein für Geschichte der Mark Brandenburg. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1908, 65-99. Arnheim, Fritz. “Die Universal-Universität des Grossen Kurfürsten und ihre geistigen Urheber.” Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft für Kultur und Geistesleben 20. N. F. 3 (1911): 19-35. Artelt, Walther. “Vom Akademiegedanken im 17. Jahrhundert.” Nunquam otiosus. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Präsidenten der Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. Festgabe zum 70. Geburtstag des XXII. Präsidenten Kurt Mothes. Nova Acta Leopoldina N. F. 198 = Vol. 36. Ed. Erwin Reichenbach and Georg Uschmann. Leipzig: Barth, 1970. 9-22. Bacon, Francis. Works. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Vol. 3. London: Longman, 1858. Bahl, Peter. Der Hof des Großen Kurfürsten. Studien zur höheren Amtsträgerschaft Brandenburg-Preußens. Cologne: Böhlau, 2001. Ben-David, Joseph. “Scientific Role: Conditions of its Establishment in Europe.” Minerva IV.1 (1965): 15-54. Berns, Jörg Jochen. “Zur Tradition der deutschen Sozietätsbewegung im 17. Jahrhundert.” Sprachgesellschaften, Sozietäten, Dichtergruppen. Arbeitsgespräch in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, 28. bis 30. Juni 1977. Vorträge und Berichte. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 7. Ed. Manfred Bircher and Ferdinand van Ingen. Hamburg: Hauswedell, 1978. 53-73. Beuys, Barbara. Der Große Kurfürst. Der Mann, der Preußen schuf. Biographie. Reinbek: Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1979. Blekastad, Milada. Comenius. Versuch eines Umrisses von Leben, Werk und Schicksal des Jan Amos Komenský. Oslo: Univ.-forl., 1969. Böger, Ines. ‘Ein seculum…da man zu Societäten Lust hat’: Darstellung und Analyse der Leibnizschen Sozietätspläne vor dem Hintergrund der europäischen Akademiebewegung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. 2 vols. Munich: Utz, 1997. Busche, Hubertus. Leibniz’ Weg ins perspektivische Universum. Eine Harmonie im Zeitalter der Berechnung. Hamburg: Meiner, 1997. Comenius, Johann Amos. “Via Lucis.” Opera Omnia. 1642. Ed. Ludvík Svoboda. Prague: Academia, 1974. Comenius, Johann Amos. Panorthosia or Universal Reform. Trans. A. M. O. Dobbie. Glasgow: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Dülmen, Richard van. “Sozietätsbildungen in Nürnberg im 17. Jahrhundert.” Gesellschaft und Herrschaft. Festgabe für Karl Bosl zum 60. Geburtstag. Munich: Beck, 1969. 153-90. Eamon, William. “From the Secrets of Nature to Public Knowledge.” Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. Ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 333-65.

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Forgan, Sophie. “Context, Image and Function: a Preliminary Enquiry into the Architecture of Scientific Societies.” BJHS 19 (1986): 89-113. Galison, Peter. “Buildings and the Subject of Science.” The Architecture of Science. Ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. 125. Garber, Klaus and Heinz Wismann, eds. Europäische Sozietätsbewegung und demokratische Tradition. 2 vols. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996. Goetze, Ludwig. Geschichte der Burg Tangermünde. Stendal: Franzen & Grosse in Comm., 1871. Grape, Anders. “Comenius, Bengt Skytte och Royal Society.” Lychnos. Lärdomshistoriska Samfundets ǖrsbok (1936): 319-30. Grau, Conrad. Die Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Eine deutsche Gelehrtengesellschaft in drei Jahrhunderten. Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademie Verlag, 1993. Hartmann, Fritz and Rudolf Vierhaus, eds. Der Akademiegedanke im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 3. Bremen: Jacobi, 1977. Hinrichs, Carl. “Die Idee des geistigen Mittelpunktes Europas im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert.” Das Hauptstadtproblem in der Geschichte. Festgabe zum 90. Geburtstag Friedrich Meineckes. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1952. 85-109. Holz, Hans Heinz. “Einleitung.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Politische Schriften II. Ed. and intro. Hans Heinz Holz. Frankfurt a. M.: Europ. Verl.-Anst, 1967. Hüttl, Ludwig. Der Große Kurfürst. Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg. Munich: Heyne, 1984. Hunter, Michael. “A ‘College’ for the Royal Society: The Abortive Plan of 16671668.” Establishing the New Science. The Experience of the Early Royal Society. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989. 156-84. Hurel, Daniel-Odon and Gérard Laudin, eds. Académies et sociétés savantes en Europe (1650-1800). Paris: H. Champion, 2000. Kanthak, Gerhard. Der Akademiegedanke zwischen utopischem Entwurf und barocker Projektmacherei. Zur Geistesgeschichte der Akademiebewegung des 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1987. Keller, Ludwig. “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz und die deutschen Sozietäten des 17. Jahrhunderts.” Mitteilungen der Comenius-Gesellschaft (1903): 1-15. Kleinert, Paul. Vom Anteil der Universität an der Vorbildung fürs öffentliche Leben. Rede bei Antritt des Rektorats…der Kgl. Friedrich Wilhelm Universität am 15. Okt. 1885. Berlin: Vogt, 1885. Küster, George Gottfried. Antiquitates Tangermundenses. Berlin, 1729. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Politische Schriften II. Ed. and intro. Hans Heinz Holz. Frankfurt a. M.: Europ. Verl.-Anst, 1967. Opgenoorth, Ernst. Friedrich Wilhelm. Der Große Kurfürst von Brandenburg. Eine politische Biographie. Zweiter Teil: 1660-1688. Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1978. Ornstein, Martha. The Role of Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928. Pohlmann, August Wilhelm. Geschichte der Stadt Tangermünde seit Gründung derselben bis zu dem laufenden Jahre 1829. Stendal, 1829. Schabert, Tilo. Die Architektur der Welt. Eine kosmologische Lektüre architektonischer Normen. Munich: Fink, 1997. Sessions, W. A. Francis Bacon Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1996. Seyler, Georg Daniel. Leben und Thaten Friedrich Wilhelms des Großen, Churfürstens zu Brandenburg. Frankfurt: Knochen, 1730.

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Shapin, Steven. “The House of Experiment in Seventeenth Century England.” Isis 79 (1988): 373-404. Steadman, John M. “Bacon and the Scientist as Hero.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 4.1 (1971): 3-47. Valter, Claudia. “Akademien der Wissenschaften.” Erkenntnis, Erfindung, Konstruktion. Studien zur Bildgeschichte von Naturwissenschaften und Technik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Ed. Hans Holländer. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000. 121-42. Whitney, Charles C. “Merchants of Light: Science as Colonization in the New Atlantis.” Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts. “The Art of Discovery Grows With Discovery.” Ed. William A. Sessions. New York: AMS Pr., 1990. 255-68. Winau, Rolf. “Der Hof des Großen Kurfürsten als Mittelpunkt wissenschaftlicher Forschung. Vorschläge zur Edition der Werke der Leibärzte (Gesamtausgabe Christian Mentzel).” Werkstattgespräch ‘Berliner Ausgaben’. Ed. Hans-Gert Roloff. Bern: Lang, 1981. 30-40. Zahn, Wilhelm. Geschichte der Altmark. Stendal: Schindler, 1892.

BEKET BUKOVINSKÁ

The Known and Unknown Kunstkammer of Rudolf II This article should, by means of a brief recapitulation on what one can learn of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II from existing sources, clarify its position within the framework of imperial intentions, and emphasize its meaning and importance. Rudolf II became the Bohemian King in 1575 and the Holy Roman Emperor in 1576 (fig. 1). He died in 1612. After coming to power, he began to spend more and more of his time in Prague before finally moving the imperial court to the capital of the kingdom of Bohemia in 1583.1 Prague Castle impressed the Emperor for a number of reasons, among the most important of which must have been its location, high above, and thereby removed from, the city below. The large-scale and ambitious operations carried out by Rudolf II on the organism of the Prague Castle during his near thirty-year reign transformed the royal castle grounds into the representative residence of an Emperor (fig. 2). The construction work of Rudolf II, which bestowed upon Prague Castle a completely new dimension, had a major influence on the ground plan of the castle grounds as a whole, a plan, which to this day, has largely survived without further alteration of any great significance. This is verified by the fact that the three monumental castle gates, through which the castle grounds are entered from the north, east and west, still serve their original purpose. More far-reaching re-construction work, however, was carried out during the time of Maria Theresia, when the court architect, Nikolaus Pacassi, applied a new unified façade to the castle architecture, thereby almost completely concealing 1

About the personality of Rudolf II, his court and his collections see especially Prag um 1600. Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. [Exhibit. cat.] Freren: Luca, 1988. And Eliška Fuþíková et al, eds. Rudolf II and Prague – the Court and the City. [Exhibit. cat.] London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. Here also the older literature.

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Fig. 1: Giovanni Ambroggio Miseroni [?] Rudolf II (after 1600).

the Rudolfine buildings. This was also one of the reasons why for many years the opinion prevailed that Rudolf II was not a great builder and that architecture itself did not interest him greatly. Only as a result of research conducted in recent decades can we slowly begin to shed light on the significant role his personality truly played in this direction. In establishing the function of many of the individual rooms certain issues remained unclear for many years. These issues have only recently been clarifed as a result of new archival research carried out with the aid of the oldest available construction plans and drawings – mostly dating from the first half of the 18th century, and thanks to newly-conducted

Fig. 2: Giovanni Castrucci View of the Hradschin in Prague (after 1606).

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construction investigations primarily by Ivan Muchka and Eliška Fuþíková.2 The first steps in building, initiated by Rudolf II, following his accession to the throne, concentrated on the residential palace, which was situated on the southern border of the castle hill, facing the town and not far from the mediaeval royal palace. The Emperor continued with the activities begun by his predecessor, extending the rooms, adding on a second storey, and errecting a representative double-branched staircase which provided access to his audience chambers and, at the same time, was connected to the monumental castle gate, granting entrance to the castle grounds from the west. After the residential palace, new buildings followed, which, in the broadest sense, were exclusively designed to accomodate the Emperor´s collecting activities. The Kunstkammer played an important role here. At this point and in this context, it would probably be of use to provide a brief overview of the logic of the location, size and purpose of the individual buildings as part of the Emperor´s overall building program. As a counterpart to the residential wing, Rudolf II built a new spacious section on the opposite edge of the grounds in the north, which was connected on both sides to the second entrance gate, through which all communication to the north was transmitted via a Hirschgraben. Work commenced on the east side of this building in the 1580s with the so-called Spanish Stables. Above these a hall rose over two storeys. It was 48 metres long, 10 metres wide and 8 metres high. In 1597, this part was completed and received an illusionist ceiling from Paul and Hans Vredemann de Vries. To the west of the passageway the building work also began with stables, although in this case the manner in which the work was carried 2

Cf. Ivan Muchka. “Podoba Pražského hradu v rudolfínské dobČ z hlediska veduty.” UmČní 31 (1983): 447-50. Eliška Fuþíková, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka, eds. Die Kunst am Hofe Rudolfs II. Prague: Aventinum, 1988. Ivan Muchka. “Die Architektur unter Rudolf II., gezeigt am Beispiel der Prager Burg.” Prag um 1600. Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. [Exhibit. cat.] Freren: LucaVerl., 1988. 85-93. Ivan Muchka. “Die Prager Burg zur Zeit Rudolfs II. Neue Forschungsergebnisse.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 85/86 (1989-1990): 95-98. Eliška Fuþíková. “Prague Castle under Rudolf II. His Predecessors and Successors, 1530-1547.” Rudolf II and Prague. 2-71. Petr ChotČbor . “Pražský hrad za Rudolfa II. PromČny architektury.” UmČní a Ĝemesla 39.2 (1997): 15-19. Idem. “Neuentdeckte Fragmente der rudolfinischen Architektur auf der Prager Burg.” Rudolf II, Prague and the World. Papers from the International Conference Prague, 2-4 September. Ed. Lubomír Koneþný, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka. Prague: Artefactum, 1998. 226-28.

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out was quite remarkable. The sloping terrain of the Hirschgraben was used to build the stables in two storeys one above the other. The lower stables located in the “basement” were accessible from the deer trench. Also on this side a large hall was erected above the stables. This hall, originally called the New Hall and nowadays known as the Spanish Hall, was 43 metres long, 21 metres wide and 9 metres high. This spacious new construction, the building of which began in 1602 and ended in 1606, was the high point of the building program initiated by Rudolf II at Prague Castle. Both of the representative ‘palaces,’ as they were referred to in reports of the time, only had windows to the north, which meant they were ideally suited to housing an art collection. The smaller of the two halls was to be used to house a part of the collection of paintings, whereas the larger hall was reserved for sculptures. The splendour of the stables beneath both halls, where, according to reports of the time, approximately three hundred of the most magnificent horses from numerous different countries were kept and displayed to the honourable visitors to Prague Castle, was very much in keeping with the Emperor’s overall collecting program. The connection between the residential palace of the Emperor in the south and the splendid halls in the north was achieved by means of a narrow middle section – also known as the Corridor or Long Wing – which was erected along the west front of the old Roman fortification wall. In this building which was one hundred-metre long and only a little over five-metre wide, the Emperor housed the Kunstkammer on the first floor and the gallery on the second (fig. 3). Part of the remains of the mediaeval fortifications were incorporated here and transformed into the so-called Mathematical Tower. In this tower, which also divided the section into two unequal parts, Rudolf erected a remarkable oval staircase, which allowed for communication between the levels and could be accessed from the castle courtyard through a portal.3 The connection to the Emperor’s living quarters in the south wing was on the second storey level, i.e. on the level of the gallery; access to the Kunstkammer on the first floor was provided by an entrance staircase. On the northern side of the Corridor Wing the Emperor could reach the level of the Kunstkammer and both of the halls from the gallery passageway by means of a spiral staircase. 3

On the design of this no longer existing oval staircase and its importance in Central European architecture see Monika Brunner. “Prag und Rom um 1600. Ein Beitrag zur Architektur der rudolfinischen Residenz.” Rudolf II, Prague and the World. 24-30.

Fig. 3: Johann Heinrich Dienebier Plan of the first floor of the Prague Castle (early eighteenth century).

204 Beket Bukovinská

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Those of the Emperor’s activities which stretched beyond the castle grounds – in close vicinity – and which serve to complete our impression of the building program as a whole should only be mentioned briefly here. When one passes through the north gate, heading in a northerly direction, and crosses the bridge over the Hirschgraben – where not only deer lived – one reaches the castle gardens to the right, which had been laid out by Rudolf’s predecessors and where both the small and big ballrooms and the fine summer residence of Queen Anna once stood.4 Rudolf himself extended these gardens considerably and had several stone-walled greenhouses erected to house orange and fig trees and other warmth-loving plants. He also built a lions’ enclosure, in which various predators were kept, apart from lions and leopards. Besides this, a new fish pond was added with different species of fish and waterfowl, as was an aviary with a large variety of exotic birds from all over the world. The passion of Rudolf II for collecting is also closely associated with his generous patronage, and so Prague Castle became, as is now generally accepted, a highly-interesting cultural centre where not only artists of many specialities but also a string of scientists from different countries gathered to work under optimal conditions.5 Those who worked directly for the Emperor himself as court employees mostly had their workshops, observatories and laboratories on the Prague Castle grounds. Today we know, for example where the workshops of Ottavio Miseroni or Jost Bürgi were situated, it is also known where the mint or the foundry or also a laboratory were to be found.6 The opportunity to follow and observe the genesis of the work played an important role for the Emperor, and it must be said that the personality of the imperial client commissioning the work, as well as the co-operation between the individual personalities and the influence they had on each other be-

4

5 6

On the summer residence of Queen Anna, which was used during the time of Tycho Brahe for his observations, see Eliška Fuþíková. “Zur Konzeption der rudolfinischen Sammlungen.” Prag um 1600. Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. Freren: Luca-Verl., 1988. 59-62. Apart from the fact that they were often, and after 1600 more and more often, not paid their, generally-speaking, rather high salaries. On the locations of the workshops in Prague Castle see Beket Bukovinská. “Das Kunsthandwerk in Prag zwischen Hof und Stadt: Eine topographische Untersuchung.” Krakau, Prag und Wien. Funktionen von Metropolen im frühmodernen Staat. Ed. Marina Dmitrieva and Karen Lambrecht. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000. 195204.

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stowed upon the Prague court its unique characteristics, which are not alone to be recognised in Rudolfine art.7 The collecting activities and patronage of Emperor Rudolf II mirror the endeavours of the time to capture the riches of the world in miniature, something also commented on in the work of the theorists. Eliška Fuþíková draws our attention to an interesting parallel of the generous views of Rudolf II, which is to be found in Francis Bacon’s advice to the English Queen in 1594 as to how a model of universal nature could be created in a small or confined space. The four acts, which, according to Bacon, are necessary “to become an ideal monarch and to control all the secrets of the world” correspond conspicuously with what Rudolf II achieved in his imperial court.8 The fame which accompanied the collecting activities and patronage of Rudolf II, even in his own lifetime, remained undiminished for many centuries, even though the collections themselves faced dissolution even shortly after his death. His brother and successor Matthias immediately moved the imperial court back to Austria, and took many of the most important objects with him to Vienna.9 None of the rulers who succeeded Rudolf II ever resided in Prague again, and apart from those works transported to Vienna, little by little many more were sold, given away as gifts or stolen. The most severe blow to the collections came with the Swedish pillage at the end of the Thirty Years’ War – the final blow, for the Kunstkammer in particular, came at the end of the 18th century when a Josefine auction sold 7 8

9

Most recently Rudolf Distelberger dealt with this question. “Thoughts on Rudolfine Art in the ‘Court Workshops’ of Prague.” Rudolf II and Prague. 189-98. Eliška Fuþíková. “Die Sammlungen Rudolfs II.” Die Kunst am Hofe Rudolfs II. 244-46. “The first thing which was done was to build a comprehensive and universal library on the grounds. Secondly, a garden was to be created with everything which grows under the sun, with wild and cultivated plants from all climatic zones. This was to be surrounded by buildings containing animals and cages with rare birds. Two lakes were also part of this, one freshwater and one salt water lake in which all kinds of fish could live. In this way the Queen received a model of universal nature in miniature. The third work was to be the erection of a great cabinet, which contained everything of human hand, created by craftsmen and artists, everything unique or resulting from the confusion of things. Everything nature created and which could be stored there, was to be sought for this cabinet and put in order. Fourthly, a laboratory equipped with a mill, all kinds of apparatus and a melting furnace, in short, a palace worthy of the philosopher’s stone.” What was interesting for Emperor Matthias, can be drawn to some extent from the so-called Matthias Inventory, which probably came into being in 1619 (after May 5). An accurate study of this source in still missing. Cf. Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 20.2 (1899): Reg. 17408, XLIX-CXXII.

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the rest. These were also the reasons why the collections of Rudolf II, although always renowned, remained largely unknown for a long time. At the beginning of the scholarly interest shown in Rudolfine art clearly stands the personage of Karel Chytil, who at the start of the twentieth century prepared the first exhibitions of the collections of Rudolf II and emphasized the importance of Rudolfine art in his work, thereby laying the foundations for further research.10 The Kunstkammer, however, was not yet dealt with as a theme in its own right. In contrast, a negative appraisal of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II by Julius von Schlosser appeared at the same time in his weighty publication about modern Kunstkammer, which achieved widespread acceptance for quite some time.11 A fundamental turning point, as far as scholarly opinion of the true meaning of this part of the collections of Rudolf II is concerned, came about with the discovery of the inventory of the Kunstkammer, which had been recorded during the Emperor’s lifetime.12 The careful and conscientious editing of the inventory in 1976 opened up entirely new possibilities to study the selection, structure, processing and exhibition of this part of the collections.13 Even though this inventory does not document the complete contents of the Kunstkammer, it does offer us countless and manifold pieces of information and helps us to comprehend important connections and correlations and to recognize new facts.14

10

11

12

13 14

Karel Chytil. UmČní v Praze za Rudolfa II. Prague: UmČlecko-prĤmyslové museum, 1904. Idem. UmČní a umČlci na dvoĜe Rudolfa II. Prague: Krasoumná jednota, 1912. Idem, “Apotheosa umČní od B. Sprangera.” Roþenka kruhu pro pČstování dČjin umČní za rok 1918, 3-10; Idem. “O posledních umČlcích Rudolfa II. v Praze.” Dílo 18 (1924-25): 26-28, 33-34. Julius von Schlosser. Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1908. His appreciation of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II was not really as negative as it was consequently interpreted. Unfortunately, to this day one still encounters, and not too rarely, the opinion that the Kunstkammer was merely a confused collection of curiosities. Erwin Neumann. “Das Inventar der rudolfinischen Kunstkammer von 1607/11.” Queen Christina of Swede. Documents and Studies. Analecta Reginensia I. [Exhibit. cat.] Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 1966. 262-65. Rotraud Bauer and Herbert Haupt. “Das Kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II. 1607-1611.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 72 (1976). Eliška Fuþíková. “The Collection of Rudolf II at Prague: Cabinet of Curiosities or Scientific Museum?” The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe. Ed. O. Impley and A. MacGregor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. 47-53.

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The inventory of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II carries the title: “Vonn Anno 1607. Verzeichnus, was in der Röm: Kay: May: Kunstkammer gefunden worden …,” and was therefore begun in 1607 (fig. 4). The entries continue into the year 1611. The logical reason for the opening of a new inventory was the fact that the collections had now definitely been re-housed in the rooms of the newly-completed connecting wing. The imperial miniaturist Daniel Fröschl, who is now generally recognized as the compiler of the inventory, took on the function of court antiquary in the same year. The objects, which were recorded in the inventory according to their factual or material contexts, form more or less extensive groups, which are then again gathered together in the attached register to provide an even better overview. Between these groups space was left on the sheets for new acquisitions, which until 1611 were repeatedly added, mostly with the relevant data and information. The majority of the individual entries are very informative, and contain, in addition to an accurate description, also often the dimensions or weight, facts about the artist or author, the nature of the acquisition as well as – especially in the case of zoological exhibits – references to the professional literature. In different parts of the inventory small drawings or illustrations to accompany several of the objects are to be found in the margins. Presumably, the author found these objects to be of particular or extraordinary interest, or he may have felt they needed a little explanation (fig. 5). The texts demonstrate not only a deep interest in each individual object, but also incorporate a considerable wealth of knowledge. The Rudolfine inventory gives us the opportunity to gain an overall view of certain complexes, while at the same time revealing their interrelations, thereby reflecting the ideal order which constituted the very basis on which the Kunstkammer was built. As Erwin Neumann, who was first to look into the inventory, explained, it could be more aptly described as a ‘catalogue’ of the Kunstkammer, which was organised according to a systematic order rather than one of place or location: “The objects are essentially arranged from the point of view of their material or practical relationships to each other, and this means that, all in all, the naturalia appear first, then the artificialia and last but not least the scientifica.” Neumann also emphasises: “The inventory from 1607-1611 teaches us in the meantime that the Kunstkammer of Emperor Rudolf II represented quite a systematically-organised, in the encyclopaedic sense, collection of the finest specimens from the different realms of nature, the arts and hu-

The Known and Unknown Kunstkammer of Rudolf II

Fig. 4: Title page of the Kunstkammer inventory from 1607-1611.

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Fig. 5: Daniel Fröschl [?] marginal drawings from the inventory of 1607-1611.

man knowledge, a manneristic ‘universal museum’... .”15 Moreover, it should be noted that the Rudolfine Kunstkammer contained objects from all reachable corners of the earth, from East Asia to Africa, and South to North America, and so one can say in unison with Horst Bredekamp: “The Kunstkammer thereby crossed the three steps of the lad15

“Die Gegenstände sind im Wesentlichen nach dem Gesichtspunkt ihrer materiellen oder sachlichen Verwandtschaft zusammengestellt, und zwar so, daß im Großen gesehen, zuerst die ‘naturalia’ erscheinen, dann die ‘artificialia’ und zum Schluß die ‘scientifica’. [...] Das Inventar von 1607/1611 belehrt uns indessen, daß die Kunstkammer Kaiser Rudolfs II. eine durchaus systematische, im enzyklopädischen Sinne angelegte Kollektion erlesener Spezimina der verschiedenen Gegenstandsgattungen der verschiednen Reiche der Natur, der menschlichen Künste und des menschlichen Wissens darstellte, ein manieristisches ‘Universalmuseum’ [...].” Erwin Neumann. “Florentiner Mosaik.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 53 (1957): 264.

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der stretching from the naturalia to the artificialia to the scientifica by means of a horizontal plateau, which sought to encompass the globe as a whole. In a way, the Kunstkammer was simultaneously both a form of time-lapse recording and a microcosm.”16 The Kunstkammer consisted of three rooms in total.17 When one follows the direction taken by the Emperor from his residential palace via the afore mentioned stairs, first came three rooms which incorporated the Corridor Wing as far as the Mathematical Tower. The main room took up the remaining part between the Mathematical Tower and the north wing. Of the complete length of the corridor wing, 60 metres were allotted to the three vaults of the front Kunstkammer and 33 metres to the actual Kunstkammer. The appearance and design of the Kunstkammer has not been recorded anywhere, and unfortunately, we do not know any of the original furnishings. An impression as to how it must have looked can only be drawn from the existing inventories, of which the index of the Kunstkammer of 1607-1611 naturally contains the most valuable information. As it is not a location-based index, only sporadic references to the exhibiting, division and storage of the objects can be found in the text itself, or as is more often the case, in the marginal notes.18 The index which is chronologically closest to the Rudolfine inventory is the one which the estate had written prior to the arrival of Friedrich von Pfalz in Prague in 1619.19 It also only deals with the Kunstkammer and contains interesting details about the division of the objects in the four rooms and partly about the furnishings. The subsequent inventory from 1621 is the first index which contains a record of the complete collections, that is not only all the contents of the Kunstkammer, but also the gallery, the furnishings of both great halls, the neighbouring chambers and partly even of the living quar-

16

17

18

19

Horst Bredekamp. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1995. 39. On the Kunstkammer most recently Beket Bukovinská. “The ‘Kunstkammer’ of Rudolf II. Where it Was and What it Looked Like.” Rudolf II and Prague. 199208. The marginal notes were made in pencil in the same handwriting, and one assumes that they date from approximately the same time period as the actual entries themselves. Cf. Eva Irblich, ed. Thesaurus austriacus. Europas Glanz im Spiegel der Buchkunst. Handschriften und Kunstalben von 800 bis 1600. [Exhibit. cat.] Vienna: Österr. Nationalbibliothek, 1996. Jan Morávek. NovČ objevený inventáĜ rudolfínksých sbírek na HradČ Pražském. Prague: Archiv Pražského hradu, 1937.

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ters.20 By combining the information contained in these three sources, we can establish a picture of the Kunstkammer during the reign of its founder. Firstly, in the rooms of the Kunstkammer there were cabinets (Almare), which are to be counted as part of the actual furnishings of the Kunstkammer. As far as appearance of the cabinets is concerned, we can only say that they contained two to six shelves; whether they were of the same height or were adapted to suit their contents, is not clear. At least some of them were quite large, when one imagines that, for example, in one cabinet with four compartments 389 bigger and smaller pieces of porcelain crockery were displayed. Some of the cabinets were described as open, closed or of two parts. Some of them contained boxes and caskets with different kinds of objects, for example in cabinet No. 6 (according to the 1621 inventory) with three shelves, 13 boxes or small boxes and 14 chests or small chests were listed.21 The contents correspond more or less to those of cabinet No. 5 in the Rudolfine inventory, which the entries on sheets No. 18-28 relate to, where zoological specimens such as turtles, crabs, fish and sea fossils were carefully described, often with the remarks that they were stored in painted boxes. In the middle of the Kunstkammer stood a large long table often referred to as the Lange grüne Tafel. In 1621 globes, clocks, geometric and astronomical instruments, chests, mirrors, musical instruments, silver vases with flowers made of coloured silver or hand stones with different kinds of figured decoration stood here. In the Rudolfine inventory the objects standing on the table appear in different parts of the entries, as for example on page 338: “A large clock with an astral body including a year indicator surrounding it, on top of this a sphere with its circulis planetarium and other accessories and an accompanying written tract, stands on the table in the Kunstkammer, made by Jobst Bürgius, von h. von Braunschw: your majesty: honourable...”22 20

21 22

Heinrich Zimmermann. “Das Inventar der Prager Schatz- und Kunstkammer vom 6. Dezember 1621.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 25.2 (1905): XV-LXXV. Ibid. XXI. “Ein groß uhrwerck mit einem astrolabio sambt dem jahrzaiger herumb, darauf ein sphera sambt ihren circulis planetarium sambt anderer zugehor und ein geschribens tractetlin darzu, steht auff der tafel in der kunstcammer, hatt Jobst Bürgius gemacht, von h. von Braunschw: Ihr Mt: verehrt.” Bauer, Haupt. “Kunstkammerinventar.” No. 2138.

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Further on the description of a machine is to be found: “A clock or mechanism, is a peacock, walks and turns around, calls and makes a pan with its tail of real feathers, stands on the table in kc:”23 This machine was to be found in the same place for at least seven years after the death of Rudolf II.24 In addition to the cabinets and the long table, numerous other tables, trunks of different sizes, “desks and studioli” were to be found in the Kunstkammer. Under these descriptions we must imagine various cabinets or cupboards, jewellery boxes and cases, which were either so large that they could stand alone or on tables, or so small that they were stored in chests or trunks. In one of the entries in the inventory of 1619 we can read for example: “Two long trunks, in each of which were six desks with many drawers, which mostly contained antique gold, silver and copper medallions...”25 On the tables, apart from the desks and trunks, also stood sculptures of marble, bronze, plaster or wax, as well as mirrors etc. Between these tables and beneath them on the ground stood further pieces of furniture, globes or sculptures. In the inventory of 1607-1611 several trunks and desks with numbers are described, and when all of these details are combined, a numbering system which runs continuously from 1-101 can be observed. The trunks are not described in more detail; it is only mentioned, for example, that they were made of iron or covered with leather. The contents of a number of them are documented in the entries to the Rudolfine inventory, particularly in the section where the books, drawings and prints are recorded. There are also some interesting details about the desks, such as for example: “Is the beautiful writing cabinet made like in Milan, of jasper and several kinds of precious stone, and big cameos (groß camefey) and six miniatures by H. Boln, all framed in cut garnets...”26 Other desks were made of ebony or walnut, many inlayed with ivory or decorated with silver. Some of those described as ‘little Indian desks’ could be Japanese works, with black or red varnish, painted with gold and inlayed with mother-of-pearl. 23

24 25 26

“Ein uhr oder rederwerckh, ist ein pfaw, geht und wendt sich ringsumb, schreitt und macht eine wannen mit seinem schwaiff von rechten federn, steht auff der tafel der kc.” Ibid. No. 2142. Morávek. NovČ objevený. 33. “Zwo lange truhen, in deren jeder sechs schreibtisch mit vielen schublädeln, in deren meisten guldene, silberne und kupfern antiquische medalien.” Ibid. 32. “Ist der schöne schreibkasten so zu Milano gemacht worden, von jaspis und mehrerley stainen und groß camefey und von 6 stuckh miniatura von H. Boln, umbher alles mit geschnitnen granaten eingefasst” Bauer, Haupt. “Kunstkammerinventar.” No. 2384.

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The desk which was richest in its contents appears to be desk No. 100, called “des elsässers,” made of ebony and combined with brown wood and with three drawers: In this desk lie many wonderful stately things, all kind of precious little clocks inlayed and adorned with gold and gems, little portraits in oil and miniature, little drop earrings, rings, all kinds of medallions, portraits of gold and silver. In the top right-hand drawer there are lots of little watches, to begin with […]27

A comprehensive description of the contents of each individual drawer follows on the next nine pages. Among the magnificent little treasures we find, for example: “Another little treasure with a St. Hieronymo, which moves its head and strikes itself with the stone on its breast, in a small brown bag, put into a small painted box.”28 The small objects were stored in little boxes and cases and sometimes given numbers, such as, for example, the gold and silver medallions with the rulers´ portraits, which were numbered 1-70. As Eliška Fuþíková emphasized, it was not only the wealth and breadth of the interests of Rudolf II, but also the arrangement and presentation of the objects in the Rudolfine Kunstkammer which distinguished it from other Kunstkammern such as those in Munich or Ambras for example.29 Both of these were conceived in such a way that the collected objects, grouped according to different criteria, were easily seen and provided a clear statement of the creator’s intentions. In Munich it was decisive that the visitors, upon entering the Kunstkammer, were able to effortlessly cast their glance over the entire room and immediately grasp the incredible wealth, preciousness and importance of the objects exhibited in the Kunstkammer.30 The Kunstkammer of Archduke Ferdinand II, in Ambras an uncle of Rudolf’s, was arranged according to a strict programme, in which aesthetic standpoints also played an important role.31 Its contents were consistently 27

28

29 30 31

“In diesem schreibtischl ligen allerley stattliche gutte sachen, alls von allerley köstlichen kleinen uhrlein mit gold und stainen versetzt und geziert, item von conterfettlein von ölfarb und miniatur, ohrngehenglein, ring, allerley medalien, conterfett von gold und silber. In der ersten schubladen zu oberst zu der rechten hand sein lautter kleine uhrlein.” Ibid. No. 2408. “Ein anders kleinodlin mit einem st. Hieronymo, der bewegt den kopff und schlegt sich mit dem stain an die brust, in einem veyelbraun daffetin seckelin in obgemeltem schächtelin.” Ibid. No. 2421. Fuþíková. “Sammlungen Rudolfs II.” 230-231. Lorenz Seelig “Die Münchener Kunstkammer, Geschichte, Anlage, Ausstattung.” Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Denkmalpflege 2 (1986, 1989): 101-138. Cf. Elisabeth Scheicher. Die Kunst und Wunderkammern der Habsburger. Vienna: Molden, 1979. 72-136.

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structured according to the hierarchy of natural materials, without taking the age or origins of the individual exhibits into consideration. In both of these Kunstkammern, in Munich and in Ambras, the principle was the same – the Kunstkammer collections should appear representative, they should not only serve to teach the visitor, they should also captivate and enchant them at first glance. The objects in the Rudolfine Kunstkammer on the other hand were very often in cases, boxes, chests and cabinets, and this was also true in the case of extravagant objects such as, for example, a Seychelles nut or coco de mer nut jug by Anton Schweinberger or the famous TrionfiLavabo by Christoph Jamnitzer. Eliška Fuþíková formulated the difference as follows: In comparison with other collections, the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II served less the purpose of pompous representation and the display of wealth, and more that of active creation, study and research. The viewing of the imperial collection guided by a personality of such high position was an extraordinary honour which one spoke of for quite some time.32

Although it has, to this day, not been possible to discover any real system in the arrangement and order of the objects in the rooms of the Rudolfine Kunstkammer and despite the fact that, to date, we have had to deduce both the intentions of the founder and the system according to which his Kunstkammer was built up purely from the concept of the original inventory, it nevertheless seems obvious that one can regard the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II in many aspects as a “study collection” and in particular as a living connecting link between the various areas of the Emperor’s collections, where art and science co-exist in a close symbiosis.33 There are numerous examples for this, two of which at least should be briefly mentioned. In the Rudolfine inventory the objects from the field of naturalia have been gathered at the beginning, and the first entries deal with zoology. After a comprehensive collection of horns and antlers, smaller 32

33

“Im Vergleich mit anderen Sammlungen diente die Kunstkammer Rudolfs viel weniger der pompösen Repräsentation und Schaustellung ihres Reichtums, um so mehr aber der aktiven, schöpferischen Tätigkeit und der Forschung. Die Besichtigung der kaiserlichen Sammlungen durch hochgestellte Persönlichkeit war eine außerordentliche Ehrung, von der man lange sprach.” Fuþíková. “Sammlungen Rudolfs II.” 237. Cf. eadem. “Die Kunstkammer und Galerie Kaiser Rudolfs II. als eine Studiensammlung.” Der Zugang zum Kunstwerk: Schatzkammer, Salon, Ausstellung, ‘Museum’. Akten des XXV. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte. Vol. 4. Vienna: Böhlau, 1986. 53-55. Fuþíková. “Sammlungen Rudolfs II.”

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or larger groups of mammals, birds, fish and marine plants follow one after the other, in each case represented by fully-preserved specimens or items such as skeletons, or parts thereof, skin, eggs etc. The zoological exhibits received widespread attention with the publication of the so-called ‘Museums of Emperor Rudolf II.’34 This was a compendium with studies of nature, which was to be understood ‘partly as a painted inventory’ of the zoological collection of Rudolf II, and of which two volumes have survived in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. It has also been possible to identify the majority of specimens recorded in the inventory with these painted representatives of the animal world. In one example, which Manfred Staudinger explained in great detail, we can comprehend very clearly the interweaving of the individual fields as part of the greater intentions of Emperor Rudolf II to further his collection.35 Following the discovery of the until then unknown dodo bird on the island of Mauritius in 1598, Dutch ships brought two living specimens back with them to Holland. One of these was acquired for the imperial collections in Prague Castle. In the time between 1601 and 1609 this bird was painted, and it can be found on page 31 of the aforementioned compendium (fig. 6). This very accurate depiction of the now extinct bird, which is credited to the imperial miniaturist, Daniel Fröschl, still to this day serves the natural sciences as an important source of knowledge.36 As Staudinger further assumes, the dodo bird, following its death, was embalmed and took its place in the Kunstkammer. In the Kunstkammer inventory, the specimen is described as follows in an entry from 1609 on page No. 14: “a stuffed Indian bird in the description of Caroli Clusii called walghvogel by the Dutch, has a large round body, about the size of a goose or larger, a large unshapely beak, little wings, as it could not fly, dirty whitish colour.”37 In the later

34

35 36

37

Eva Irblich et. al., eds. Le bestiaire de Rodolphe II: Cod. min. 129 et 130 de la Bibliothèque Nationale d’Autriche. Paris: Citadelles, 1990. Eadem. Thesaurus austriacus. Cf. Irblich. Thesaurus austriacus. Cat. no. 47/7, Dodo worked on by Manfred Staudinger. Irblich. Thesaurus austriacus: “The trueness to life of the representation can be best judged by means of a comparison with the right foot of a dodo bird to be found in the British Museum of Natural History. It shows that the leg and toes have been correctly depicted, contrary to other well-known representations such as those by Savery.” “I indianischer außgepalsterter vogel, in Caroli Clusii beschreibung von Hollendern walghvogel genant, hatt ein groß rund corpus in der groß als ein ganns oder grösser, ein unformblichen grossen schnabel, kleine fligel, damit er nit fliegen

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Fig. 6: Attributed to Daniel Fröschl, Dodo, “Museum Kaiser Rudolfs II.”

inventories the dodo can no longer be traced accurately, but in the National Museum in Prague the very unusual remains of a dodo are to be found, which, in all probability, stem from the Rudolfine Kunstkammer38 (fig. 7). In connection with this, it is to be stressed that, apart from Daniel Fröschl, many other artistic personalities such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Hans Hoffmann or Dirk de Quade van Ravesteyn were commissioned by the Emperor to work on such nature studies. The compendium itself is also to be found in the Rudolfine inventory, it was in the chest under the description : ”Books, painted and drawn by hand.”39

38 39

kan, weißlecht beschmutzter farb.” Bauer, Haupt. “Kunstkammerinventar.” No. 135. Národní muzeum, Prague, PM, P6V-47 543. Fuþíková. Rudolf II and Prague. Cat. no. II/116. “Bücher so gemalt und von handrissen.” Bauer, Haupt. “Kunstkammerinventar.” No. 2689, 2690.

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Fig. 7: Dodo (Raphus cucullatus), remains of the skeleton.

Another example of the close ties between the individual fields of the Rudolfine collections, in which the Kunstkammer played an important role, can be pursued in connection with the Emperor´s great interest in precious stones. As is known, semi-precious stones were, especially during the Renaissance, among the most-favoured of raw materials and were presented as such in the area of naturalia. At the same time, their natural beauty was enhanced by further artistic craftsmanship, and the enormous hardness of the material was overcome with apparent ease. Rudolf II launched into a considerable degree of activity in search of such precious stones. This activity took place with the assistance of his agents in different countries around the world, but above all in his own empire.40 Bohemia had already been an important territory for deposits of agate and jasper in the Middle Ages, and the Emperor exploited this abundance systematically. He employed prospectors, who engaged in widespread exploration in North Bohemia, Silesia, but also in Baden-Württemberg and the Palatinate. The supply of precious stones in the Court of Prague was certainly quite enormous, 40

Most recently compiled: Beket Bukovinská. “Die Kunst- und Schatzkammer Rudolfs II.: Der Weg vom Rohmaterial zum Sammlungsobjekt als ein Erkenntnisprozess.” Zugang zum Kunstwerk. 59-62. Idem. “Wer war Johann Rabenhaupt? Unbeachtete Aspekte in den Beziehungen zwischen Prag und Südwestdeutschland.” Rudolf II, Prague and the World. 89-94.

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because even in later inventories one still spoke of the hundreds of pieces in the Kunstkammer.41 Rudolf II also managed to win the representatives of the greatest and most famous gem cutting families for his court in Prague. After 1600 numerous gem cutters of different specialities worked in Prague. Apart from the workshops in Prague Castle, a grinding mill was also built in the royal preserve not far from Prague, where large stones could also be worked on. The most famous gem cutter was Ottavio Miseroni from Milan, whose works were among the high points of manneristic gem cutting art. The immense hardness of the raw material was transformed in these works into a material, which feigned an impression of tremendous softness and suppleness, thereby serving as a vivid example for the virtuosity and skilfulness of mankind (fig. 8 and 9). The differently-formed vessels were pre dominantly set in gold, which was the work of the court goldsmiths, the main representative of whom was Jan Vermeyen from Brussels, also known as the creator of the imperial crown.42 This so finely-finished product of nature then took its place in the Kunstkammer, and in the inventory, the vessels can again be found in the chapters after those dealing with the individual precious stones. The imperial court physician and natural scientist Anselmus Boetius de Boodt also occupied himself with precious stones. In his book Gemmarum et lapidum historia from the year 1609, which is among the most important publications on mineralogy of the 17th century, he dealt with precious stones among other things. In connection with this, what follows from an entry to a later inventory should also be noticed, i.e.: “In the cabinet a desk standing with seven drawers, which contained many precious stones and other stones, each of which was named,” which means, on the other hand, that a mineralogical collection was also worked on in the Kunstkammer.43 In addition to the scientific importance, this book also provides us with some remarkable information about the famous semi-precious stone tabletop, which the Emperor had ordered from the Medici Granducal workshops and which unfortu41

42 43

In a room on the ground floor of the palace a large pile of unprocessed stones are mentioned. In archaeological research at Prague Castle the remains of these have long since been found. see on this Fuþíková. Rudolf II and Prague. Cat. no. II/261. For the most important reports on gem cutting in Prague refer to, above all, both of the catalogues (note 1), where also the older literature is to be found. “In der Almar ein schreib Tüsch stehendt mit 7 schubladen, darin allerhand Edlund andere gestein, bey Jdem sein Namen Verzeichnet.” Fuþíková. Rudolf II and Prague. Cat. no. II/260.

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nately no longer exists.44 Apart from the author’s famous statement concerning Emperor Rudolf’s passion for precious stones,45 another important reference is expressed in the dedication which tells us that on this tabletop the natural structures and colours of the stones were, for the first time, not only used for purely ornamental decoration, but rather in a completely new way, as Boetius de Boodt himself captivatingly writes: That your holy imperial Majesty is of this mind, is demonstrated by this table of precious stones, which your holy imperial majesty commissioned, the eighth wonder of the world, the production of which took so many years and brought with it such high costs, and which was worked on with such artistic skill that the precious stones are pressed together in such a way as to render the joints invisible to form forests, trees, rivers, flowers, clouds, animals and various other wonderfully-beautiful things, that they seem to have been painted after nature and form a work whose equal is not to be found anywhere in this world.46

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Neumann. “Florentiner Mosaik.” Clare Vincent. “Prince Karl I of Liechtenstein’s Pietre Dure Tabletop.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 20 (1987): 157-78. Beket Bukovinská. “Florenz – Prag oder Prag – Florenz?” UmČní 45 (1997): 161-70. Karla Langedijk. “The Table in Pietre Dure for the Emperor. A New Understanding of Rudolf II as a Collector.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 42 (1998): 358-82. “Der Kaiser sei ihnen nicht deshalb so zugetan, um mit ihrer Hilfe die eigene Würde und Majestät zu steigern, sondern um in den edlen Steinen die Größe und unsagbare Macht Gottes, der in so winzigen Körperchen die Schönheit der ganzen Welt vereinigt und die Kräfte aller anderen Dinge eingeschlossen zu haben scheint zu betrachten, um einen gewissen Abglanz des Schimmers der Göttlichkeit immerdar vor Augen zu haben.” [“The Emperor’s passion for these precious stones did not stem from a mere desire to enhance his own dignity and majesty with their assistance, but rather to observe in them the greatness and unspeakable might of God, who seemed to have united the beauty of the whole world and the power of all things in these tiny little bodies, and to have a certain reflection of the gleam of divinity before his eyes at all times.”] Arpard Weixlgärtner. “Die Weltliche Schatzkammer in Wien. Neue Funde und Forschungen II.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 2 (1928): 280. Our Translation. “Daß Eure heilige kaiserliche Majestät dieses Sinnes sind, zeigt jener Tisch aus Edelsteinen, den Eure heilige kaiserliche Majestät haben ausführen lassen, das achte Wunder der Welt, auf dessen Herstellung so viele Jahre und so große Kosten mühevoll aufgewendet wurden und der mit so hoher Kunstfertigkeit gearbeitet ist, daß die durch unsichtbare Fugen aneinandergepreßten Edelsteine Wälder, Bäume, Flüsse, Blumen, Wolken, Tiere und verschiedene Gestalten herrlich schöner Dinge derart wiedergeben, daß sie nach der Natur gemalt zu sein scheinen und ein ähnliches Werk in der ganzen Welt nicht mehr gefunden werden kann.” Anselmus Boetius de Boodt. Gemmarum et lapidum historia. Hannover, 1609.

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Fig. 8 and 9: Ottavio Miseroni, oval bowl from jasper.

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Fig. 10: Giovanni Castrucci Landsape with Obelisk and Imperial Coat of Arms (before 1611).

At the same time as this famous tabletop was being worked on in Florence, the Emperor managed to engage Cosimo Castrucci, a Florentine specialist for commessi in pietre dure, who founded a workshop in Prague, which was to become an important parallel to the Florentine manufacturers and where later his son and grandson also worked. For the Prague commessi it is characteristic that the tabletops may be seen as independent landscape paintings of their own right, where the natural contours and colours of the precious stones are used as the ‘painting medium,’ The work of painters was mostly used as models for the commessi (fig. 10 and 11).47 A fact which is generally unknown is that already in 1597 a similar tabletop with animal figures formed from stone inlays was worked on in Prague. It was round and rather large.48 Both of these splendid table47 48

Distelberger. “Thoughts on Rudolfine Art.” Bukovinská. “Florenz – Prag oder Prag – Florenz?” Bukovinská. “Florenz – Prag oder Prag – Florenz?” Here the history of the round table has been related to those facts known about the Florentine table. Now a translation of an interesting passage from the diary of Jacques Esprinchard de la Rochelle will be cited, which reflects his experience of the imperial collections in

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Fig. 11: Johann Sadeler after an invention by Lodewyck Toeput Landsape with Obelisk and Imperial Coat of Arms (1599).

tops were then given an extravagant base or leg by the imperial sculptor Adrian de Vries. In the inventory of the Kunstkammer they find their place in the chapter: “Stone table of fine hard stones such as jasper and agate,” where they are described as follows: “A square table or tabletop of all sorts of magnificent stones, which your Majesty had made in Florence, in the middle stand garnets in gold as an IRI, with this the base with Ganymedes and Jove, cast in metal, made by Adriano de Fries, belonged...” And the Prague table: “round tabletop, inlayed with all kinds of jasper, garnet and many other stones set in gold, in the Prague and was recorded on the occasion of his stay in Prague in 1597: “And yet another magnificant, although not yet completed and still being worked on; worth more than 200 000 Thaler, which in our money amounts to about 450 000 Francs. This table is round and so big that twelve people could freely and comfortably dine at it. It is partly of fine marble, partly also of jasper and porphyry, in the different representations of animals precious stones have been set, namely diamond, ruby, garnet, hyacinth, sapphire, emerald and other similar stones. And in the middle of the table, there is a large eagle made out of diamonds, which is the imperial coat of arms and the Austrian coat of arms, to which the empire is heir...”

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middle a double eagle, everything, as in the case of the square table, of Bohemian stones, with this the base of metal by Adrian de Fries, is a woman with lions.”49 Apart from the finished works, the remainder of the precious stones also returned to the Kunstkammer. We therefore find many gems which have been cut into plates awaiting further treatment. The importance of the Kunstkammer of Rudolf II has already been stressed and is generally accepted. We experience and learn ever more about the contents and the importance of the individual areas of the collections, to which the Emperor dedicated his interest, and which often demonstrate a foresight on his part which is beyond comparison. On the occasion of the great exhibitions of the Rudolfine art in Essen and Vienna in 1988 and in Prague in 1997, a lot of work was resumed and continued and numerous new aspects were examined.50 Nowadays, there is no longer any doubt that Rudolf II was an extraordinary personality. His interests did not deviate from the contemporary tendencies of the time, but the intensity and the concentrated efforts with which he sought to accomplish his goals are not to be matched by anyone or anything else at that time. Rudolf’s part in the marked development of a whole range of areas in the arts and sciences still remains inadequately appreciated. In this sense, the inventory of the Kunstkammer from 1607-1611, which came into being during his lifetime and probably under his direct supervision, is, above all, an extraordinary source of information, which can expand several aspects of the knowledge we possess about the importance of the Kunstkammer around 1600.51 Translation: Liam Cregg

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50 51

“Ein gevierter Tisch oder tischblatt von allerley köstlichen stainen, so Ihr Mt: zu Florentz machen lassen, inmitten steht von granaten in gold also IRI, darzu der fuß mit dem Ganymedes und Jove, von metalle gegossen und von Adriano de Fries gemacht.” [...] “Ein rund tischblat, eingelegt mit allerley jaspis, granaten und vil anderen stainen in gold gesetzt, inmitten ein doppelter adler, alles, wie auch der gevierte, vonn böhmischen stainen, darzu auch Adrian de Fries den fuß von metal gemacht, ist ein weiblin mit lewen.” Bauer, Haupt. “Kunstkammerinventar.” No. 1156; about the foot cf. Lars Olaf Larsson. Adrian de Vries. Adrianvs Fries Hagiensis Batavvs. 1545-1626. Vienna: Schroll, 1967. 45-6. Bauer, Haupt. “Kunstkammerinventar.” No. 1156. My thanks to my colleague Lubomír Koneþný for the encouraging interest in my work; for the kind provision of the photos, I thank Rudolf Distelberger (Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Kunstkammer) and Eva Irblich (Handschriften- und Inkunabeln-Sammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vienna).

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WORKS CITED Bauer, Rotraud and Herbert Haupt. “Das Kunstkammerinventar Kaiser Rudolfs II. 1607-1611.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 72 (1976). Boetius de Boodt, Anselmus. Gemmarum et lapidum historia. Hannover, 1609. Bredekamp, Horst. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1995. Brunner, Monika. “Prag und Rom um 1600. Ein Beitrag zur Architektur der rudolfinischen Residenz.” Rudolf II, Prague and the World. Papers from the International Conference Prague, 2-4 September. Ed. Lubomír Koneþný, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka. Prague: Artefactum, 1998. 24-30. Bukovinská, Beket. “Die Kunst- und Schatzkammer Rudolfs II.: Der Weg vom Rohmaterial zum Sammlungsobjekt als ein Erkenntnisprozeß.” Der Zugang zum Kunstwerk: Schatzkammer, Salon, Ausstellung, ‘Museum’. Akten des XXV. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte. Vol. 4. Vienna: Böhlau, 1986. 59-62. Bukovinská, Beket. “Florenz – Prag oder Prag – Florenz?” UmČní 45 (1997): 161-70. Bukovinská, Beket. “The ‘Kunstkammer’ of Rudolf II. Where it Was and What it Looked Like.” Rudolf II and Prague – the Court and the City. Ed. Eliška Fuþíková et al. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. 199-208. Bukovinská, Beket. “Wer war Johann Rabenhaupt? Unbeachtete Aspekte in den Beziehungen zwischen Prag und Südwestdeutschland.” Rudolf II, Prague and the World. Papers from the International Conference Prague, 2-4 September. Ed. Lubomiír Koneþný, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka. Prague: Artefactum, 1998. 89-94. Bukovinská, Beket. “Das Kunsthandwerk in Prag zwischen Hof und Stadt: Eine topographische Untersuchung.” Krakau, Prag und Wien. Funktionen von Metropolen im frühmodernen Staat. Ed. Marina Dmitrieva and Karen Lambrecht. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000. 195-204. ChotČbor, Petr. “Pražský hrad za Rudolfa II. PromČny architektury.” UmČní a Ĝemesla 39.2 (1997): 15-19. ChotČbor, Petr. “Neuentdeckte Fragmente der rudolfinischen Architektur auf der Prager Burg.” Rudolf II, Prague and the World. Papers from the International Conference Prague, 2-4 September. Ed. Lubomír Koneþný, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka. Prague: Artefactum, 1998. 226-28. Chytil, Karel. UmČní v Praze za Rudolfa II. Prague: UmČlecko-prĤmyslové museum, 1904. Chytil, Karel. UmČní a umČlci na dvoĜe Rudolfa II. Prague: Krasoumná jednota, 1912. Chytil, Karel. “Apotheosa umČní od B. Sprangera.” Roþenka kruhu pro pČstování dČjin umČní za rok 1918. Prague, 1918. 3-10. Chytil, Karel. “O posledních umČlcích Rudolfa II. v Praze.” Dílo 18 (1924-25): 26-34. Distelberger, Rudolf. “Thoughts on Rudolfine Art in the ‘Court Workshops’ of Prague.” Rudolf II and Prague – the Court and the City. Ed. Eliška Fuþíková et al. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. 189-98. Fuþíková, Eliška. “The Collection of Rudolf II at Prague: Cabinet of Curiosities or Scientific Museum?” The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth – and Seventeenth – Century Europe. Ed. Oliver Impley and Arthur MacGregor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. 47-53. Fuþíková, Eliška. “Die Kunstkammer und Galerie Kaiser Rudolfs II. als eine Studiensammlung.” Der Zugang zum Kunstwerk: Schatzkammer, Salon, Ausstellung, ‘Mu-

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seum’. Akten des XXV. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte. Vol. 4. Vienna: Böhlau, 1986. 53-55. Fuþíková, Eliška, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka, eds. Die Kunst am Hofe Rudolfs II. Prague: Aventinum, 1988. Fuþíková, Eliška. “Zur Konzeption der rudolfinischen Sammlungen.” Prag um 1600. Beiträge zur Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. Freren: Luca-Verl., 1988. 5962. Fuþíková, Eliška. “Die Sammlungen Rudolfs II.” Die Kunst am Hofe Rudolfs II. Ed. Fuþíková, Beket Bukovinská, and Ivan Muchka. Prague: Aventinum, 1988. 20946. Fuþíková, Eliška et al, eds. Rudolf II and Prague – the Court and the City. [Exhibit. cat.] London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. Fuþíková, Eliška. “Prague Castle under Rudolf II. His Predecessors and Successors, 1530-1547.” Rudolf II and Prague – the Court and the City. Ed. Fuþíková et al. [Exhibit. cat.] London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. 2-71. Irblich, Eva et al., eds. Le bestiaire de Rodolphe II. Cod. min. 129 et 130 de la Bibliothèque Nationale d’Autriche. Paris: Citadelles, 1990. Irblich, Eva, ed. Thesaurus austriacus. Europas Glanz im Spiegel der Buchkunst. Handschriften und Kunstalben von 800 bis 1600. [Exhibit. cat.] Vienna: Österr. Nationalbibliothek, 1996. Langedijk, Karla. “The Table in Pietre Dure for the Emperor. A New Understanding of Rudolf II as a Collector.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Instituts in Florenz 42 (1998): 358-82. Larsson, Lars Olaf. Adrian de Vries. Adrianvs Fries Hagiensis Batavvs. 1545–1626. Vienna: Schroll, 1967. Morávek, Jan. NovČ objevený inventáĜ rudolfínských sbírek na HradČ Pražském. Prague: Archiv Prazského hradu, 1937. Muchka, Ivan. “Podoba Pražského hradu v rudolfínské dobČ z hlediska veduty.” UmČní 31 (1983): 447-50. Muchka, Ivan. “Die Architektur unter Rudolf II., gezeigt am Beispiel der Prager Burg.” Prag um 1600. Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. [Exhibit. cat.] Freren: Luca-Verl., 1988. 85-93. Muchka, Ivan. “Die Prager Burg zur Zeit Rudolfs II. Neue Forschungsergebnisse.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 85/86 (1989-1990): 95-98. Neumann, Erwin. “Florentiner Mosaik aus Prag.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 53 (1957): 157-202. Neumann, Erwin. “Das Inventar der rudolfinischen Kunstkammer von 1607/11.” Queen Christina of Swede. Documents and Studies. Analecta Reginensia I. [Exhibit. cat.] Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 1966. 262-65. Prag um 1600. Kunst und Kultur am Hofe Rudolfs II. [Exhibit. cat.]. Freren: Luca, 1988. Scheicher, Elisabeth. Die Kunst und Wunderkammern der Habsburger. Vienna: Molden, 1979. Schlosser, Julius von. Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1908. Seelig, Lorenz. “Die Münchener Kunstkammer, Geschichte, Anlage, Ausstattung.” Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Denkmalpflege 2 (1986, 1989): 101-38. Vincent, Clare. “Prince Karl I of Liechtenstein’s Pietre Dure Tabletop.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 20 (1987): 157-78. Weixlgärtner, Arpad. “Die Weltliche Schatzkammer in Wien. Neue Funde und For-

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schungen II.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien 2 (1928): 267315. Zimmermann, Heinrich. “Das Inventar der Prager Schatz- und Kunstkammer vom 6. Dezember 1621.” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 25.2 (1905): XV-LXXV.

ROBERT FELFE

Collections and the Surface of the Image: Pictorial Strategies in Early-Modern Wunderkammern In the last few years, a renaissance of the early-modern Wunderkammer seems to have dawned within museum practice with almost programmatic impetus. The universality of nature’s harmonies, science, art and technology as well as associative looking, interaction and event, are catchwords for a promising though much criticized historical borrowing. Even today visions and designs for the future are frequently linked with this type of museum. The new interest in a museum type stemming from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would be unthinkable without the intensive historical studies of the last 15 years.1 In a few cases old collections were reconstructed and reactivated for the museum as a spatial ensemble. But above all Wunderkammern were examined as complex cultural phenomena in which art historical, scientific and social-historical aspects overlap. A few main themes should be outlined briefly. The social conditions under which the collections were installed, whether at Royal Courts or by private scholars, determined their prior function in a spectrum between the representation of power and scientific study.2 The 1

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In view of the meanwhile extremely extensive literature to Wunderkammern, here is only a sample of the contributions: Andreas Grote, ed. Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450 – 1800. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1994. Claudia Valter. “Science in Art- and Wunderkammern.” Erkenntnis Erfindung, Konstruktion. Studien zur Bildgeschichte von Naturwissenschaft und Technik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Ed. Hans Holländer. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000. 183-96. Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, eds. Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2002. Further references to literature on Wunderkammern will be limited to newer titles relating to the particular topic. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann. The Mastery of Nature. Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, here esp. 174-94. Paula Findlen. “Courting Nature.” Cultures of Natural History. Ed. Nicolas Jardine et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 58-73.

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status and claim of the owner as well as the form of institutionalisation determined the museum practice. Wunderkammern were not only places for the display of objects, but also, depending on the interests of the collector, places of research, experiment and discussion, as well as intersections in a far reaching network of visitors and the exchange of objects.3 From this point of view the historical phenomenon of Wunderkammern is thoroughly heterogeneous. What perhaps unites this type of collection, however, is a common theoretical and conceptual background. The most encompassing epistemological frame, and therefore a possible matrix for these collections, is the analogical relationship between micro- and macrocosm. If man is formulated as a small world and microcosmic counterpart to earthly nature and the cosmos, then a relationship between nature and the total of the human arts could also be posited – a mimetic relationship in which art could be understood not merely as an imitation of nature (natura naturata), but analogue to its productivity (natura naturans), as actively creative.4 No clear border would separate the two into categorically differentiated areas. The motifs of the micro- and macrocosm also suggest various concrete concepts of museum collecting and presentation: the encyclopaedic order of knowledge tending towards completeness, as well as techniques of the ars memorativa5 or historicist perspectives.6 In relation to Wunderkammern, what has become an object of fascination as well as an open problem – also in the case of the few reconstructions – is the integration of the aforementioned aspects as a situational conjunction of representation and experience in the museum space. Inventories, descriptions and visual representations only give limited insight into the microcosm of the collection as a complex ensemble perceived by the senses. To put it bluntly: even for historians the museum interior is a black box through which at most, certain cross sections can be laid. Such a cross section will be attempted in the fol3 4

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Paula Findlen. “Die Zeit vor dem Laboratorium. Die Museen und der Bereich der Wissenschaft 1550-1750.” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. 191-207. Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature. 1150 – 1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Here esp. 255-301. Paula Findlen. “Cabinets, Collecting, and Natural Philosophy.” Rudolph II and Prague. The Court and the City. Ed. Eliška Fuþíkova et al. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. 209-19. Lina Bolzoni. “Das Sammeln und die ars memoriae.” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. 129-68. Cf. Horst Bredekamp. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Fig. 1: Ferrante Imperato, Dell’Historia Naturale (frontispiece; Naples, 1599).

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lowing. It follows a pair of different groups or types of visual representation that run through the collection space. The first are representations of museum interiors and belong to a visual tradition in which the rendering of existing collections overlaps with certain concepts and ideals. Here they are above all interesting in this programmatic aspect. The others arose directly from a collecting praxis. They show single objects and represent collections in book form. In view of these complementary representations, significant changes can be remarked in the relationship between viewer and exhibit in the field of tension between museum interior and the medium of book illustration. Thus it is decidedly a case here of images of collection interiors, and of images from the direct sphere of such collections. The historical focus therefore concentrates on the early eighteenth century, a time when the importance of Wunderkammern as a universal representation of the world was on the wane. First, however, a sketch of a typology of collection views is required that reveals over a period of about 150 years a significant change in the representation of museum interiors. Rooms to Enter One of the earliest surviving views of a Wunderkammer is in the frontispiece of the 1599 Historia Naturale of the Neapolitan collector Ferrante Imperato (fig. 1). It presents a scenario that sets the tone for numerous representations in the following decades. One of its nearest relatives is the frontispiece of a plate book about the museum of Basilius Besler in Nuremberg (fig. 2). In both cases, the viewer looks frontally into a more or less box-shaped room, closed with the exception of windows and doors. On the ceilings and walls – and in the case of Besler, also on the floor – are numerous exhibits placed either singly, or stored on shelves or in repositories. Characteristic for this view of the collection are the actors in the room. In the case of Imperato, a scholarly guide seems to point with a stick at an animal on the ceiling while simultaneously taking part in a discussion with the other visitors. In the Besler frontispiece similar gestures and actions move in various directions, cross and answer each other. Perhaps it is the collector himself who draws the attention of his companion to a curtain with the inscription of the book title. In this way he refers to the collection as a whole as well as to the publication that the viewer is looking at. At the same time, from the other side of the

Fig. 2: Petrus Iselburg, frontispiece of Basilius Besler, Fasciculus Rariorum et Aspectu dignorum varii Generis [...] (Nuremberg, 1616).

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room, a youth turns towards the two gentlemen in order to demonstrate something. Bowing forward with a gesture of offering he presents the skull of a dolphin.7 In both frontispieces the scenes have a performative character. They seem, particularly in the case of Besler, to describe a specific moment – namely the moment when the museum interior is disturbed by the entry of visitors, and as it were, brought to life in a dynamic ensemble of exhibits and viewers. As a result there is no strict division between the people and the exhibits, who seem to be part of a collective performance. Within this performance the assistant acts as a link between the contemplative visitors and exhibits, both natural and crafted. As a man he is connected to the visitors, but unlike these he is not removed from the animals on the floor by means of a platform, but placed among them. As a result his movement echoes that of the saurian in the bottom right hand corner – as if those that are in fact lifeless exhibits, through his presentation offer themselves to observation.8 In front of both images the viewer becomes the audience of an interplay of gestures, actions and gazes. The viewing of the exhibits is organized by gestures that direct the attention, and by the presentation of single objects. Gestures of showing overlap with those of discussion. Showing, seeing and speaking are inseparably bound or blended into each other.9 This interplay develops itself in front of the viewer of the book page primarily across the room of the collection, that is to say parallel to the surface of the print. The actors mostly occupy the foreground and mediate from here between the viewer of the book page and the exhibits. In this way their role is ambivalent: They present a link 7

8

9

This exhibited object is, as with a few others, represented recognizably on one of the following plates (plate “Marines”). As also with other descriptions of collections, this link between the single representation and description to the frontispiece creates a visually understandable connection between the single object and the collection space. A similar function is given to an employee of the museum of Ferdinando Cospi in Bologna. Here the dwarf Sebastiano Biavati worked as warden and guide – himself a living curiosity from the realm of nature, and mediator between visitor and exhibit. Cf. Arthur MacGregor. “Die besonderen Eigenschaften der Kunstkammer.” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. 94. As well as the frontispiece in Lorenzo Legati. Museo Cospiano. Bologna, 1677. Particularly in relation to the early modern museum as a place of discussion and sozializing. Cf. Barbara Welzel “Galerien und Kunstkabinette als Orte des Gesprächs.” Geselligkeit und Gesellschaft im Barockzeitalter. Vol. 1. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 28. Ed. Wolfgang Adam. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997. 495-504. Stefan Siemer. Geselligkeit und Methode. Naturgeschichtliches Sammeln im 18. Jahrhundert. Diss. U. Zurich, 2000.

Fig. 3: G. Wingendorp, frontispiece of Olaus Worm, Museum Wormianum [...] (Leiden, 1665).

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Fig. 4: Io. Bapt. Bertonus/Hieronymus Viscarius, frontispiece of B. Ceruti and A. Chicco, Museum Calceolarium [...] (Verona, 1622).

with the viewer but at the same time confirm the Wunderkammern as an autonomous stage. As constitutive as the actors are for this early type of Wunderkammer-view, these representations already contain a further visual dimension, which in the course of the seventeenth century seems to have developed into its own type of collection view. For example the frontispiece of the Museum Wormianum published in 1655 presents a similarly laid out collection interior with similar arrangements of objects (fig. 3). The most noticeable difference in this

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Fig. 5: Samuel Blesendorf, plate from Lorenz Beger, Thesaurus Electoralis Brandenburgicus selectus (Cologne, 1696).

type of representation, however, is the absence of actors. Consequently, all narrative moment is omitted. There is no action inside the image, no prototypical visitor who, though present in the museum space, is at the same time agent of the viewer’s attention. As much as the interiors represented here resemble the others, the absence of actors gives a new nuance to the visual structure of the images, leading to a more direct and intensive relationship to the space of the Wunderkammer and the objects visible there. The hard, box-shaped room is unmediated and exclusively directed at the viewer. It not only requires that the ensemble as a whole and the single items are perceived successively, but also, as it were, invites the viewer to enter. This immersion is partly created by an extremely subtle lighting, which sculpturally moulds the whole ensemble. The layering of objects gives the room a highly tactile quality. A strong sense of space is the result of the occasionally stressed strict perspective construction – as for example in the frontispiece of the Museum Calceolarium, published in 162210 (fig. 4). The unpopulated collection views are mostly pre10

The verse over the image of this frontispiece makes the spatial integration of the viewer, who is transposed by the eye into the room, explicit: Spectator/ oculos insertio/ Calceolari Musaei admiranda/ contemplator/ et volup animo tuo/ facito.

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sented as spaces that stretch lengthwise into the distance, in contrast to the rooms with actors that are predominantly wider than they are deep. Such an organization of space, as in both these examples, frequently produces an optical pull into depth.11 It is a visual call to enter the museum interior, and in this way the image aesthetically honours its symbolic function as a frontispiece to offer the viewer an entrance into the book. 12 At the same time, the universal claim of the collection in this type of image is carried over onto the architectonic space itself in the extension of its depth. The typologies of the comparably shallow collection interiors with actors, and the unpopulated deep interiors were frequently varied and combined in the course of the seventeenth century. A late example of such variation and synthesis is the representation of the cabinet of antiquities in the Berliner Schloß in Lorenz Beger’s Thesaurus Brandenburgicus from 1696 (fig. 5). Views into Rooms Departing from the representations considered so far, a new type of printed collection view appeared in the late seventeenth century. A kind of initial role seems to have been played by the frontispiece of the Gottorffische Kunstkammer from 1674 (fig. 6). The most striking novelty is an architectural façade, which is placed in the foreground of the image. The not very elegant, but monumental synthesis of antique-style forms of buildings with the coat of arms in the pediment, makes a claim to a certain prestige. Unlike most of the images mentioned so far, this one displays a royal collection; though more important for the typology of collection views being sketched is that the façade here marks a spatial border from where the whole representation is organized. At first glance it seems to be a kind of portal situation. It separates the narrow strip in the foreground from a succession of rooms that continue into the depth of the image. Through the arch one looks into the actual collection interior; on the walls, on tables and on the floor one 11

12

As a further example, particularly in relation to this pull into the depth of unpopulated spaces, cf. the collection images in: Paolo Maria Terzago. Museum Septaleanum [...]. Tortona, 1664. Frontispiece. Ludwig Sommer. Die fürstliche Kunstkammer im Lustgarten zu Stuttgart. Approx. 1670/80. Cf. Wolfgang Harms. “Programmatisches auf Titelblättern naturkundlicher Werke der Barockzeit.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 12 (1978): 326-55.

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Fig. 6: H. von Hensberg, frontispiece of Adam Olearius, Gottorffische Kunstkammer (Schleswig, 1674).

recognizes single exhibits such as shells, snakes, fish and Egyptian statues. On closer inspection however the supposed portal proves not to be enterable. The base of the façade extends through the lower part of the arch with the inscription of the book trader who issued this publication. The museum interior is thus distinguished as a region which is visible to the viewer but which they cannot enter without further ado. And precisely this barrier demonstrates through its inscription the medium of representation – the book. With this frontispiece a tendency emerges within the tradition of collection views that can be understood as the increasingly virtual status of the museum interior. The interior of the collection is removed from the viewer in their physical existence to become a visual space of a second order. But though direct access is blocked, the perspective

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Fig. 7: Jacobus d. Later, frontispiece of G. E. Rumphius, Amboinische Rariteitkamer [...] (Amsterdam, 1705).

system secures continuity between the viewer and the further reaches of the museum. This schema – a sequence of spaces closed off by a portal-like architecture – was frequently varied around 1700 and developed in the frontispieces of museological publications. During this time the collection interiors were populated once again with actors, but in a different way than a hundred years earlier. Though considerably more extravagant in terms of performance, and more detailed than the Gottorffische Kunstkammer, the frontispiece of the Amboinische Rariteitkamer from 1705 offers a view into a similarly

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Fig. 8: I. v. Viane, frontispiece of Vincent Levinus, Wondertooneel der nature [...] (Amsterdam, 1706).

organized space (fig. 7). Once again an architectural façade separates a narrow foreground from the actual collection interior with its repositories and ornamental displays. As with the façade of the Gottorffische Kunstkammer statues flank a representative archway. Terra, the earth, on the left, and Neptune, the god of the ocean, on the right, stand as much for the elements earth and water as for the totality of the globe. As a semantic axis of the complex spatial iconography both statues connect the spaces of the collection with the respective spaces of nature which are to be seen as small landscape views in the background: on the left is a view of a landscape with a well or mine construction, and on the right a lone sailing ship on the sea. Though here the portal itself is enterable, the archway is mostly blocked. Crouching figures have settled down here with their backs to the viewer and have spread out a pile of exotic specimens around them-

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Fig. 9: C. Huyberts, frontispiece of Frederik Ruysch, Opera omnia (Amsterdam, 1720).

selves. Their placement and their pose are in this way part of a choreography of the viewer’s gaze. As a result the eye of the viewer is repeatedly referred to the centre of the image by way of a number of detours: a group of scholars who have gathered around a large table to inspect some exhibits. Again, the architecturally framed scene only offers a view of the Wunderkammer, without integrating the viewer. This scene should be understood as a symbolic space. If the scarcely clothed figures in the foreground represent the far reaches of the globe and serve the museum as deliverers of curious specimens, the circle of scholars is clearly not one of contemporary visitors to the collection. In their partly antique, partly oriental garments, they seem to represent the transmission of a semi-mythical knowledge from antiquity.

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Likewise in Amsterdam two collection inventories appeared in the following years in which this type of representation was resolutely formulated further. One case is that of the frontispiece of the Wondertooneel der nature (1706), which was printed for the first time in 1710 in the Thesaurus Animalium by Frederik Ruysch (fig. 8 and 9). In both, the actual collection interior is more decisively separated from a narrow foreground strip than in the representations of the Gottorffische and the Amboinsche museum. Also here in each case, an archway regulates an architectural spatial border, which is also a frame within the image. In the lower part of the image – as a barrier on the ground – this border is continued in both cases by a group of figures that block the opening. In this way the border is blurred between the statuesque portal figures on the pedestals and the dynamic figures on the ground. Compositionally (fig. 8) and clearly united in their gestures (fig. 9), the actors in the foreground are optically anchored in the architecture and close off the enterable space of the collection from the viewer. In both cases, the figure groups in the foreground are made up of allegorical figures – personifications of the earth and sea, of collecting and of the graphic arts (fig. 8) as well as Mother Nature, and Cronos (fig. 9) as a representative of time and the finiteness of everything natural. It is primarily through these allegories that the claim to a universal representation of the world and of knowledge is formulated, and no longer through the collection space itself with the variety of exhibits placed there. This is emphasized by the fact that certain exhibits are perhaps recognizable to the viewer only in the section presenting or spread out with allegorical figures. In contrast, the interior of the collection space is dominated by finely structured repositories. They stand for the abstract ordering of knowledge where the individual objects as such are completely concealed or hardly to be seen. The tiny visitors to the collection are transported into the depth of the interior and hardly relevant as actors. Parallel to the aforementioned tendency to block direct access to the interior of the collection, a further marked change to the conception of museum interiors can be determined that cannot be ascribed to a particular type of representation. It’s a case of the sixth wall of the interior – the ceiling. Since the second half of the seventeenth century it is, in comparison to the walls, rarely covered with objects (fig. 1, 2, 3, and 4), but contrasts with the density of exhibits and opens the closed architectural space. This occurs on the one hand through ceiling paintings, for example an antique heaven (fig. 5), a Christian heavenly sphere (fig. 9) or in an image of the cosmos, as in the frontispiece from

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Athanasius Kircher’s museum in Rome.13 At its most radical this vertical opening of the collection interior is implemented in the frontispiece of the Wondertooneel der nature (fig. 8). Here, instead of a ceiling, there is an antique templum opening, and under the clouds in the sky, an armillary sphere stands for the cosmic dimension of the extended collection space. Under the paintings of mythological and religious themes or of a cosmic heavenly space the museum cabinet becomes a border region of the sublunary physical world, and an idealized space in which natural specimens and artefacts are already transcended and the earthly sphere is released. In the place where this metaphysical region overlaps with the spatial separation of the collection from the viewer, the museum space becomes a place between worlds: on one side the sensible, and on the other side the suprasensible – from the intelligible to the sacred. The Theatre and Pictorial Representation If the transformation of the concept of museum space described here can be understood as a tendency towards a theatrical model, the proximity to theatre becomes explicit in these last examples (fig. 8 and 9). Both clearly adapt elements of Baroque stage architecture, as a comparison with the stage decoration by Domenico Mauro (1686) makes clear (fig. 10). Like a proscenium arch, the portals of the collection frame a view into the depth of the image and at the same time emphasize the border between the real space of the viewer and the illusionary space of the theatrical representation. As with the theatre, the space of the collection of images is split into two parts, which are then assigned differing grades of reality. Though both areas seem to be connected with each other by a continuous stage floor and potentially remain a continuous space for one and the same performance, only at the front of the stage – the proscenium – does a performance take place that is directly addressed to the viewer. Understood as a stage the Wunderkam-

13

Giorgio de Sepi. Romani Collegii Societatis Jesu Musaeum Celeberrimum. Amsterdam, 1678. Frontispiece. The painted vault depicting a cosmos connected to the architectural space, is further exceeded by an angel that ascending on a cloud carries a banner with the name of the museum into a purely sacred heavenly region. Concerning this museum in the context of Kircher’s universal science see the articles in: Eugenio Lo Sardo, ed. Athanasius Kircher. Il Museo del Mondo. Rome: De Luca, 2001.

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Fig. 10: Dominico Mauro, decoration to Servio Tullio by A. Steffani and V. Terzago (Munich, 1686). Engraving by M. Wenig.

mer has a narrow performance section that shoves itself between the actual interior of the collection and the viewer. The concept of the collection interior as a stage and consequently the implicit distinction between the Wunderkammer and spaces of the real world, seem to have achieved an almost canonical status around 1720. In the frontispiece from Caspar Friedrich Neickel’s Museographia from 1727 – a kind of summa of museum practice and theory – most theatrical splendour and pathos has been erased. What appears all the more clearly as a result is the stage structure itself (fig. 11). The framing of the gaze that separates the Wunderkammer from the viewer’s space is accentuated here by a fence that runs across the stage. The museum interior that lies behind is now a symbolically condensed place of secluded study and quiet contemplation. This space is explicitly situated between both books and exhibits, between reading and the study of objects. The staging of the collection view as a Baroque stage is not merely the pictorial version of a universal metaphor of theatre.14 Through it the 14

On the metaphor of the world as theatre see Richard Bernheimer. “Theatrum Mundi.” Art Bulletin 38.4 (1956): 225-47. Richard Alewyn. Das große Weltthea-

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Fig. 11: Frontispiece of Caspar Friedrich Neickelius, Museographia oder Anleitung zum rechten Begriff und nützliche Anlegung der Museorum oder Räritäten-Kammern (Leipzig, 1727).

relationship between museum space, exhibit and viewer is fundamentally changed. Put another way: a new kind of presentation is practiced ter. Munich: Beck, 1985. Specially in relation to early modern collections: Horst Bredekamp. Die Fenster der Monade. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ Theater der Natur und Kunst. Berlin, 2004. 23-44.

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Fig. 12: Frontispiece of Johann Ernst Hebenstreit, Museum Richterianum (Leipzig, 1743).

in the image. If there were particular exhibits, if at all, in the frontispieces by Ruysch and Levinus (fig. 9 and 8), then only in the immediate foreground. In a view of the Museum Richterianum from 1743, this seems to be almost the main theme of the image (fig. 12). Through the heavy curtains the collection interior with its repositories and numerous paintings is also identified here as a stage. On a small proscenium lie corals, shells and other exhibits flanked by two globes that are also scientific instruments and represent the totality of earthly nature. What is accentuated in this scene without human actors is initially a greater decoupling of the exhibits and the museum space. They are no longer presented as a totality and meaningful unity in which visitors inspect items and exchange information, rather the item and its inspection are removed from the interior of the collection, in the vocabulary of the theatre, to the front of stage. If around 1700 the theatre became the model for museum representations, then two aspects overlap: on the one hand the reference to the stage suggests a scenery in which the exhibits are the props of the alle-

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gorical performers, or still life-like arrangements that occupy the stage. In this way the view into the museum is presented as a significant event, especially when framed by gathered curtains (fig. 9, 11, and 12). The pictorial representation evokes a moment in which the most differentiated order of things is revealed behind the objects as an arcane knowledge. At the same time this theatrical reference seems to have coincided with a heightened pictorialization of the collection space. If the architectural frames inside the image (fig. 6-9, and 11) emphasize a narrow section as visible surface of the collection interior, and a border between it and the viewer, through the extravagant ornamental frame of the view into the Museum Richterianum (fig. 12), this border is also explicitly emphasized as the surface of an image.15 Looking back on the typology of collection views developed here, a tendency of abolishing borders, and immersion as well as a certain vitalization of the exhibits can be remarked in the earlier representations. This contrasts with an increasing distancing of the viewer in front of a performance section, which defines itself as the surface of an image, and which in turn can be seen as a tendency towards a medialization of the museum collection. The image and the surface now become a predetermined place in which the relationship between man as a subject of the gaze and of knowledge – the object and order of knowledge – is renegotiated. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer: Presence and History If Wunderkammern were systems of objects and spaces turned by perspective into images in the way mentioned, then they were also places of a manifold image practice. Paintings, prints and drawings were collected and exhibited, and pictorial representations were produced, particularly from the available exhibits. In the latter case, a kind of transfer of the items from the collection space into book illustrations and their tableaux of knowledge began. In the context of this transfer, both the late collection images and other forms of object representation can be seen as complementary strategies in the medium of book illustration. This appears in an exemplary way in the work of a pair of collectors, 15

As an example of such ornamental frames cf. also fig. 5 as well as both versions of the frontispiece of Ferrante Imperato. Dell’Historia Naturale. The unframed version from 1599 (fig.1) was given a frame with an inscribed cartouche as the most noticeable change in an edition from 1672.

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Fig. 13: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, collage from his Theatr[um] Diluv[ianum] Nautilus. Icones pro lexico dilviano (between 1716 and 1730).

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scientists and authors who were important in the early eighteenth century, though their work on the image marks rather extreme poles in the field of tension to be described. Directly from the study of objects, a series of collages came about (fig. 13) which can be found today in the estate of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. He was a town doctor, teacher, as well as a longstanding curator of the Wunderkammer and citizen’s library in Zurich.16 His international reputation is above all based on his publications on the Alps, his writings on fossils, and his private collection of minerals and fossils. As a member of the Royal Society, the Preußische Akademie and the Leopoldina, Scheuchzer cultivated, particularly in this area, a lively correspondence and exchange with collectors such as Hans Sloane, John Woodward and Albertus Seba. These collages come from a many-volumed collection of images that Scheuchzer had established for a planned encyclopaedia on fossils and minerals. This collection of material was built up and reorganized over a period of roughly twenty years – though it was never printed.17 Initially the collecting and systematic ordering of illustrations should have been the central concern. Prints from publications of various authors, as well as drawings were pasted under the respective class of objects and provided with a short commentary. The pages of these albums were however much more than a mere classification of images. In numerous collages, as in Wunderkammern, natural specimens and artefacts were arranged into suggestive ensembles. 16

17

On Scheuchzer see in particular a few new publications: Irmgard Müsch. Geheiligte Naturwissenschaft. Die Kupfer-Bibel des Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. Rekonstruktion der Künste 4. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2000. Robert Felfe. Naturgeschichte als kunstvolle Synthese. Physikotheologie und Bildpraxis bei Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003. Michael Kempe. Wissenschaft, Theologie, Aufklärung. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer und die Sintfluttheorie. Tübingen: Bibliotheca-Academica-Verlag, 2000. Especially in relation to Scheuchzer’s curatorial activities: Claudia Rütsche. Die Kunstkammer in der Züricher Wasserkirche. Öffentliche Sammeltätigkeit einer gelehrten Bürgerschaft im 17. and 18. Jahrhundert aus museumsgeschichtlicher Sicht. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997. Esp. 134-36. The manuscript and image collection can be found in the form of an album in the manuscript section of the main library in Zurich under the shelf code: MsZ VIII 19 e; MsZ VIII 21 & a; MsZ 21 b-d. See in relation: Robert Felfe. “Verdammung, Kritik und Überbietung. Das Nachleben hermetischer Tradition in der Naturgeschichte Johann Jakob Scheuchzer.” Antike Weisheit und kulturelle Praxis. Hermetismus in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Anne-Charlot Trepp and Hartmut Lehmann. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2001. 269-303. As well as: Felfe. Naturgeschichte. 173-99.

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To some extent this could be seen as a manner of ennobling the work, as it occurs when a drawing from Scheuchzer’s hand appears together with the work of a famous artist of the past. The gravestone-like ensemble of sculptural figures was cut out of a title page after Hans Holbein the Younger from 1523, and where the book title was originally to be seen, one of Scheuchzer’s studies has been pasted.18 It carries the signature ‘Acarnan fecit.’ Arcarnan was Scheuchzer’s academic name that he was granted on entering the Leopoldina. With this signature, the claim to the rank of artist was joined to that of scholar and collector. In its sculptural effect, the fossil study competes with, and at the same time is given value by the sculptures of the woodcut. The fossil is raised as if in a display reliquary and is granted an almost sacred value. This staging as a meaningful precious object is a result of the interpretation that Scheuchzer and other collectors around 1700 attached to fossils concerning their contested origin. To this extent the fossils did have sacred connotations. As life forms that were supposed to have died in the biblical flood, they had the status of direct witnesses to the biblical events and God’s wrath. The stone relics evidenced this in their resemblance to living plants and animals. It was the flood theorists of the early eighteenth century who traced this resemblance to a direct genetic lineage, and thus prioritised a historicist perspective in the debate over fossils. As a result, the earlier theories that assumed fossils to be games of nature and therefore as the work of a playful creative nature who was busy making forms in the interior of the earth, were successively replaced. In Wunderkammern, as these ludi naturae or Figurensteine, fossils formed an important link in the analogy between a visually productive nature (natura naturans) and the mimetic arts of man.19 Through the antique motifs in Holbein’s woodcut a historical interpretive horizon of the fossils is suggested – this is made more explicit on a sheet where fossils are placed next to ancient ruins: for example, an ammonite over a landscape with Roman ruins is given the historical dignity of antiquity (fig. 14). The collage implies that the ammonite is a 18

19

On the original title page after Holbein see Christian Müller, ed. Hans Holbein d. J. Die Druckgraphik im Kupferstichkabinett Basel. [Exhibit. cat.] Basel: Schwabe, 1997. 251-53. On the interpretive history of fossils see Martin J. S. Rudwick. The Meaning of Fossils. Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. New York: Neale Watson, 1976. David R. Oldroyd. Thinking About the Earth. A History of Ideas in Geology. Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 8-10. In relation to Wunderkammern: Bredekamp. Lure of Antiquity. 74-76. Daston, Park. Wonders. 286-88.

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witness of natural history just as the Roman ruins were the remains of an earlier civilization. The natural-historical work of this collage must stay rather schematic at this stage. It should be stressed, however, that particularly in this synthesizing pictorial procedure – in an affinity with archaeology – concepts on the history of nature are formulated independently from the bible or other mythical traditions. In contemporary discourse on fossilization, this was in a certain way innovative. Nevertheless this historical approach doesn’t stand in contradiction to the collecting praxis of Wunderkammern. The analogy between antique finds and Figurensteine is established anew in the collages. A method of interpretation is practiced in them that speeded up the process of the historicist view of nature.20 If it never came to printing the planned encyclopaedia, then partly because the albums themselves remained a dynamic collection. Until the end new images were placed on the pages, and the ones already pasted in were taken out again, reordered and put in new suggestive relationships. The single images remained movable objects that never found a final form and order as a whole. In Scheuchzer’s last realized book project, assemblage or montage procedures with a high artistic investment were converted into a coherent pictorial technique. The four volumes of the Physica Sacra or Kupfer-Bibel appeared between 1731 and 1738, simultaneously in four languages in Augsburg and Amsterdam. As a physical-theological demonstration of the basic correspondences between the holy scripture, and natural or human history, most plates combine natural-historical, anatomical, technical or antiquarian subjects with scenes from biblical stories. The variety of the objects of knowledge runs, as with the microcosm of the Wunderkammer, through the realms of nature and the human Artes. An illustration concerning the composition and function of the human heart combines anatomical specimens, a pictorial representation, and a machine as model of the working method of the organ (fig. 15). The multi-layered images, which in their visual structure are in many cases directly related to museum displays, prompt a comparison with a painted Wunderkammer display case, probably by Domenicus 20

Generally on the relationship between the science of antiquity and natural history in the area of collections see Alain Schnapp. The Discovery of the Past. The Origins of Archeology. London: British Museum Press, 1996. 167-69, 221-23. Walter Tega, ed. L’Antiquita del Mondo. Fossili, Alfabeti, Rovine. [Exhibit. cat.] Bologna, 2002.

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Fig. 14: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, collage from his Theatr[um] Diluv[ianum] Corn[u] Amm[onis] n. 16. Icones pro lexico dilviano (between 1716 and 1730).

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Fig. 15: I. A. Friedrich after Johann Melchior Füßli and Johann Daniel Preissler, engraving from Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Kupfer-Bibel in welche die Physica Sacra oder geheiligte Natur-Wissenschaft [...] deutlich erklärt [...] (Augsburg and Ulm, 1731-35).

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Remps, produced in the middle of the seventeenth century (fig. 16). Similar to the ordering of various exhibits in the display case, the engraving of the Physica Sacra was also designed as an ensemble of objects. The biblical scene creates a deep background space for the anatomical subjects that seem to exist in a section between the book page and the observer. The frame of what seems to be a painting accommodates anatomical specimens, a pictorial representation of the human heart and a miniature model of a water pump. The whole ensemble of heterogeneous pictorial elements ultimately creates an optically coherent space. The presented objects throw shadows that can be seen on the ornamental frame of the panel, though not on the surface of the supposed painting. In this way the borders between the individual sections of the representation are dissolved and any clearly defined surface is cancelled. A visually coherent space of representation is created where, as in a theatre prospect, the deep space of the stage seems to cross seamlessly over into the space of the viewer. In comparison with the frontispiece of the Museum Richterianum (fig. 12), the narrative space of the history of salvation corresponds structurally with the collection space behind the objects in the foreground. By referring to universal forms of representation such as the museum and the theatre, in the Physica Sacra, between the deep space and the trompe l’œil objects, the book illustration as medium is dissolved and transcended by linking two illusionary display places. Corresponding to the physical-theological ambition of this work, in the hybrid composition, a sacred promise of meaning is forced into the apparently physical presence of things. Frederik Ruysch: The Art of Making Specimens, between Body and Line Among the numerous objects which as concrete exhibits from existing museums were included into the engravings of the Physica Sacra, there can be found – as with the heart plate (fig. 15) – a number of anatomical specimens from the collection of the aforementioned Ruysch.21 21

In this relation the most spectacular plate from Scheuchzer’s Physica Sacra is that of the “Erschaffung und Zeugung des Menschen.” Vol. 1, tab. XXIII. Here a crying embryo skeleton from one of Ruysch’s famous “Landschafts-Szenen” (landscape scenes) (fig. 17), as well as a whole series of individual specimens were used.

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Fig. 16: Domenico Remps [?], Wunderkammer display case (second half of the seventeenth century).

The anatomist and collector from Amsterdam was one of the most elusive characters in the scene around 1700. His international fame rested above all on the method he developed for preparing specimens.22 Through injections of wax he was able to make the finest tissue and vessel systems visible, and his prepared anatomical specimens impressed his contemporaries by conserving in a life-like way, body parts and whole bodies. Other objects were scenically and allegorically raised to sculptural art works through gesture, discursive inscriptions or other attributes (fig. 17). The art of these anatomists and specimen makers – which has often been presented in recent research – peaked in the eyes of contemporary observers in the way that it was understood as a symbolic victory over death. This in particular seemed to vouch for its status as art. The motif of vanitas is pushed to an extreme and at the same time surpassed. 22

On Ruysch see Antoine M. Luyendijk-Elshout. “‘An der Klaue erkennt man den Löwen.’ Aus den Sammlungen von Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731).” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. 643-60.

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Fig. 17: C. Huyberts, engraving from Frederik Ruysch, Thesaurus Anatomicus primus [...] (Amsterdam, 1721).

Ruysch questioned death’s absolute right to the body by preserving even the most subtle body parts from decay and giving them in death a striking appearance of liveliness. Among the prominent admirers was Bernard de Fontenelle. He claimed that the anatomist had found in 1731 ‘the secret of the resurrection of the dead.’23 In 1717 Tsar Peter the Great bought Ruysch’s first cabinet for his Wunderkammer in St. Petersburg. 23

Cf. Julie V. Hansen. “Resurrecting Death: Anatomical Art in the Cabinet of Dr. Frederik Ruysch.” The Art Bulletin 78.4 (1996): 663-79.

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In their symbolic dimension, Ruysch’s works and collections were connoted with religion and had at the same time a magical core. With the aura of someone who re-animates the dead, he stands in the rich tradition of accounts and legends of the artist who creates living works, and therefore becomes a god-like creator.24 In this way his work stands, like Scheuchzer’s montages, in a precarious relationship to a, in the broadest sense, platonic-idealistic concept of art. This takes place exclusively with his specimens, and these have, as the symbolic salvation from death, no other stage than the transitory world itself. With or without religious intentions, his works rigorously avoid the difference between nature and art, as well as the dichotomies between original and copy, ideal form and material. Ruysch’s highly symbolic art is intrinsically bound to the body in its physical presence. It might then appear logical that the images in his publications are the multiple scene of a contest between an object-art, and the manner of representation by media. Here a broad spectrum of pictorial techniques and strategies are played out with a number of variations – it reaches from a highly subtle art of the line to a concrete illusionism that visually and factually transcends the limitations of the graphic medium. In 1722 Ruysch published a correspondence in which he carries out a dispute with Hermann Boerhaave about the structure of various gland and vessel systems. Ruysch frequently emphasizes the originality of his specimen preparation procedure and the value of its discoveries. At the end of the correspondence he placed a single plate (fig. 18). It shows a section of tissue as seen through a microscope, reproduced as a segment in a rectangular field. Unlike images such as the arrangement of skeletons (fig. 17), the graphic line doesn’t so much describe a concrete form as delineate the structure in an almost sketchy manner. The clear avoidance of illusionist finesse in the reproduction of the subject matter is part of a scepticism formulated in the image which addresses the question whether the book illustration can sufficiently represent the subject at all. It’s a case, according to the author of this print, in reality of such a large number of the finest vessels, “that if the artist attempted to engrave them, the whole plate would show a single black mark.”25

24 25

Cf. Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz. Die Legende vom Künstler. Ein geschichtlicher Versuch. 1934. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1994. Frederik Ruysch. Opusculum Anatomicum de Fabrica Glandularum in Corpore Humano [...]. Amsterdam, 1722. 81. Trans. by the author.

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Fig. 18: C. Huyberts, etching from Frederik Ruysch, Opusculum Anatomicum de Fabrica Glandularum in Corpore Humano [...] (Amsterdam, 1722).

This scepticism about the graphic medium is accentuated in the image as a whole. The image field of anatomical representation hangs by two thin threads that are tied at one end to the vessels themselves and at the other with bows to fine nails. In this way the mesh of lines of the tissue is defined as an entity. As a pictorial object it is no longer merely a copy, but apparently spatially present. What is interesting is that this pictorial object appears in a space that is not defined by the graphic representation itself as pictorial space. The nails are outside of the actual pictorial field in a surface that merely through the colourless imprint of the printing plate is enclosed on the paper. It is a case of a virtual space, which pushes itself between the book page and the viewer. Even the hair-thin line concretises itself here as a thread on which the image hangs and is naturally still only a line – but that is the game in which the graphic means create the illusion of an entity and at the same time break this illusion. The image’s inherent self-reflexivity

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Fig. 19: C. Huyberts, engraving from Frederik Ruysch, Thesaurus Anatomicus secundus [...] (Amsterdam, 1722).

insists in this way demonstratively on the fundamental untranslatability of the subject into the graphic medium. The concrete existing body, and the line as an abstract element of the graphic medium are the poles between which this image oscillates. In other plates one of these poles became respectively the absolute paradigm of the representation. In his second Thesaurus Anatomicus from 1722, Ruysch published the prepared specimen of a hydrocephalic embryo aged six or seven months (fig. 19). The face is shown in a frontal view with open eyes. The enormous head fills almost the entire background. Face and head are formed from a single undulating spiralling line. It begins on the tip of the nose producing contours by swelling in and out on its course.

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Fig. 20: Claude Mellan, Christ’s Face on the Veil (1649).

With this line the image unmistakably quotes an equally virtuoso and theoretically loaded engraving by the French graphic artist Claude Mellan from 1649 (fig. 20). Here, a single line forms the face of Christ in the iconography of the so called Vera Icon – the veil of Veronica, which in the Christian tradition became an archetype of an image of God made without a human hand.26 26

On this engraving by Mellan see Gerhard Wolf. “Gestörte Kreise. Zum Wahrheitsanspruch des Bildes im Zeitalter des Disegno.” Räume des Wissens. Repräsentation, Codierung, Spur. Ed. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997. 39-63, esp. 61-63. William B. MacGregor. “The Authority of Prints: an Early Modern Perspective.” Art History 22.3 (1999): 389-420, esp. 418-20.

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Fig. 21: Frederik Ruysch [?], Icon durae matris [...] ad objectum artificiosissime praeparatum à clarissimo Viro Fred. Ruyschio [...] delineata. & coloribus distincta typa impressa à Joanne Ladmiral (Amsterdam and Leiden, 1738).

With this line, Mellan symbolically claims the sacred authority of the image immediately created as a cast of the Saviour himself for his art of the line. It is a question of an infinite and therefore ideal line. It appears on the surface of the paper but is not actually bound to this medium. Following its course, it drifts free of Christ’s physiognomy and does not give this physiognomy a firm contour. In this way, the Saviour’s face becomes almost sculpturally present without reducing the Son of God to his human form. The fact that Ruysch uses this line for the representation of his prepared specimens, is the most radical form of the transformation of his art works into the graphic medium. In this way he lets this ideal line become flesh to an extent that was hardly implied in the theological horizon of Mellan’s engraving. He extends the reach of his death-defeating art, using a line that an artist had formerly used to make the face of the Saviour appear as the immediate image of God, for the representation of a malformed embryo that, by nature, is not capable of living.

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The complementary pole in the image practice based on Ruysch’s collections and specimen art, is marked by a plate in a publication with the title Icon durae matrix27 (fig. 21). Held in a thin golden frame, this elusive miniature painting shows a brain as a compact, almost circular form. The monochrome background evokes a space that is a non-concrete, abstract place for the object. All the more forcefully, light and shadow make the subtle colour of the organ appear physically present. The verisimilitude of the representation culminates in the highly suggestive synthesis of its plastic form with the most differentiated surface qualities. The finest lines overlap here with the transparency of the outermost layers. Certainly, the apparent presence of the object is finally a virtuoso game of representation and is understood as such. However, not only the art of trompe l’œil is celebrated here in small format. Through an image that not only evokes the aesthetic presence of objects, but which, as a painting, is itself a valuable artwork and calls to mind the museum space, though as a place of solitary viewing, the book medium is simultaneously charged and exploded. The tendencies and aesthetic strategies examined here can be understood as complementary aspects of a collection-related image practice. Firstly the frontispieces of museological publications prove that the Wunderkammern were themselves exhibited places in which a splitting and drifting apart of system spaces of knowledge and spaces of experience took place in the course of the seventeenth century. As a result not so much the spatial concepts of physics as the differently abstract space of Taxinomia emerged, in contrast to the museum microcosm, integrating a perceiving subject. In the frontispieces this difference is represented and at the same time the claim is formulated in them that the museum space is able to manage the increasingly difficult synthesis of both. Secondly, the book projects and publications by Scheuchzer and Ruysch open a new perspective upon the supposed disappearance of 27

This publication appears first in 1738, seven years after Ruysch’s death so that the creation of the illustration cannot be traced with certainty to his direct instigation and intentions. However, the title already shifts into the centre the crossover of Ruysch’s art of specimens, and a virtuoso image technique being studied here, and defines this as its theme. Icon durae matrix [...] ad objectum artificiosissime praeparatum à clarissimo Viro Fred. Ruyschio [...] delineata, & coloribus distincta typa impressa à Joanne Ladmiral. Amsterdam and Leiden, 1738. Following the title it’s obviously a question of a coloured print, but where the image elements given by the print are now scarcely to be deciphered.

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Wunderkammern as a place of representation and the constitution of universal knowledge. If in the course of the eighteenth century the book became the primary medium of knowledge then possibly not simply as a result of an increasing differentiation of the fields of knowledge or their separation from artists in today’s sense. This change of medium, so it seems, emerged also and perhaps precisely because books – and above all the images they contained – were the late scene of a virtuosity that unified the scientist, collector and artist. From a structural point of view these virtuosos realized a transfer or an operation of a possibly epochal impact: they opposed the great scientific historical tendencies toward abstraction and differentiation – having around 1700 the largely sacred background of the interpretation of nature as creation – with a return of the object by means of media to the sensible perceptible world. Beyond mimetic concepts of art they used their aesthetic means for a highly self-reflexive image practice and to fix on the highest power of suggestion. This operation seems to have continued to function. Translation: Benjamin Carter

WORKS CITED Adam, Wolfgang, ed. Geselligkeit und Gesellschaft im Barockzeitalter. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 28. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997. Alewyn, Richard. Das große Welttheater. Munich: Beck, 1985. Beger, Lorenz. Thesaurus Electoralis Brandenburgicus selectus […]. Cologne, 1696. Bernheimer, Richard. “Theatrum Mundi.” The Art Bulletin 38.4 (1956): 225-47. Besler, Basilius. Fasciculus Rariorum et Aspectu dignorum varii Generis […]. Nuremberg, 1616. Bolzoni, Lina. “Das Sammeln und die ars memoriae.” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450-1800. Ed. Andreas Grote. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1994. 129-68. Bredekamp, Horst. The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology. Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1995. Bredekamp, Horst Die Fenster der Monade. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ Theater der Natur und Kunst. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004. Ceruti, B. and A. Chicco. Musaeum Calceolarium […]. Verona, 1622. DaCosta Kaufmann, Thomas. The Mastery of Nature. Aspects of art, science, and humanism in the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Daston, Lorraine and Katherine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature. 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Felfe, Robert. Naturgeschichte als kunstvolle Synthese. Physikotheologie und Bildpraxis bei Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2003.

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Felfe, Robert. “Verdammung, Kritik und Überbietung: Das Nachleben hermetischer Traditionen in der Naturgeschichte Johann Jakob Scheuchzers.” Antike Weisheit und kulturelle Praxis. Hermetismus in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ed. Anne-Charlot Trepp and Hartmut Lehmann. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2001. 269-303. Findlen, Paula. “Die Zeit vor dem Laboratorium: Die Museen und der Bereich der Wissenschaft 1550-1750.” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450-1800. Ed. Andreas Grote. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1994. 191-207. Findlen, Paula. “Courting Nature.” Cultures of Natural History. Ed. Nicholas Jardine et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 58-73. Findlen, Paula. “Cabinets, Collecting and Natural Philosophy.” Rudolph II and Prague. The Court and the City. Ed. Eliška Fuþíková et al. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997. 209-19. Grote, Andreas, ed. Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450-1800. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1994. Hansen, Julie V. “Resurrecting Death: Anatomical Art in the Cabinet of Dr. Frederik Ruysch.” The Art Bulletin 78.4 (1996): 663-679. Harms, Wolfgang. “Programmatisches auf Titelblättern naturkundlicher Werke der Barockzeit.” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 12 (1978): 326-355. Hebenstreit, Ernst. Museum Richterianum […]. Leipzig, 1743. Imperato, Ferrante. Dell’ Historia Naturale. Naples, 1599. Kempe, Michael. Wissenschaft, Theologie, Aufklärung. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer und die Sintfluttheorie. Tübingen: Bibliotheca-Academica-Verlag, 2003. Kris, Ernst and Otto Kurz. Die Legende vom Künstler. Ein geschichtlicher Versuch. 1934. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1994. Legati, Lorenzo. Museo Cospiano […]. Bologna, 1677. Levinus, Vincent. Wondertooneel der nature […]. Amsterdam, 1706. Lo Sardo, Eugenio ed. Athanasius Kircher. Il Museo del Mondo. Rome: De Luca, 2001. Luyendijk-Elshout, Antonie M. “‘An der Klaue erkennt man den Löwen.’ Aus den Sammlungen von Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731).” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 1450-1800. Ed. Andreas Grote. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1994. 643-60. MacGregor, Arthur. “Die besonderen Eigenschaften der ‘Kunstkammer’.” Macrocosmos in Microcosmo. Die Welt in der Stube. Zur Geschichte des Sammelns 14501800. Ed. Andreas Grote. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 1994. 61-106. MacGregor, William B. “The Authority of Prints: an early modern perspective.” Art History 22.3 (1999): 389-420. Müller, Christian. Hans Holbein d. J. Die Druckgrafik im Kupferstichkabinett Basel. Basel: Schwabe, 1997. Müsch, Irmgard. Geheiligte Naturwissenschaft. Die Kupfer-Bibel des Johann Jakob Scheuchzer. Rekonstruktion der Künste 4. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2000. Neickel, Caspar Friedrich. Museographia […]. Leipzig, 1727. Olearius, Adam. Gottdorffische Kunst-Kammer […]. Schleswig, 1674. Olroyd, David R. Thinking About the Earth. A History of Ideas in Geology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Roth, Harriet, ed. Der Anfang der Museumslehre in Deutschland. Das Traktat ‘Inscriptiones vel Tituli Theatri Amplissimi’ von Samuel Quiccheberg. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000.

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Rudwick, Martin J. S. The Meaning of Fossils. Episodes in the History of Palaeontology. New York: Neale Watson, 1976. Rumphius, G. E. Amboinsche Rariteitkamer […]. Amsterdam, 1705. Rütsche, Claudia. Die Kunstkammer in der Zürcher Wasserkirche. Öffentliche Sammeltätigkeit einer gelehrten Bürgerschaft im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert aus museumsgeschichtlicher Sicht. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997. Ruysch, Frederik. Opera omnia […]. Amsterdam, 1720. Ruysch, Frederik. Thesaurus Anatomicus primus […]. Amsterdam, 1721. Ruysch, Frederik. Thesaurus Anatomicus secundus […]. Amsterdam, 1722. Ruysch, Frederik. Opusculum Anatomicum de Fabrica Glandularum in Corpore Humano […]. Amsterdam, 1722. Ruysch, Frederik. Icon durae Matris […] ad objectum artificiosissimè praeparatum à clarissimo Viro Fred. Ruyschio […] delineata, & coloribus distincta typa impressa à Joanne Ladmiral. Amsterdam and Leiden, 1738. Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob. Kupfer-Bibel in welcher die Physica Sacra oder Geheiligte Natur-Wissenschafft […]. Augsburg and Ulm, 1731-35. Schnapp, Alain. The Discovery of the Past. The Origins of Archeology. London: British Museum Press, 1996. Sepi, Giorgio de. Romani Collegii Societatis Jesu Musaeum Celeberrimum. Amsterdam, 1678. Siemer, Stefan. Geselligkeit und Methode. Naturgeschichtliches Sammeln im 18. Jahrhundert. Diss. U. Zurich, 2000. Smith, Pamela and Paula Findlen, eds. Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science and Art in Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2002. Sommer, Ludwig. Die fürstliche Kunstkammer im Lustgarten zu Stuttgart. Approx. 1670/80. Tega, Walter, ed. L’Antiquita del Mondo. Fossili, Alfabeti, Rovine. [Exhibit. cat.] Bologna: Compositori, 2002. Terzago, Paolo Maria. Museum Septalianum […]. Tortona, 1664. Valter, Claudia. “Wissenschaft in Kunst- und Wunderkammern.” Erkenntnis, Erfindung, Konstruktion. Studien zur Bildgeschichte von Naturwissenschaft und Technik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Ed. Hans Holländer. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2000. 183-96. Welzel, Barbara. “Galerien und Kunstkabinette als Orte des Gesprächs.” Geselligkeit und Gesellschaft im Barockzeitalter. Vol. 1. Wolfenbütteler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung 28. Ed. Wolfgang Adam. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997. 495504. Wolf, Gerhard. “Gestörte Kreise. Zum Wahrheitsanspruch des Bildes im Zeitalter des Disegno.” Räume des Wissens: Repräsentation, Codierung, Spur. Ed. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1997. 39-63. Worm, Olaus. Musaeum Worminum […]. Leiden, 1655.

HORST BREDEKAMP

Kunstkammer, Play-Palace, Shadow Theatre: Three Thought Loci by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

1. The Kunstkammer In order that the i ma gina tio n or fantasy is held in check and doesn’t start to wander, it is necessary to concentrate on a particular object and take trouble to consider not only the surfaces of things, but to observe in stages, as far as is necessary for ones purpose. To this end it is extremely good to see many things, and to observe exactly, as in Kunstkammern1, rarity and anatomy cabinets.2

Without knowing the author, one would hardly associate the advice to study museum exhibits, in order to avoid the ideas rippling on the surface, with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The “windowless monad,”3 perhaps his most famous thought-image, seemed to be separated from the world of empiricism; and innately having all knowledge, it must only be opened and unfolded from the inside. The latent Neoplatonism of this school of thought is expressed in a striking observation made in relation to Leibniz’s journey to Italy: “Leibniz saw nothing.”4 That this, for Leibniz, rather depressing remark comes from one of the most prominent living Leibniz scholars is no coincidence. In the immense literature, Leibniz’s affinity to the museums of his time, among which the Kunstkammern stand out, has re1 2

3 4

Or cabinet of curiosities [trans.]. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Ed. Preußische, later Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin [Akademieausgabe = AA]. Berlin, 1923 et seq. Series IV, vol. 3, no. 136, p. 898, lines 6-8. My translation. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. “The Monadology.” Philosophical Papers and Letters. Ed. and trans. Leroy E. Loemker. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989. 643, §7. “Leibniz n’a rien vu.” André Robinet. “Leibniz: La Renaissance et l’Age Classique.” Leibniz et la Renaissance. Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 23. Ed. Albert Heinekamp. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983. 2.

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mained almost unnoticed.5 Leibniz probably visited and studied Kunstkammern chronologically in Jena, Strasbourg, Paris, London, Brunswick, Kassel, Frankfurt am Main, Nuremberg, Munich, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, Wolfenbüttel, Bevern, Salzdahlum, Kiel, Gottorf, and Halle;6 probably a number of others could be added, as is documented in one of his travel preparations.7 The museum visits were accompanied by renewed considerations to construct theatres of nature and art as an ensemble of Kunstkammern, laboratories and theatres, which should give a tactile-visual backbone to the academies of science to be constructed. The plans reach from the Mainz considerations in 1671 to establish “a Theatrum naturae et artis or Kunstkammer, rarity, and anatomy cabinet” next to the rather sterile library,8 to the Berlin plans for the construction of the Berliner Societät, where Leibniz, with a covetous view to the Berlin-Brandenburg Kunstkammer, demanded: To all these sciences serve libraries, picture collections [...], Kunstkammern, rarity cabinets, arsenals, gardens of many kinds, also animal enclosures, and the great works of nature and art itself, none of which, up to the Theatro Naturae und Artis, the Royal Highness is lacking.9

Also in further plans, the theatre of nature and art had an important place. In 1704-05 Leibniz recommended the use of a theatre of nature and art to the Kurfürsten of Sachsen;10 in 1713, in Vienna, he made 5

6

7 8 9

10

Wilhelm Ennenbach. “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ Beziehungen zu Museen und Sammlungen.” Beiträge zu Leibniz’ geowissenschaftlichen Sammlungen. Schriftenreihe Institut für Museumswesen 10. Berlin: Inst. für Museumswesen, 1978. 163, offers the only contribution to this material. A start also from Arno Victor Nielsen. “Preface.” Wunderkammer des Abendlandes. Museum und Sammlung im Spiegel der Zeit. [Exhibit. cat.] Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1994. 120-22. And Roger Ariew. “Leibniz on the Unicorn and Various Other Curiosities.” Early Science and Medicine 3.4 (1998): 267-88. At least this list is given in Ennenbach. “Beziehungen” as well as Kurt Müller and Gisela Krönert. Leben und Werk von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Eine Chronik. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1969. Both remain however as good as without sources. Leibniz. AA. I, 1, no. 315, p. 458, line 28 – p. 459, line 6. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 43, p. 537, lines 11-12. Hans-Stephan Brather, ed. Leibniz und seine Akademie. Ausgewählte Quellen zur Geschichte der Berliner Sozietät der Wissenschaften 1697-1716. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993. 77. My emphasis. Louis Dutens, ed. G. G. Leibnitii Opera Omnia. Vol. V. Hildesheim: Olms, 1989 [Facsimile of the edition Geneva, 1768]. 176. Lous A. Foucher de Careil, ed. Oeuvres. Vol. VII. Hildesheim: Olms, 1969 [Facsimile of the edition Paris, 1875]. 219-20.

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sure that the academy there should have extensive collections at their disposal: “en un mot, theatres de la Nature et de l’Art.”11 Leibniz frequently implored Tzar Peter the Great to construct in stages “libraries, museums or rarity cabinets, workshops for models and works of art, chemistry laboratories, and observatories.”12 When eventually in the year 1730, the St. Petersburg Kunstkammer was opened as the largest building for which this type of collection was ever conceived,13 Leibniz could have seen the idea realized for an academy, which should become a true museum laboratory with an adjoining theatre of nature and art. 2. The Play-Palace A brief text, formulated in the high spirits of his stay in Paris in September 1675, put this concept of the theatre of nature and art at the centre of a strategy for the promotion of knowledge with a liberty of thought which was never achieved again: Drôle de Pensée, touchant une nouvelle sorte de REPRESENTATIONS.14 The text whose title is difficult to translate – perhaps something like thought-quip – deals with the preparation, organisation, and execution of an extensive exhibition machine, focussing on technology and nature studies. The whole arrangement was not only meant as a joke to be taken seriously, but also 11

12 13

14

Quot. from: Onno Klopp. “Leibniz’ Plan der Gründung einer Societät der Wissenschaften in Wien.” Archiv für österreichische Geschichte 40 (1868): 248. My emphasis. Cf. Ines Böger. “Ein seculum…da man zu Societäten Lust hat”: Darstellung und Analyse der Leibnizschen Sozietätspläne vor dem Hintergrund der europäischen Akademiebewegung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Vol. 1. Munich: Utz, 1997. 445-46. Woldemar Guerrier. Leibniz in seinen Beziehungen zu Rußland und Peter dem Großen. St. Petersburg and Leipzig: Eggers, 1873. 208. On the construction history: N. V. Kaljazina. “Korte Geschiedenis van het Gebouw van de Kunstkamera.” Peter de Grote en Holland. [Exhibit. cat.] Amsterdam: Amsterdams Historisch Museum, 1996. 37-40. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, pp. 562-68. Cf. Ernst Gerland, ed. Leibnizens nachgelassene Schriften physikalischen, mechanischen und technischen Inhalts. Leipzig: Teubner, 1906. 246-48. Philip P. Wiener. “Leibniz’s Project of a Public Exhibition of Scientific Inventions.” Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940): 232-40. Yvonne Belaval. “Une ‘Drôle de Pensée’ de Leibniz.” Nouvelle Revue Francaise 12.2 (1958): 754-68. Paul Wiedeburg. Der junge Leibniz, das Reich und Europa. Vol. 2. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1962 [1970]. 610. Wilhelm Ennenbach. “Über eine öffentliche Einrichtung zur Vorführung, Lagerung und Erfassung technischer Objekte.” Neue Museumskunde 24.2 (1981): 103-08. Böger. Ein seculum. Vol. 1. 98-99.

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– as the marginal note of the heading shows – as the plan for an academy of play.15 Leibniz goes on to name the native and foreign games to be played in the individual rooms of the play-palace, in order to explain, concerning the internally valid currency, that the visitor must exchange play money at the entrance. This would not only have the effect that the flow of the establishment’s money could be monitored, and that this could prove itself to be honourable, but also that it would above all increase the investment, since the use of artificial money reduces the inhibition threshold. The play money, and here Leibniz smuggles in a further matter, could also serve for the viewing of cabinets of curiosity.16 In so far as the whole town would be overrun with such play-academies, a not insignificant side effect would result from the play-palaces being equipped with extensive surveillance systems.17 Leibniz had doubtlessly been inspired by the transparent palaces as they were conceived by Athanasius Kircher; a milestone in the history of visual and acoustic surveillance (fig. 1). Leibniz’s play-palace, as one of his most vivid word-inventions, “would be an extremely important thing for the state, and a space of political confessional,”18 in which the father confessor remains not only invisible but also mute, and consequently also discovers the truth about himself. If the Drôle de Pensée aims at increasing knowledge and constructive curiosity, which occurs through the collections and numerous other types of installation and groups of exhibits such as the didactic and popular theatre, opera, and automaton ensembles, and eventually also through the play-palace, the viewer is consequently placed in the same context of participatory cognition as the ruler who observes the observers in the play-palace. Leibniz closes this passage with an eulogy on his academy of play, which should increase the profit, which should burst at the seams, and where dangerous passions would be transformed into useful training of thought and imagination. This conclusion discloses once again the psychological possibilities that Leibniz was trying to activate through the academy of play and his theatre of knowledge as a whole. If he insists on conveying knowledge and curiosity through pleasure and man’s passion for play, then he follows an insight reminiscent of Thomas Hobbes, saying that men should not be conceived of as a tabu-

15 16 17 18

Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, p. 562, line 31; p. 566, line 12 – p. 567, line 26. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, p. 566, lines 14-21. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, p. 566, lines 24-28. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, p. 566, lines 27-28.

Fig. 1: Athanasius Kircher Palace with Surveillance Devices (1650).

270 Horst Bredekamp

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la rasa on which information could be inscribed, but rather that their existing passions provide the conditions for all action and teaching. Man’s passions shouldn’t therefore be fought, but changed into curiosity: “This means in truth to mix the sweet with the useful, and from a poison to make a remedy.”19 3. The Shadow Theatre The same is the case for the effects of the laterna magica, which is emphasized as the first exhibit: “The presentation could be for example the laterna magica (one could begin here).”20 It repeatedly emerges next to other optical instruments and effects, to take on the main role in a brief supplement: One could also attach shadow theatres [...], or a sloping theatre, where at the end of the viewing side there would be a light and small wooden figures, which would be moved so that they cast their shadow on a translucent paper behind which would likewise be a light. In this way the shadows would appear on the paper in an impressive way in large format. But in order for the shadow figures not all to appear on the same level, the choice of perspective could reduce the size of the shadows. They would wander from the edge to the middle, and this would give the impression of coming forwards from the back. They increase in size if they reduce their distance from the light, which is easy and simple to arrange. There would be continuous wonderful metamorphoses, daring leaps and flights. Circe, the sorceress, who transforms emerging hells. All of a sudden everything would be dark: at this point the same wall would be of service again by extinguishing all light apart from that near to the small moving wooden figures. The remaining light, with the help of a magic lantern, would cast wonderfully beautiful and agile figures against the wall, which would conform to the same law of perspective. All this would be accompanied by a song behind the theatre. The small figures would be operated from below or by their feet, so that whatever serves to move them remains invisible. Song and music would accompany everything.21

The text is not illustrated, but the sense becomes evident if we look at the shadow theatre of the artist Samuel van Hoogstraten (fig. 2).22 The

19 20 21 22

Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, p. 567, lines 24-26. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, p. 563, line 15. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, no. 49, p. 567, line 31 – p. 568, line 12. Cf. Celeste Brusati. Artifice and Illusion: The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 90, 193-199. Victor I. Stoichita. A Short History of the Shadow. London: London Reaction Books, 1997. 130-31. And Hans-Jörg Czech. Im Geleit der Musen. Studien zu Samuel van

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Fig. 2: Samuel Hoogstraten Shadow Theatre (1678).

shadows are cast on a surface which is likewise illuminated on the reverse side by a lamp, as Hoogstraten’s etching shows. It emphasises above all the dramatic differences in size relations that occur through the movements of the projected figures. To heighten the effects, Leibniz had in mind to extinguish all lights except the laterna magica, which would strengthen the light/dark contrast, thus strengthening the effect of the miraculous. Leibniz and Hoogstraten are possibly alluding to Plato’s parable of the cave, as it is represented in the engraving by Jan Saenredam (fig. 3).23 Similar to the reworking of numerous other hybris-motifs, for example the Tower of Babel,24 this etching shows the projection technology to be of more interest than the illuminating sun. It is prob-

23

24

Hoogstratens Malereitraktat “Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst: Anders de Zichtbare Werelt” (Rotterdam 1678). Münster: Waxmann, 2002. 252. Konrad Gaiser. Il paragone della caverna. Variazioni da Platone a oggi. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985. 42-44. Ernst H. Gombrich. Shadows. The Depiction of Cast Shadows in Western Art. London: National Gallery Publications, 1995. 20-21. Ulrike B. Wegener. Die Faszination des Maßlosen. Der Turmbau zu Babel von Pieter Bruegel bis Athanasius Kircher. Hildesheim: Olms, 1995.

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Fig. 3: Jan Saenredam Plato’s Cave Allegory. After a lost painting by Cornelis di Haarlem (1604).

able that Leibniz was also inspired by Athanasius Kircher’s Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, which appeared in 1646 in Rome, and in 1671 as a third edition in Amsterdam. Kircher, with whom Leibniz corresponded about the ars combinatoria in the early summer of 1670,25 and whose Roman Kunstkammer Leibniz listed in the Drôle de pensée,26 imagined with the great art of light and shadow, shadow-casting machines which anticipate today’s slide and film projectors.27 Here the projection of an artificial world does not lead to blindness, but rather to enchantment. It achieves this through a perspective technology that, since its mechanism is not occult but can be studied, lets optical research become subject to experience. 25

26 27

Leibniz. AA. II, 1, no. 23, pp. 48-49. For Leibniz Kircher was an influence on his combinatory theory of language. Cf. Thomas Leinkauf. Mundus combinatus. Studien zur Struktur barocker Universalwissenschaft am Beispiel Athanasius Kirchers SJ (1602-1680). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993. 257. Compare the publication of the extract from Kircher’s Ars magna sciendi in Leibniz. AA. VI, 4, B, no. 238, pp. 1201-1203. Leibniz. AA. IV, 1, p. 654, line 1. Cf. Felix Burda-Stengel. Andrea Pozzo und die Videokunst. Neue Überlegungen zum barocken Illusionismus. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2001. 14-16.

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Leibniz also made a connection between these light theatres and his own optical research. Above all, he grappled intensively with questions of geometrical perspective as they had been developed by Girard Desargues and Blaise Pascal.28 The acquaintance with Desargues was mostly due to the designer and perspectivist Abraham Bosse who had translated and published Desargue’s theory together with his own methods. Leibniz worked through the geometrical sections of these works.29 Bosse’s role-model, Desargues, subsequently developed his own definition of perspective and tried to establish this method of artificial space-construction as a special discipline of geometry;30 and here he came close to Pascal, whose now lost manuscript Traité des coniques, Leibniz had studied at the beginning of 1676. In a commentary, he observed that in geometry, all methodology tends “to simultaneously grasp different objects in the same situation;” One could achieve this either by perceiving a figure from different directions, or by turning the cone in thought through sections producing circles, ellipses, and parabolas, which would result in a higher observation.31 This relates to the 28

29

30 31

Javier Echeverría. “Recherches inconnues de Leibniz sur la géométrie perspective.” Leibniz et la Renaissance. Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 23. Ed. Albert Heinekamp. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983. 191-201. Jean-Pierre Le Goff. “Desargues et la Naissance de la Géométrie Projective.” Desargues en son Temps. Ed. Jean Dhombres and Joel Sakarovitch. Paris: Librairie Scientifique A. Blanchard, 1994. 157-206. And René Taton. “Desargues et le Monde Scientifique de son Époque.” Desargues en son Temps. Ed. Jean Dhombres and Joel Sakarovitch. Paris: A. Blanchard, 1994. 23-53, for the state of research. Javier Echeverría. “Recherches inconnues.” 193-95, 289-90. On Desargues: J. V. Field. The Invention of Infinity. Mathematics and Art in the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 192-94, and particularly 220-224. On the conflicting position of Bosse at the academy: Sheila McTighe. “Abraham Bosse and the Language of Artisans: Genre and Perspective in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, 1648-1670.” Oxford Art Journal 21.1 (1998): 6-7, 22. Leibniz’s margin notes show that Bosses exposition disappointed him since it aimed to “surprise the reader.” Quot. from: Echeverría. “Recherches inconnues.” 195, cf. ibid. 290. Nevertheless Leibniz used Bosse’s text for his own writings on perspective (cf. Echeverría. “Recherches inconnues.” 197-98) and in 1701, in an instruction stated how the “applied sciences” and in particular mathematics and physics are best to be learnt: “In the perspective of Desargues through Bosse.” Letter to Tschirnhaus, 17. 4. 1701. In: Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, ed. Der Briefwechsel von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz mit Mathematikern. Hildesheim: Olms, 1899. No. XL, 514. René Taton. L’Oeuvre mathématique de Desargues. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1951. 16. P. Costabel. “Traduction française de notes de Leibniz sur les Coniques de Pas-

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motif described in the Discours de Metaphysique, that God turns all phenomena back and forth: For as God turns the universal system of phenomena which he has seen fit to produce in order to manifest his glory, on all sides and in all ways, so to speak, and examines every aspect of the world in every possible manner, there is no relation which escapes his omniscience [...].32

4. The Divine Eye Here there is an obvious connection with Leibniz’s description of the shadow theatre, in which wooden figures are moved in front of a light source resulting in an apparently permanent metamorphosis, which nevertheless retains a material consistence. In various kinds of optical devices, Leibniz recognized the manner of exercise of a playful perception of God , which, in his own considerations on perspective, he was only able to achieve with the help of laborious mathematical calculations. For Leibniz, the centre of his efforts was the geometry of the divine eye, in the sense of his transcendental geometry which attempted to lay the foundations for a dynamic definition of the infinite.33 The eye had two eye-points which should be calculated as being infinitely far from the object and projection screen as well as infinitely near.34 In the Theodicy Leibniz grounded his geometry of the divine eye in the idea of the harmony of creation.35 The world becomes for him the best of all worlds because God can annul all distortions through the choice of the appropriate point of view: But God, by a wonderful art, turns all the errors of these little worlds to the greater adornment of his great world. It is as in those devices of perspective, where certain beautiful designs look like mere confusion until one restores

32

33

34 35

cal.” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 15 (1962): 259. Cf. Echeverría. “Recherches inconnues.” 192. Leibniz. Papers and Letters. 311-12. Cf. Rita Widmaier. “Optische Holographie – ein Modell für Leibniz’ Monadenlehre.” Leibniz: Werk und Wirkung: IV. internationaler Leibniz-Kongreß. Hannover: Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, 1983. 829. Eberhard Knobloch. “Im freiesten Streifzug des Geistes (liberrimo mentis discursu): Zu den Zielen und Methoden Leibnizscher Mathematik.” Wissenschaft und Weltgestaltung: Internationales Symposion zum 350. Geburtstag von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Ed. Kurt Nowak and Hans Poser. Hildesheim: Olms, 1999. 215 and 221-22. Echeverría. “Recherches inconnues.” 199-201. Ibid.

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them to the right angle of vision or one views them by means of a certain glass or mirror. It is by placing and using them properly that one makes them serve as adornment for a room. Thus the apparent deformities of our little worlds combine to become beauties in the great world, and have nothing in them which is opposed to the oneness of an infinitely perfect universal principle [...].36

Leibniz relates the metaphor of perspective to anamorphosis (fig. 4), in order to make its “oblique” perspectives into the visual equivalent of a world which must be observed from an appropriate viewpoint, to achieve a divine view. In a letter to Bartholomaeus des Bosses he described this perspective idea as not symbolic, but as a description of the concrete composition of a world observed by God as if on a geometrical plane. In so far as the monads carried onto this plane perceive the environment from their particular perspective in relation to the scenographia, that is from the viewpoint of their own position, there are as many scenographies as monads. God, on the other hand, represents the unique Ichnographia or geometric demonstration as dynamic. In this way God observes “not only the single monads and the modification of each monad, but also their relations.”37 Leibniz’s concept of a perspective geometry, which is able to take in every viewpoint, including the nearest and furthest, aims to mathematically reconstruct the divine optic which unifies all possible perspectives. The shadow game of the Drôle de pensée, with its various projections, alters the manner of appearance of things rather than the standpoint of the viewer and plays with the same principle. It refers to the necessity of reaching the fundamental basis of the differing manner of appearance of projected objects. To reconstruct their basic image, they must be calculated back to the point of light that creates the illusion of the shadow theatre. In the end, the perspective-metaphorical passage in the Monadology can be traced back to the optical wonder of the Drôle de Pensée: Just as the same city viewed from different sides appears to be different and to be, as it were, multiplied in perspectives, so the infinite multitude of simple substances, which seem to be so many different universes, are nevertheless only the perspectives of a single universe according to the different points of view of each monad.38 36

37 38

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Theodicy. Essays on the Goodness of God. The Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. Ed. Austin Farrer. Trans. E. M. Huggard. Chicago: Open Court, 1998. 216. Idem. Oeuvres. Vol. II, 438. Trans. Widmaier. “Optische Holographie.” 828. Leibniz. “Monadology.” 648, §57. Compare on the perspective of the monad: C.

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Fig. 4: Mario Bettini Optical Construction of a Cylindric Anamorphosis (1642).

In this passage Leibniz also aims to characterize the individual angle of view as the false security of only a partial perceptual field. As a result it is necessary, as in the shadow theatre, to experience and analyse the various methods of looking as parts of a general perspective scheme. The shadow game, with which the Drôle de Pensée closes, crowns the Theatre of Nature and Art. Only in the high spirits of a moment in September 1675, did Leibniz dare to formulate so openly an Utopia of a playful and pleasurable goading of research and literally borderless knowledge. It remained the pivot of all later considerations of the museum, the theatre, and the academy. F. Graumann. Grundlagen einer Phänomenologie und Psychologie der Perspektivität. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960. 33-35, and Helmut Pape. “Über einen semantischen Zusammenhang von projektiver Geometrie und Ontologie in Leibniz’ Begriff der Perspektive.” Leibniz und Europa. Ed. Albert Heinekamp and Isolde Hein. Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 1994. 573-80, 139-204.

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5. The Palace of Fate An echo of this idea can be felt at the end of the Theodicy from 1710, when Leibniz imagined a palace of fate which contains the “representation not only of that which happens but also of that which is possible.”39 Probably Leibniz recalled the Drôle de Pensée, when in one of the halls he assessed the life of Sextus “as at one glance, and as in a stage presentation (représentation de théâtre).”40 The oscillation between the levels of presentation is made clearer, in a highly memorable way, in the subsequent description of a “book of fate,” where, probably influenced by contemporary physiognomical treatises (fig. 5), people can be located by the number that they carry on their forehead. Like pressing a screen to open hypertexts, a finger can be laid on a line, which then pictorially represents in detail that which it contains.41 In this world of possibilities which shows the functioning of the theatre of representation in the guise of a fictive narrative, numbers, letters and images operate together, and as with fractals, details as explanations may be called up through the sequence image – number – text – line. This testifies to the fact that for Leibniz representations are never to be observed in isolation even in their abstract lexical form as number and letter. Rather, they indicate something immediate, as shadows in relation to bodies; again and again natural and artificial shadows were described as the original structure of art. With Leibniz it isn’t appropriate to speak of a systematic separation of les choses from les mots, or of words from images or images from shadows.42 His high opinion of images and objects leads to the conviction that man needs a pictorial and tactile object as much to unleash as well as to control and order the powers of imagination. Unlike the codified method of a calculating thought which, though also defined using the senses, rests upon strict definitions,43 this 39 40 41

42

43

“Il y a des représentations, non seulement de ce qui arrive, mais encore de tout ce qui est possible.” Leibniz. Theodicy. 370. “Théodore vit toute sa vie comme d’un coup d’oeil, et comme dans un représentation de théâtre.” Ibid. 371. “Mettez le doigt sur la ligne qu’il vous plaira, lui dit Pallas, et vous verrez représenté effectivement dans tout son détail ce que la ligne marque en gros.” Ibid. §415. Engl. trans. 372. Compare the Foucault critique developed by André Robinet with a view to Leibniz’ Sextus fable. André Robinet. “Leibniz: La Renaissance et l’Age Classique.” Leibniz et la Renaissance. Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 23. Ed. Albert Heinekamp. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983. 29-31. Sybille Krämer. Symbolische Maschinen. Die Idee der Formalisierung in ge-

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Fig. 5: Richard Saunders Physiognomical Head (1671).

goes for all fields which show a collecting, playful and theatrical character. schichtlichem Abriß. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988. 10002. Hartmut Hecht. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften im Paradigma der Metaphysik. Leipzig: Teubner, 1992. 18-20. Sybille Krämer. “Ist das ‘Auge des Geistes’ blind? Über Visualität und Erkenntnis bei Leibniz.” Nihil sine Ratione. Mensch, Natur und Technik im Wirken von G. W. Leibniz. Vorträge. Vol. 2. Ed. Hans Poser et al. Berlin: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 2001. 646. Erhard Holze. “Mensch – Perspektive – Gott. Leibniz’ Perspektivitätstheorie als neuzeitliches Pluralismusmodell.” Nihil sine Ratione. Mensch, Natur und Technik im Wirken von G. W. Leibniz. Vorträge. Vol. 2. Ed. Hans Poser et al. Berlin: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 2001. 518.

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The monad, to come back to the problem of the beginning, has universal knowledge in an enfolded form. Thinking is carried out in the unity of the monad, but its force of development cannot be unfolded without sensible stimulation. For its mental theatre of representation, that knows how to unfold and extend ideas, it needs stimuli such as the Kunstkammer, the theatre of nature and art, the play-palace and the shadow play of perspective. Translation: Benjamin Carter

WORKS CITED Ariew, Roger. “Leibniz on the Unicorn and Various Other Curiosities.” Early Science and Medicine 3.4 (1998): 267-288. Belaval, Yvonne “Une ‘Drôle de Pensée’ de Leibniz.” Nouvelle Revue Francaise 12.2 (1958): 754-68. Böger, Ines. “Ein seculum…da man zu Societäten Lust hat”: Darstellung und Analyse der Leibnizschen Sozietätspläne vor dem Hintergrund der europäischen Akademiebewegung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. 2 vols. Munich: Utz, 1997. Brather, Hans-Stephan, ed. Leibniz und seine Akademie. Ausgewählte Quellen zur Geschichte der Berliner Sozietät der Wissenschaften 1697-1716. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993. Brusati, Celeste. Artifice and Illusion: The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Burda-Stengel, Felix. Andrea Pozzo und die Videokunst. Neue Überlegungen zum barocken Illusionismus. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2001. Costabel, P. “Traduction française de notes de Leibniz sur les Coniques de Pascal.” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 15 (1962): 253-268. Czech, Hans-Jörg. Im Geleit der Musen. Studien zu Samuel van Hoogstratens Malereitraktat “Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst: Anders de Zichtbare Werelt” (Rotterdam 1678). Münster: Waxmann, 2002. Echeverría, Javier. “Recherches inconnues de Leibniz sur la géométrie perspective.” Leibniz et la Renaissance. Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 23. Ed. Albert Heinekamp. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983. 191-201. Ennenbach, Wilhelm. “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’ Beziehungen zu Museen und Sammlungen.” Beiträge zu Leibniz’ geowissenschaftlichen Sammlungen. Schriftenreihe Institut für Museumswesen 10. Berlin: Institut für Museumswesen, 1978, 1-63. Ennenbach, Wilhelm. “Über eine öffentliche Einrichtung zur Vorführung, Lagerung und Erfassung technischer Objekte.” Neue Museumskunde 24.2 (1981): 103-108.

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Field, J. V. The Invention of Infinity. Mathematics and Art in the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Gaiser, Konrad. Il paragone della caverna. Variazioni da Platone a oggi. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985. Gerland, Ernst, ed. Leibnizens nachgelassene Schriften physikalischen, mechanischen und technischen Inhalts. Leipzig: Teubner, 1906. Gombrich, Ernst H. Shadows. The Depiction of Cast Shadows in Western Art. London: National Gallery Publications, 1995. Graumann, C. F. Grundlagen einer Phänomenologie und Psychologie der Perspektivität. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1960. Guerrier, Woldemar. Leibniz in seinen Beziehungen zu Rußland und Peter dem Großen. St. Petersburg and Leipzig: Eggers, 1873. Hecht, Hartmut. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften im Paradigma der Metaphysik. Leipzig: Teubner, 1992. Holze, Erhard. “Mensch – Perspektive – Gott. Leibniz’ Perspektivitätstheorie als neuzeitliches Pluralismusmodell.” Nihil sine Ratione. Mensch, Natur und Technik im Wirken von G. W. Leibniz. Vorträge. Vol. 2. Ed. Hans Poser et al. Berlin: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 2001. 516-23. Hoogstraten, Samuel van. Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst, anders de Zichtbaere Werelt. Rotterdam, 1678. Kaljazina, N. V. “Korte Geschiedenis van het Gebouw van de Kunstkamera.” Peter de Grote en Holland. [Exhibit. cat.] Amsterdam: Amsterdams Historisch Museum, 1996. 37-40. Klopp, Onno. “Leibniz’ Plan der Gründung einer Societät der Wissenschaften in Wien.” Archiv für österreichische Geschichte 40 (1868): 157-255. Knobloch, Eberhard. “Im freiesten Streifzug des Geistes (liberrimo mentis discursu): Zu den Zielen und Methoden Leibnizscher Mathematik.” Wissenschaft und Weltgestaltung: Internationales Symposion zum 350. Geburtstag von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Ed. Kurt Nowak and Hans Poser. Hildesheim: Olms, 1999. 211-29. Krämer, Sybille. Symbolische Maschinen. Die Idee der Formalisierung in geschichtlichem Abriß. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1988. Krämer, Sybille. “Ist das ‘Auge des Geistes’ blind? Über Visualität und Erkenntnis bei Leibniz.” Nihil sine Ratione. Mensch, Natur und Technik im Wirken von G. W. Leibniz. Vorträge. Vol. 2. Ed. Hans Poser et al. Berlin: Gottfried-Wilhelm-LeibnizGesellschaft, 2001. 644-50. Le Goff, Jean-Pierre. “Desargues et la Naissance de la Géométrie Projective.” Desargues en son Temps. Ed. Jean Dhombres and Joel Sakarovitch. Paris: Librairie Scientifique A. Blanchard, 1994. 157-206. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Der Briefwechsel von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz mit Mathematikern. Ed. Carl Immanuel Gerhardt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1899. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand. Trans. with intro. and notes Ernst Cassirer. Hamburg: Meiner, 1996. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Papers and Letters. Ed. and trans. Leroy E. Loemker. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Schöpferische Vernunft. Schriften aus den Jahren 16681680. Ed. and trans. Wolf von Engelhardt. Münster: Böhlau, 1955. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Politische Schriften II. Ed. Hans Heinz Holz. Frankfurt a. M.: Europ. Verl.-Anst, 1967. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Oeuvres. Vols. I-VII. Ed. Louis A. Foucher de Careil. Hildesheim: Olms, 1969 [Facsimile of the edition Paris, 1875].

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Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Theodicy. Essays on the Goodness of God. The Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. Ed. Austin Farrer. Trans. E. M. Huggard. Chicago: Open Cour, 1998. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. G. G. Leibnitii Opera Omnia. Vols. I-VI. Ed. Louis Dutens. Hildesheim: Olms, 1989 [Facsimile of the edition Geneva, 1768]. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. “The Monadology.” Philosophical Papers and Letters. Ed. and trans. Leroy E. Loemker. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989. Leinkauf, Thomas. Mundus combinatus. Studien zur Struktur barocker Universalwissenschaft am Beispiel Athanasius Kirchers SJ (1602-1680). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993. McTighe, Sheila. “Abraham Bosse and the Language of Artisans: Genre and Perspective in the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, 1648-1670.” Oxford Art Journal 21.1 (1998): 3-26. Müller, Kurt and Gisela Krönert. Leben und Werk von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Eine Chronik. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1969. Nielsen, Arno Victor. Wunderkammer des Abendlandes. Museum und Sammlung im Spiegel der Zeit. [Exhibit. cat.] Bonn: Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1994. Pape, Helmut. “Über einen semantischen Zusammenhang von projektiver Geometrie und Ontologie in Leibniz’ Begriff der Perspektive.” Leibniz und Europa. Ed. Albert Heinekamp and Isolde Hein. Hannover: Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, 1994. 573-80. Robinet, André. “Leibniz: La Renaissance et l’Age Classique.” Leibniz et la Renaissance. Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 23. Ed. Albert Heinekamp. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983. 12-36. Robinet, André. G. W. Leibniz Iter Italicum (Mars 1689 - Mars 1690). Le dynamique de la République des Lettres. Nombreux textes inédits. Florence: Olschki, 1986. Stoichita, Victor I. A Short History of the Shadow. London: London Reaction Books, 1997. Taton, René. L’Oeuvre mathématique de Desargues. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1951. Taton, René. “Desargues et le Monde Scientifique de son Époque.” Desargues en son Temps. Ed. Jean Dhombres and Joel Sakarovitch. Paris: A. Blanchard, 1994. 2353. Wegener, Ulrike B. Die Faszination des Maßlosen. Der Turmbau zu Babel von Pieter Bruegel bis Athanasius Kircher. Hildesheim: Olms, 1995. Widmaier, Rita. “Optische Holographie – ein Modell für Leibniz’ Monadenlehre.” Leibniz: Werk und Wirkung: IV. internationaler Leibniz-Kongreß. Hannover: Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, 1983. 828-35. Wiedeburg, Paul. Der junge Leibniz, das Reich und Europa. 6 vols. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1962 [1970]. Wiener, Philip P. “Leibniz’s Project of a Public Exhibition of Scientific Inventions.” Journal of the History of Ideas 1 (1940): 232-40.

OLAF BREIDBACH

On the Representation of Knowledge in Athanasius Kircher

In seeking to clarify moments in a conception from the 17th Century, this text is not only concerned with things that have past. It deals with a tradition which has a much greater presence in modern systems of representing knowledge, than has long been realized. I will thus seek to sketch the idea of the representation of knowledge against the background of modern conceptions. I would like to begin by describing modern, technically realized systems of knowledge representation in their essential components.1 Spaces of Representation Why must knowledge be represented? Is knowledge not something we actually have, which we can take home saved as bits or letters? This type of knowledge, understood as ‘capacity of memorizing representation’ of the world quickly turns into that which is measured in bits and today is commonly called information. This forgets that in-forming, forming, was not initially understood as a mere reflex but as a impression of world (fig. 1). If knowledge is the image of the world grasped by the ego, if information thus ultimately is an evaluation of 1

In doing this, I will not attempt to discuss Kircher’s thought in the context of the intellectual history of theology, but will attempt to explain the operative nature of his thought. This strategy is justified with reference to his most important text, the Ars Magna Sciendi in which Kircher himself tries to give an operative explanation of his method. Cf. Paolo Rossi. Clavis universalis. Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. Bologna: Il mulino, 1983. 259-81. For the theological/neoplatonic background of this approach see Wilhelm SchmidtBiggemann “Hermes Trismegistos, Isis und Osiris in Athanasius Kirchers ‘Oedipus Aegyptiacus’.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2001): 37-88.

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Fig. 1: “Representation of the exterior in the microcosm man” from Robert Fludd Supernaturalia, Naturali, Praeternaturali et Contranaturali. Microcosmi Historia. In Tractatus Tres Distrubata (Oppenhemii, 1619).

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the impression of the world on consciousness, then it is measurable.2 Information is ‘good’ if it conditions an action which optimally reflects the impression of the subject. Information is thus defined as a unit for the evaluation of ways of acting: knowledge is the description of an instruction to act which – if correctly used – can lead to a successful action. In this notion, guiding our modern theory of the representation information, knowledge is to be calculated. It is possible to calculate what it costs to get to a certain instruction to act. In concrete terms this means getting from concrete situation x, by means of a number of steps described by y to an act instruction z which makes it possible to react optimally to situation x. This, in turn, means that the optimized function is to be defined as a function through which we transform situation x into situation x*. Thus a simple formula can be found through which we can find y which equals an F(x) with the result of x*. According to this, knowledge has a simple definition: knowledge is to have found this function. It means to possess the optimal function y0:=[F(x)=x*] through which this transformation is possible. Those functions are considered optimal in which the number of possible ys are smallest, that is, the cost in searching for y and in the running of the function is lowest. This approach to ‘knowledge’ may sound esoteric and removed from reality but in its brevity is still describes the function of a search engine. A search engine allows us to find that y among a number of possible ys which makes it possible for situation x to be transformed into situation x*. It is of course clear that knowledge is here described only in its effect on the realm of action and that no content is analyzed. Thus the argument follows certain ideas of Cognitive Science, which seek to explain the structure of our actions as the result of evolution.3 I consider this approach to be the wrong one, but it is nonetheless necessary to understand it in order to understand an extensive and new approach to what knowledge and representation of knowledge is. We have thus described, in very technical language, what the linguistic analytic philosophers Searle, Fodor and Putnam argue about and what

2 3

Cf. Olaf Breidbach. Das Anschauliche oder über die Anschauung von Welt. Ein Beitrag zur neuronalen Ästhetik. Vienna: Springer, 2000. 79-90. Cf. Michael Tye. Ten Problems of Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995. Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland. On the Contrary. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998. Euan MacPhail. The Evolution of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

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they see as having been implemented in the domain of modern robotics.4 The above mentioned ‘y0’ optimizes a way of acting which also permits the evaluation of ‘knowledge.’ It can be formulated as a steering command which permits a robot to choose precisely that movement of its extremities, among a number of possible movements, which allows it to kick a nearby ball into the goal with the least expenditure of energy. This y0 can also be a goal function which allows a physician to find that specific set of data in a larger data set which allows him to make the correct diagnosis of an illness. Space of World Knowledge is thus understood as a depiction of the world in terms of possible forms of action. The memory of previously possible and already lived through situations is the frame of reference by which these forms of action can be measured. These memories can themselves be replaced by systems of experts, be they in digital form or in the shape of an encyclopedia. Ideally this system of experts would not be structured in such a way that each individual representation of this complete system referring to a contextual situation x would have to be tested against all possible situations in order to find the optimal reaction. Rather it would be ideal to structure an expert system in such a way that its structure would reflect the structure of the world which it depicts. That is, the order of the expert system would be arranged in such a way that it would represent the world. Such a representation is found, for instance, in the system of references of an encyclopedia. The entries and the conceptual fields fixed in them disclose the world to me (fig. 2). If the system is known to me, all I have to do is to look within it for the function through which x is transformed into x*. The arrangement of the x and x* in the system is given by the structure. This structure can be illustrated via a problem of steering movement: In classic theory of neuronal networks a number of possible locations which a robotic arm can reach is defined.5 4

5

Cf. Hilary Putnam. The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body and World. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. See also Rolf Pfeifer and Christian Scheier. Understanding Intelligence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Cf. Valentino Braitenberg. Vehicles. Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984. See also Helge Ritter, Thomas Martinetz, and Klaus Schulten. Neuronale Netze: eine Einführung in die Neuroinformatik selbstorganisierender Netzwerke. Bonn: Addison-Wesley, 1991.

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Fig. 2: Classification schema after Johannes Henricus Alsted. Encyclopaedia (Herborn, 1630).

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Each of these points has a connection to every other point in the network (these are thus the possible trajectory of movement for the system). The order of these two points can now simply be found in the function through which the robotic arm moves from position a to position b. The ordering is implemented as a steering function in the architecture of the network. The depiction of the possible ordering functions permits the identification of the optimal function for this order. This system can be expanded further. The robot might possess a sensor system. This sensor system makes it possible to define a card of possible reception states. The steering command “the object in position a’ of the visual field should be brought to position b’ of the visual field” must then simply be projected onto the card of possible motion situations a, b. If this succeeds, the automat is able to perform a controlled action and then an autonomous action, that is, without external steering. One might even go a step further in the development of this robot and train the system freely. This would consist in testing all conditions of the motor space which permit the transformation of an object from a to b and thus develop alternative motion strategies. For instance, the robot does not have to push the ball from a to b but could knock it to its goal location. Encyclopedias What does all this have to to do with the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who was born May 2nd, 1602 – around 400 years ago – and died November 27th 1680 in Rome?6 Kircher is known, among other things, as the author Ars Magna Sciendi as well as for a work about a translation computer, entitled Polygraphia.7 These works are not isolated elements in an œuvre which includes works on the archeology of the middle east,

6

7

For a biography see Conor P. Reilly. Athanasius Kircher. Master of a Hundred Arts. Rome: Edizioni del Mondo, 1974. Joscelyn Goodwin. Athanasius Kircher. A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge. London: Thames and Hudson, 1979. Athanasius Kircher. Polygraphia Nova et Universalis, ex combinatoria arte detecta. Rome, 1663. Idem. Ars Magna Sciendi. In XII Libros Digesta, qua nova et universali Methodo per Artificiosum Combinationum contextum de omni re proposita plurimi set propre inifinitis rationibus disputari, omnumque sommaria quaedam cognitio comparar ipotest. Amsterdam, 1669. For a complete bibliography see Carlos Sommervogel. Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus. Vol. IV. Bruxelles: Schepens, 1898. 1046-1077.

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on the translation of hieroglyphs, physiology, medicine, geology as well as music and optics. In his works spanning the entire pallet of the sciences, Kirchner is always concerned with order and systematicity. For him systematicity embodied the key to knowledge which, if brought into the right language, could depict precisely that which, for him, had been lost with the building of the tower of Babel – a universal language.8 He believed that he could reconstruct this language through a study of the system of essential combinatorics that would make it possible to disclose the true description of things and, in the ordering of these descriptions, the true order of these descriptions – this was what was behind his Polygraphia. His Ars magna sciendi examines this order of things and the means to reconstruct this order. In this, Kircher is a technician. He presents us with a kind of mechanics of combinatorics in which, through the combination of everything with everything, the network of the totality of all possible relations can be determined. Were there also rules for searching out what is correct in this multitude of the possible, the true order could be found. In this true order the world, as it is in its essence (essentia), could be grasped. I claim that the concept of representing knowledge sketched above can be interpreted in the light of Kircher’s ideas. But, the tradition so evident in Kircher reaches back even further. It encompasses the encyclopedic tradition which we find represented in the 17th Century by the Alsteds Encyclopädie which appeared around 1630 in Herborn in four volumes.9 This encyclopedia already contains the idea of the search tree and of the interior representation of the world. But even this work is not the first to do so.10

8

9

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Thomas Leinkauf. Mundus Combinatus. Studien zur Struktur der barocken Universalwissenschaft am Beispiel Athanasius Kirchers SJ (1602-1680). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993. Johannes Henricus Alsted. Encyclopaedia. 4 vols. Preface by Wilhelm SchmidtBiggemann and bibliography by Joerg Jungmayr. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989 [Facsimile of the Herborn edition of 1630]. For a general history of the encyclopedia see Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann. Topica universalis. Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft. Hamburg: Meiner, 1983. Maristella Casciato, Maria Grazia Ianniello, and Maria Vitale eds. Enciclopedismo in Roma barocca. Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico. Venice: Marsilio, 1986. The family tree – as root of Jesse – is a central theme in the painting of the high Gothic era, see for instance Chartres.

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This tradition of encyclopedia extends to the French encyclopedists and well into the 19th Century. It contains the concept of the world organization as it became central to the organization of the dialogue of knowledge through the work of Lorenz Oken, at least in the German speaking world.11 Furthermore, this tradition of encyclopedic knowledge determined the establishment of collections and libraries and, through this ostensibly ‘pure’ technical instruments, the architecture of modern systems of representing knowledge. I am claiming that the modern concept of the cognitive was developed in this tradition and that these sciences of cognition never took notice of the discussions about this anthropology which were already conducted around 1800.12 Lastly I will show that these concepts stem from the Lullian tradition, a Cabalistic topos.13 The Jesuit Kircher, who, in his Ars Magna Sciendi of 1664, was the last to develop a compendium of such Lullian thought, shows that this thought is embedded in a technology. The Lullian ars combinatoria becomes a formula for structuring knowledge: the totality of the world is broken down into a formula of a universal network of self-interpreting rules. For a Jesuit it was still tenable that the world could be comprehended in such a network of rules; for did not such a thought reveal the absolute? This thinking, formalized in words, was also held captive by them, because God had created a likeness of himself in the thinking person. Thus Kircher’s topos in all its technical fragmentation stands in the lost tradition of securing. On the Topology of Knowledge Topology is not simply a representation of the world. It would be more correct to define world as a representation of topology. There appear traces of this tradition of thought in the natural sciences up to Darwin.14 11

12

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Olaf Breidbach and Michael Ghiselin. “Lorenz Oken’s Naturphilosophie in Jena, Paris and London.” Journal of the History and Philosophy of Life Sciences 24.2 (2002): 219-47. Cf. Olaf Breidbach. “The Origin and Development of the Neurosciences.” Theory and Method in Neurosciences. Ed. Peter v. Machamer, Rick Grush, and Peter McLaughlin. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. 7-29. Johannes Henricus Alsted. Clavis Artis Lullianae et Verae logices Duos in Libellos Tributa. Strasbourg, 1609. Frederick Gregory. Nature Lost? Natural Sciences and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Robert J. Richards. The Meaning of Evolution. The Morphological

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The search for the natural order of things is actually the search for the true structures of that which, though it only becomes explicit in thought, is in the explication already brought under the form of the imperfect human mind. Thus Kircher not only becomes the hero of a history of Cognitive Science and the history of science recreating systems of knowledge representation, but also a test case via which we can ask what this tradition of thought produced and what was lost in it. Rhetoric of Knowledge What is thinking if not a logically operative progressive sequence of conclusions? Can thinking and thus cognition be completely depicted in a logic? Already Leibniz draws this conclusion from this remark in his postulate of a mathematical logic and the hence extrapolated calculating machine, but limits the consequences to a partial function of the ego which is limited by understanding (Verstand).15 For Leibniz the problem was to show that thinking based on logic does not utilize false axioms. His solution was simple. In the best of all possible worlds, the creator just would not base thinking on false axioms. Nonetheless thinking which follows these axioms is still imperfect. His logic was reduced to the possibilities of limited understanding. The world did not appear as it actually is to logically operative thinking, but only as it appears in its possible limited perspective. This act of thinking, however, stood under a higher order. It appeared to represent the structure of thought in its divine structure. The structure came not from its execution but from the unity which the execution made possible, the concept. Its order mirrored the true relations of things and thus the order of the world. Topology, the study of the interrelation of concepts provides the method to find the structure.

15

Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwins’s Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Michael Ghiselin. “The Founders of Morphology as Alchemists.” Cultures and Institutions of Natural History: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science. Ed. Michael Ghiselin and Alan Leviton. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 2000. 39-49. On this particular problematic see Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann. Philosophia perennis. Historische Umrisse abendländischer Spiritualität in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998.

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In the tradition, the mediaeval estimation of topology is combined with the study of the organization of understanding. In a culture largely devoid of writing it was essential to have mnemonic techniques which permitted the rhetorician to keep complex thought processes and series of associations at his disposal. The nascent technique of ars memorativa worked not only with complete logical sequences or complicated speeches.16 The basic supposition was simpler. The idea was to imagine an internal landscape and to enliven this architecture with successive content representations through concepts. Concretely, these instructions meant that a rhetorician would imagine an architecture, such as a temple. The imagined corners and niches were then filled with particular images, concepts, and sometimes the contexts in which they arose. Recollection, as has been suggested, meant to represent the landscape or architecture to oneself and to wander through it memorizing the imaginatively arranged images. But this did not merely make memory techniques available which helped to reproduce particularities. What is more significant in this context, however, is that the thus memorized world of concepts stood in spatial proximity. The relation of the concepts – their real distance in the imagined architecture – corresponded to the nearness or farness of individual conceptual patterns. An order of concepts was imagined. Now, if one succeeded in depicting the real order of things in the internal order of concepts, the explanatory nexus of the world could be grasped. The Ars memoria was thus not the technique of the optimal ordering of sequences of statements but the technique of visualizing knowledge through which complex contexts of knowledge could be imagined and thus become palpable for representation (Vorstellung) (fig. 3). These contexts of representation were thus positioned in a landscape before the inner eye. The trick consisted in constructing things and their contexts in such a way that they would be directly graspable in this same context by the inner eye. Things were to be continually reorganized before the inner eye until they found a firm order. 16

Ernst Florey. “Memoria. Geschichte der Konzepte über die Natur des Gedächtnisses.” Das Gehirn – Organ der Seele? Zur Ideengeschichte der Neurobiologie. Ed. Ernst Florey and Olaf Breidbach. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993. 151-216. Jörg Jochen Berns and Wolfgang Neuber, eds. Ars memorativa. Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400-1750. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993. Jörg Jochen Berns and Wolfgang Neuber, eds. Seelenmaschinen. Gattungstraditionen, Funktionen und Leistungsgrenzen der Mnemotechniken vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Beginn der Moderne. Vienna: Böhlau, 2000. Paolo Rossi. Il passato, la memoria, l’oblio. Bologna: Il mulino, 2001.

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Fig. 3: Frontispiece of Athanasius Kircher Ars Magna Sciendi (Amsterdam, 1669).

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In the 13th century Raimund Lull developed a basic pattern for finding the order of concepts by relying directly on the Cabalistic tradition.17 Lull’s art consisted in disclosing the ordering pattern of the real place of a concept in the context of the order context of conceptual reaction. Reality consisted not in the concept but in its relation to the totality of concepts. The consequences of a correspondingly developed ars memorativa can be found in the 17th century in the spaces of representation by Robert Fludd. Fludd developed a theater of the spirit, an internal space in which the order nexus of concepts could be placed in relation to one another. These relations corresponded to true patterns of relations that were set by God. In the mid 17th century, the Venetian senate was still paying a hansom fee for the practitioner of the Lullian art Giulio Camillo who was supposed to develop a type of universal expert system. A theater was developed in which each concept had its own real place. Whoever stood in the theater and could oversee the concept relations could thus discover the real meaning and the relational order of the world. The concepts had their place and with it their relation and meaning. The first encyclopedias – such as Alsted’s of 1630 – took their reference structure from this cognitive organization. The real Lullian art finds a key to the possiblity of a combinatorics of concepts in the ars combinatoria and seeks a conceptual ordering from the representation of this possibility and thus the instrument for a total representation of the possible relations for us. Hence a securing of the relative place of concepts is of no further interest to us. Kircher himself is little interested in these more complex determinations which lead back to the space of hermeneutics. The Order of Things For Kircher, the search architectures in which the relations of things are depicted are not simply found or discovered by speculative philosophy. The system, in its universal application, is for him the truth of predication. 17

For the general context see Frances Amelia Yates. Lull & Bruno. Collected Essays. Vol. I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982. Idem. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964. Anthony Bonner. “Introduction.” Raimundus Lullus . Opera. Part 1. Ed. and intro. Anthony Bonner. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1996 [Facsimile of the Strasbourg edition of 1651]. 9-37. For more on Fludd see Frances Amelia Yates. The Art of Memory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.

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The elaborate procedure he developed from this is simple, at least in its conception. The world is depicted in the structure of the language in which we describe it. The structure can be reconstructed in formal rules. In his Polygraphia Kircher provides a process through which the combination of basic syllables in any language can be transposed into any other language. His Ars Magna Sciendi continues along the same path but is even more ambitious. For Kircher, each concept is the reflection of that which is determined through it. Thus, as he shows in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus, the hieroglyphs are also ciphers of metaphors which represent fundamental statement situations and not merely structural elements of a language.18 Though Kircher leads the study of language astray in this way, for him this is a starting point for the understanding of language as a reflection of the world broken into concepts. Concepts are nothing but the reflexes of the world forced into signs. Was there thus a basic stock of symbols to which the multiplicity of concepts could be reduced? Kircher’s answer is, again, simple. Since all concepts are positioned in an order vis a vis one another, it is possible to recognize the natural order when all possible relations of concepts to one another is depicted. This constitutes the demand for the totality of the relation of the representation of concepts. Kircher links this idea of a relational understanding to the categorization of knowledge. That means that he prestructures the space of the concepts to be depicted by separating certain conceptual spaces from one another. There is a further layering within the conceptual spaces as there are concepts which determine a relation of other concepts and concepts which are merely placed in these relations. There is thus a hierarchization within Kircher’s relation nexus (fig. 4). From this analysis of the possible appearance of concepts Kircher now derives a schema of every possible definition out of which emerges a basic schema of all relational types. According to him, the three tiered starting point of each determination (Definitio est differentia specificum et genus proximum) is the basic form of every relation. Thus the relations of determination contexts are always hierarchical. In the trinity he also perceives a theological model for the justification of the schema of every possible knowledge, this Trinitarian structure be18

Cf. Valerio Rivosecchi. Esotismo in Roma barocca. Studi sul Padre Kircher. Rome: Bulzoni, 1982. Cesare Vasoli. “Considerazioni sull’ Ars Magna Sciendi.” Enciclopedismo in Roma barocca. Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico. Ed. Maristella Casciato, Maria Grazia Ianniello, and Maria Vitale. Venice: Marsilio, 1986. 62-77.

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Fig. 4: Classification system after Athanasius Kircher Ars Magna Sciendi (Amsterdam, 1669).

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Fig. 5: “Schema of the possible combination of sentence segments” from Athanasius Kircher Ars Magna Sciendi (Amsterdam, 1669).

comes necessary and provides a way of structuring the nexus of possible relations. This triadic relation yields a hierarchy of exclusion functions. In this triadic hierarchy Kircher develops a catalogue of possible ‘setting-inrelations’; Kircher thus has a type of basic syllable structure of his meta-language, which he understands as a nexus of all types of settingin-relation. Concepts are thus nothing but a breakdown of this possible setting-in-relation. They are to be placed in their own relational structure. Thus for Kircher, a nexus of possible relations of these ‘concepts’ can be sketched (fig. 5). These nexi then remain only to be filled. This is the basic premise of his ‘synthetic scientific discipline.’ In order for this to be accomplished, only the rules which will find the determining concepts of the particular schema of the possible predications of the science are needed. These rules derive from the hierarchy of the ordering pattern in which Kircher believed all available knowledge was structured. To this extent Kircher develops a synthetically based syllogistics. It is none other than the science of a combinatorics of the possible. Kir-

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cher believes that by depicting the possible combinatorics of concepts in their particular schematism, he depicts what science is. Thus Kircher formulates a synthetic system of science in his Ars Magna Sciendi in which he is not even afraid to synthesize those theological concepts available to him. Looking Back Ahead This type of a pure operative technical analysis of the operation of conceptual ordering resembles the ordering structure of the modern search tree architecture, as described above. How could these modern technologies of knowledge be sure of themselves other than in the execution of their goals? For Kircher the execution of the project described in his Ars Magna Sciendi is invoked by means of a prayer at the end of the book. This prayer ultimately reveals the formula with which his synthetic doctrine of science operates as a mystical invocation and thus shows itself to be anything but accidental. Kircher was well aware of the tenuous nature of a Being which is only with itself (fig. 6). In his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, the first media handbook of modernity known to me, Kircher successfully shows what it means to be a reflection of oneself and thus to be exposed to all the false reflections of those things which are not immediately accessible to the subject.19 This problem was solved for Kircher by clerical authority – he was a Jesuit. The Revelation, that is the authority of the church guarding this Revelation, guaranteed the truth of experience. The ego which thinks itself was, for Kircher, trapped, it was the prisoner of its own spirit (Geist); exposed to the reflections of the world, the ego could not grasp the truth and the certainty of the absolute, but merely the uncertainty of its own self. The idea of founding a knowledge which has become uncertain of its own representations was jettisoned by modernity. It cannot simply refer to authority. All it can do is look into itself. The attempt to secure one’s own foundations can only find present relations in its relations. It

19

Athanasius Kircher. Ars Magna Sciendi. In XII Libros Digesta, qua nova et universali Methodo per Artificiosum Combinationum contextum de omni re proposita plurimi set propre inifinitis rationibus disputari, omnumque sommaria quaedam cognitio comparar ipotest. Amsterdam, 1669.

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Fig. 6: “Light and its ruptures of the real” from Athanasius Kircher Ars magna lucis et umbrae (Rome, 1646).

is possible to work under these conditions. This could be shown for example in separate discussion of Putnam’s Representations.20 Let us remain critical. Can the search tree architecture and the knowledge of modernity it comprises be grasped through the internal 20

Hilary Putnam. Representation and Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988. See also Olaf Breidbach. Deutungen. Zur philosophischen Dimension der internen Repräsentation. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wiss., 2001.

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optimization functions, mentioned above? Or does such a concept of knowledge go beyond itself and does it seek to take hold where it claims to be without foundation? What can we conclude if we, for a moment at least, move away from Kircher and return to the initially formulated sketch of modern systems of representing knowledge? Self-referential knowledge cannot adopt an objectivizing function. On this point Kircher – even in the context of his ars combinatoria – is lacking. This is sufficiently demonstrated by his polygraphic machine.21 Kircher also did not make the step to a universal determination of a relationship nexus from within itself, but remains in a hybris position, securing his notion of relation by reference to the absolute. This hybris ultimately makes his approach sterile. This hubris, however, as was shown at the outset, is shared by modernity which, though it does not follow the complex claims of a universal association, wants to secure an external controller, a master who provides the functions which, for Kircher were secured by God, through theories about objective information, and optimizing and learning functions.22 Even the formal operations of modernity, which lead knowledge into practice and seek to found it in the world itself, refer, in their actions, to a world which appears as an exact standard of measurement. The correction factor which permits to evaluate functions is a reflex of that same God, who secures the architecture of the spirit in Kircher. The objective information of Claude Elwood Shannon and Warren Weaver do not lead beyond the limits of the hermeneutic system of thinking, but are themselves part of this tradition.23 This should give us pause for thought. Our concepts of association are tied to a tradition which has not yet separated itself from Kircher’s combinatorics. The hierarchy of our structures of order and the control and evaluation functions connected to it, are late reflexes of the conception sketched here. We must now reflect on this reflex. Translated by Stefan Bird-Pollan

21 22 23

Cf. George E. McCracken. “Athanasius Kircher’s Universal Polygraphy.” Isis 39 (1948): 215-29. Schmidt-Biggemann. Topica universalis. 176-86. Kircher. Polygraphia. 481. Gebhard Rusch, Siegfried Schmidt, and Olaf Breidbach, eds. Interne Repräsentationen. Neue Konzepte der Hirnforschung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996.

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WORKS CITED Alsted, Johannes Henricus. Clavis Artis Lullianae et Verae logices Duos in Libellos Tributa. Strasbourg, 1609. Alsted, Johannes Henricus. Encyclopaedia. 4 vols. Preface by Wilhelm SchmidtBiggemann and bibliography by Joerg Jungmayr. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989 [Facsimile of the Herborn edition of 1630]. Berns, Jörg Jochen and Wolfgang Neuber, eds. Ars memorativa. Zur kulturgeschichtlichen Bedeutung der Gedächtniskunst 1400-1750. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993. Berns, Jörg Jochen and Wolfgang Neuber (ed.). Seelenmaschinen. Gattungstraditionen, Funktionen und Leistungsgrenzen der Mnemotechniken vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Beginn der Moderne. Vienna: Böhlau, 2000. Bonner, Anthony. “Introduction.” Raimundus Lullus. Opera. Part 1. Ed. and intro. Anthony Bonner. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1996 [Facsimile of the Strasbourg edition of 1651]. 9-37. Braitenberg, Valentino. Vehicles. Experiments in Synthetic Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984. Breidbach, Olaf. Das Anschauliche oder über die Anschauung von Welt. Ein Beitrag zur neuronalen Ästhetik. Vienna: Springer, 2000. Breidbach, Olaf. Deutungen. Zur philosophischen Dimension der internen Repräsentation. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wiss., 2001. Breidbach, Olaf. “The Origin and Development of the Neurosciences.” Theory and Method in Neurosciences. Ed. Peter v. Machamer, Rick Grush, and Peter McLaughlin. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. 7-29. Breidbach, Olaf and Michael Ghiselin. “Lorenz Oken’s Naturphilosophie in Jena, Paris and London.” Journal of the History and Philosophy of Life Sciences 24.2 (2002): 219-47. Casciato, Maristella, Maria Grazia Ianniello, and Maria Vitale eds. Enciclopedismo in Roma barocca. Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico. Venice: Marsilio, 1986. Churchland, Patricia and Paul Churchland. On the Contrary. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998. Florey, Ernst. “Memoria. Geschichte der Konzepte über die Natur des Gedächtnisses.” Das Gehirn – Organ der Seele? Zur Ideengeschichte der Neurobiologie. Ed. Ernst Flory and Olaf Breidbach. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993. 151-216. Ghiselin, Michael. “The founders of morphology as alchemists.” Cultures and Institutions of Natural History: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science. Ed. Michael Ghiselin and Alan Leviton. San Francisco: California Academy of Sciences, 2000. 39-49. Godwin, Joscelyn. Athanasius Kircher. A Renaissance Man and the Quest for Lost Knowledge. London: Thames and Hudson, 1979. Gregory, Frederick. Nature Lost? Natural Sciences and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992. Kircher, Athanasius. Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae: In decem Libros digesta. Quibus Admirandae Lucis et Umbrae in mundo, atque adeo universa natura, vires effectusq. Uti nova, ita varia novorum reconditiorumq. Speciminum exhibitione, ad varios mortalium usus, panduntur. Rome, 1646. Kircher, Athanasius. Polygraphia Nova et Universalis, ex combinatoria arte detecta. Rome, 1663.

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Kircher, Athanasius. Ars Magna Sciendi. In XII Libros Digesta, qua nova et universali Methodo per Artificiosum Combinationum contextum de omni re proposita plurimi set propre inifinitis rationibus disputari, omnumque sommaria quaedam cognitio comparar ipotest. Amsterdam, 1669. Leinkauf, Thomas. Mundus Combinatus. Studien zur Struktur der barocken Universalwissenschaft am Beispiel Athanasius Kirchers SJ (1602-1680). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993. MacPhail, Euan. The Evolution of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. McCracken, Goerge E. “Athanasius Kircher’s Universal Polygraphy.” Isis 39 (1948): 215-229. Pfeifer, Rolf and Christian Scheier. Understanding Intelligence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999. Putnam, Hilary. The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Putnam, Hilary. Representation and Reality. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998. Reilly, Conor P. Athanasius Kircher. Master of a Hundred Arts. Rome: Edizioni del Mondo, 1974. Richards, Robert J. The Meaning of Evolution. The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwins’s Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Ritter, Helge, Thomas Martinetz, and Klaus Schulten. Neuronale Netze: eine Einführung in die Neuroinformatik selbstorganisierender Netzwerke. Bonn: AddisonWesley, 1991. Rivosecchi, Valerio. Esotismo in Roma barocca. Studi sul Padre Kircher. Rome: Bulzoni, 1982. Rossi, Paolo. Clavis universalis. Arti della memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz. Bologna: Il mulino, 1983. Rossi, Paolo. Il passato, la memoria, l’oblio. Bologna: Il mulino, 2001. Rusch, Gebhard, Siegfried Schmidt, and Olaf Breidbach, eds. Interne Repräsentationen. Neue Konzepte der Hirnforschung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996. Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm. Topica universalis. Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft. Hamburg: Meiner, 1983. Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm. Philosophia perennis. Historische Umrisse abendländischer Spiritualität in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1998. Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm. “Hermes Trismegistos, Isis und Osiris in Athanasius Kirchers ‘Oedipus Aegyptiacus’.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2001): 37-88. Sommervogel, Carlos. Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus. Vol. IV. Bruxelles: Schepens, 1898. 1046-1077. Tye, Michael. Ten Problems of Consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995. Vasoli, Cesare. “Considerazioni sull’ Ars Magna Sciendi.” Enciclopedismo in Roma barocca. Athanasius Kircher e il Museo del Collegio Romano tra Wunderkammer e museo scientifico. Ed. Maristella Casciato, Maria Grazia Ianniello, and Maria Vitale. Venice: Marsilio, 1986. 62-77. Yates, Amelia Frances. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964. Yates, Frances Amelia. The Art of Memory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966. Yates, Frances Amelia. Lull & Bruno. Collected Essays. Vol. I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

WILHELM SCHMIDT-BIGGEMANN

Pythagorean Musical Theater: Space, Time, and Numerical Speculation in the Ancient Metaphysical Fashion

h¸ mousikh\ mhde\n e¹sti\n eÀteron, $Ã pa/ntwn 1 ta/cin ei¹de/nei.

1. Theater and Machine The terms theater and machine derive from the same origin: mhxanh/stai means to devise something, including by cunning and trickery; to produce something, to cause it to appear or to resound. A hidden movement produces something other than itself. The meaning of the term is thoroughly entwined with the ambiguity of illusion and underhandedness, a connotation conserved in the French word méchant. The mechanics of the machine, which is its very machinic nature, takes place behind its product. In this way, theater and musical instruments create visual and acoustic appearances. Something is made to appear and therein, precisely, lies its reality. Theater and music create by realizing themselves in time. This realization is called playing or performing – the play begins and ends with its own time. Theater that is not performed and musical instruments that are not played are unfulfilled promises. Both are potentialities to be redeemed by actuality, by the temporary, illusory actuality of performance and play. As they are played or performed, both theater and music create their appearances with the help of movement. Movement is not the result, but the means of the creation, while light and sound, form and rhythm are the materials.

1

Hermes in the Asklepios, quot. from: Athanasius Kircher. Musurgia universalis. Vol. 2, book 8. Rome, 1650. Verso title page.

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2. Beginning and Difference Movement takes place behind the visual and acoustic appearances. The philosophical concept of movement is quite subtle. It contains an unavoidable dialectic in which an after is different from a before. The term “different” contains the difficulty. The conceptually precise formula is: Movement is the creation of difference. The entire numerical theory resulting from Neopythagorean speculation on space and music depends upon this rather banal definition. Difference is defined easily enough: Before something was different than it is now. This means that something is here now that wasn’t there before. Difference then consists in the addition of something new to what was already there. This means that the new, before, was nothing. Newness therefore means that something is there afterwards when before there was nothing. It is a metaphysical commonplace that in every movement there is always a new beginning. But what is a beginning? It is the appearance of something. It is also banal to point out that something that appears was not there before. Machines and the theater in their essence obviously have something to do with such beginnings, with the acoustic and visual creation of appearances. Beginning is particularly essential for numbers. How do numbers begin? Following ancient arithmetic tradition it is evident that they begin with the number one. Even the tiniest beginning is a first step. But the philosophers had their troubles with the number one, as Plato demonstrates, with irony, in Parmenides. Six centuries later, Plotinus posed the question again, in a new and persistent way: How can the one be recognized, if everything is one and we are part of this totality, which thereby becomes imperceptible? All perceptibility, he argued, presupposes a distinction between the thinker and what is thought, thereby introducing a difference that is precisely the opposite of the one. Here we have a semantic problem that holds for all beginnings. A beginning marks – and how could it be otherwise? – a difference between what was there before and what is newly begun. If the one is distinguished from something, then difference is obviously primary. But then the first is not the one, because if it is distinguished from something else it has already become a second, no longer satisfying the requirements of the one. This is true as long as the one is opposed to another, while at the same time being thought of as a whole. In that case one is also everything. In this second sense, one is without differ-

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ence, which Schelling will later call the ‘indifferent’. The argument comes from Proclus, specifically from the stoixei/wsij Qeologikh/; and, as an excerpt from the stoixei/wsij, the Liber de Causis (§5), it was known in the Arabic, Hebrew and Latin Middle Ages, as well as throughout Renaissance philosophy. It defends the teaching of the aÃpeiron, the infinite and unlimited one. The limited one, finding itself face to face with the other, originated from the unlimited one and defined it as its other. The other had thus come into existence along with the one; the defined one and its negative emerged at the same time, resulting in difference. 3. Dynamic und Continuum Difference, according to Neopythagorean Renaissance mathematics, is the emergence of the two from the indefinite one; the two, in other words, from the apeiron of the one. Emergence is always dynamic. Here the most fundamental of all dynamics generates difference in the indifferent, in the indefinite one, which is neither being nor nothingness. This generation is a blind, irresistible violence, resulting in a movement that necessarily creates difference. Difference is the condition of definition. Definition is what makes ‘a something’ conceivable in the first place. We can ask what ‘a something’ is. Philosophically this means that becoming, as the generation of difference is also the act of appearance of beings. Beings are defined forms, identifiable as themselves and therefore irreducible, whether as type or as individual. The number plays the leading role in the metaphysical theater, because theater means ‘to make appear’ and theory means ‘view’ and ‘procession’: Numbers, most importantly one and two, are the spiritual motor of the universe and are behind all appearances. Numbers make up the motor of the world machine. This eternal mover works continuously, producing difference in a constant emanation from the indefinite one. This continuity alone assures the existence of beings. It is the same continuity as in numberstheory, where the apeiron divides itself and makes itself different. This distinguishes the one from the other, which is how the original separation came about. But it is a separation of sameness, as both parts are differences of the same. The nature of the continuum can already be seen in the first separation. The process is discrete at every point: It is constituted by the original separation of one and two. It is continuous:

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It is performed incessantly as the conceptual stabilization of this very process of becoming different. One and two are always kept separate. It is homogeneous: It remains a process because the one and the other that appeared in the process of becoming were parts of the same thing. One and two are from the same sequence of numbers. In this way the loss of the original, indifferent unity is regained, at least as a reflection, in a differentiated unity. 4. The Dialectic of Space The original separation into one and two can be interpreted in many different ways. It has to be understood as the process in which something is made to appear. Since the original separation brings forth first differences, it is also the moment of the first appearance of space. Without space, appearances of whatever kind are inconceivable. When something appears, the dialectic of being and appearance is at work. The inconceivable indefinite can only become conceivable as a reflection. It thereby loses its indefinite character and splits into what it was before the beginning, namely the unknown and its appearance, the pale reflection visibly defining the invisible. How are we to imagine this original becoming of space? First as the defined difference between the past indefinite and its appearance; here difference becomes indefinite by making itself into the exterior of the inside that is concealed behind the appearance. Nothing can be said of this interior except that it is the inside of the outside. But this notion of inner and outer irreducibly constitutes three-dimensionality. Now the dialectic of the point comes into effect. Because of the paucity of the determinations of the ‘one-different’ as well as of the ‘inside-outside,’ it cannot yet be said what the inside of the outside could be. One can say that the inside is the other in the process of the appearance of space, which arises from, and is therefore defined by, separation. Like numbers, space is continuous. This means that it is everywhere discrete, homogenous and continuous. But this concept of the continuity of space, constituted in the process of difference, is both contradicted by and corresponds to the point. The point is the initial determination of the indefinite. The point constitutes space, since every point determines a place. The generation of the appearance can be understood as the self-defining of the indefinite one. This generation is also a realization. The point can also be understood as the realization and self-

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definition of the indefinite one in its determination. If the figure of original realization is applied to the point itself, “which has no parts,” then the realization of the point in another is the generation of di-mension. A point distinguishable from another brings forth a difference that necessarily has a measure – the number two. This difference makes space possible. The differentiation between one and two, as difference between inside and outside and as the connection of points, irreducibly constitutes three-dimensionality. Space is the continuum of difference, irreducibly extended and, beyond all idealistic deduction, real. 5. Harmony Harmony is the unity of difference; a¸rmo/ttein means to join together. Seen purely logically, harmony does not differ from difference. But the semantics of harmony introduces something new: Harmony can be seen as the positive perspective on difference, the positive aspect of difference. And harmony also means order, which is difference appearing as harmony. According to this definition, disorder is distinguishable from order insofar as the latter is seen positively and the former negatively. The semantics of order, with its positive connotation, presupposes that there is something that ‘naturally’ joins together and results in a ‘natural’ order. This order is called the cosmos. The concept of the cosmos combines beauty and harmony. Acoustically, the overtone series, constantly vibrating and constantly audible, stands for natural harmony. The cosmos is more than just the unity of difference. In the cosmos, harmony emerges as the beautiful appearance of this order. This appearance, this harmony, is not the numerical order, but, precisely, its beautiful appearance experienced aesthetically. This experience of the aesthetic is itself irreducible. Theologically, natural harmony, the naturally beautiful, is understood as the aura of the unlimited one, in which all power is combined because it derives from the very ‘possest’ (Nicholas of Cusa). It shows itself as incomprehensible beauty, as beauty cannot be grasped in concepts. In this sense, cosmos and harmony are more than merely numerical relations. They are the beautiful, often also terrible, appearance of the undefined, omnipotent, mysterious one.

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6. The Potency of Numbers Difference is the prerequisite of harmony as well as of numbers. Again, this at first appears somewhat trivial. But if one recalls that Leibniz, in the year 1700, in his New Year’s letter to the Duke of Brunswick, made it clear that all numbers should be written binarily, that is with 0’s and 1’s, so that the creation from nothing and the order of the world in its entirety could be symbolized (today’s computer calculation depends on this), then this banality has at least been quite fruitful. It is also central to the conceptual and mathematical definition of harmony. For the Pythagoreans and the Pythagorean interpretation of numbers in the Renaissance (and in late Antiquity), the four is of decisive importance. It has a whole range of symbolic meanings. On the one hand, four is the doubling of the number of difference, two, with itself. The ability to multiply by one’s own numerical value – by one’s own being – is called potency. Only differences that can define beings can also produce potencies. The order of the numerically determined process is first difference, then potency. As is well known, the determined number one cannot get beyond itself with its own strength: ‘One is one and was one and so always will remain.’ The strength of fertility, potency, only comes from difference. This is why the procreative strength of the two shows itself in the four. The four also goes beyond the mathematical harmony of the three, in which the unity of beginning and difference was symbolized, and which is theologically linked with the complete self-sufficiency of the Trinity. Theologically, four is the number that represents the fullness of divine glory beyond the pure self-reference of the Trinity. It is the number of the divine Sophia, of the divine defining and creative power. The four shows that God’s movement does not consist only in his selfreferentiality, but extends beyond it. The four can be considered the façade of the divine, with the Trinity the inner movement that makes divine radiance appear in the four. The potency of the number ten also reveals itself in the four: 1, 2, 3 and 4 added together make 10, from which the decimal system can be derived. 7. Numerical Notes Pythagoras reports of the discovery of the ratio of chords on a monochord. While philologists agree that the report is a late, uncertain attribution, it is in any case true that harmonies can be theoretically-mathe-

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matically determined on the monochord. The mathematical definitions of the octave, the fifth and the fourth are decisive for Pythagorean musical theory. The string is halved to produce an octave. The fifth is generated with the arithmetical method (A + B): 2. So 3:2 is the relation of the upper to the lower part of the string. Thus a fifth is created on a string that is two thirds of the length of a whole string. The fourth is produced according to the harmonic method or the Golden Section: 2 AB: (A + B). The relation is 4:3. The fourth, then, is three quarters as long as a whole string. The point of this harmonic Pythagoreanism is that the calculation producing the fifth and the fourth can be made with the numbers 1 and 2 alone. So difference, the two, generates harmony, and this using the common, simple methods of calculation. In this way it is proven, according to the Pythagoreans, that music is the acoustical appearance of arithmetical difference. The division of the string in a ratio of 1:2, which produces an octave, represents the most elementary relation of division. It is the epitome of difference or negation. Mathematically, the theory of harmony can be based on 1 and 2: Octave: 1:2 (dipa¯swn; dia pashn xordh\n sumfwni/a.). Fifth: 1 + 2: 2 = 3: 2 (arithmetical method) Diapente. Fourth: 2 (1 x 2): 1+ 2 = 4: 3 (harmonic method or the Golden Section) Diatesseron. The numbers produced by these calculations are 1, 2, 3 and 4. The tetractys, the number four, in any case constitutes the main framework of Pythagorean theory of numbers. The logic of the octave scale is that the difference between the fifth and the fourth is a whole note, which defines the eight-tone scale according to Pythagorean theory. The difference between the third and the fourth, as well as between the seventh and the octave, on the other hand, is a half note.2

2

Greek Lei/mma, rest = the difference between 7:8 (245:280) and 243:256. This question is not very important for our context, no more so in that it seems to be only the octave that is fixed in all known scales, but that otherwise the pentatonic, hexatonic and heptatonic scales are also possible with equidistances. Important for Pythagorean theory is only that the pure intervals of the fifth, the fourth, and the octave are derived from the numerical theory of pure difference, namely from the 1 and the 2.

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The Pythagoreans concluded from all this that music was a mathematical phenomenon. Music acoustically reveals the internal, spiritual – in other words, numerical – processes, which are only sensualized for the ear.3 8. Number, Time, Reality Pure numerical theory has its home in the spiritual sphere, where the first ‘manifestation’ of the unutterable, indeterminable first one took place. This sphere differentiated itself from the incomprehensible one and thereby came to reveal its comprehensible, identifiable appearance. Numbers make up the elementary order, which constitutes the first forms of all conceptuality and, ontologically, of all comprehensible, ideal being, that is, spirit. Only afterwards do other orders appear in the overlapping area between spirit and sensuality, in the area, that is, of ideal sensuality – in ideal geometric space and in ‘pure’ time. Numbers have a lot in common with time. The sequence of numbers can be thought of as the logic of time. Thus to ‘count’ and to ‘recount’ is to reproduce time in its sequence. Aristotle described time as the ‘measure of movement.’ This definition is more suitable than that of Leibniz, who understood time as the ‘order of sequence.’ Time is real extension, and cannot be reduced to a sequence. It is more than that. It is true that time cannot be thought without sequence, but there are logical sequences that are not chronological, as, for example, the sequence of natural numbers. In our context of theater, music and harmony, time is important in three respects: a) In the regular recurrence of the same moment, time shows itself to be a real, not just an ideal, extended sequence. The evidence for this is rhythm. b) In time, a sequence of notes present themselves as a whole – this is called a melody. This melody can return to itself and thus be incomplete by nature. This is the case in a canon, where a melodic and a 3

It has long been shown that this mathematical music is the calculation of a scale that, for unknown reasons, corresponds approximately to the first ten notes of the physically measurable overtone series. The agreement is not precise however. On a tempered scale, the twelve fifths of the circle of fifths, which are supposed to lead back to C, do not exactly do so. In order to even out the differences that occur between the absolute measure of the octaves and the other intervals, the inconsistencies of the overtone series are ‘tempered,’ in other words, brought into line.

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regularly recurring, rhythmic-mnemonic element are combined. A melody with a beginning and a conclusion has the nature of a whole in the Platonic-Aristotelian sense: It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Whether or not melodies are ‘recounted’ is unclear, in any case they are analogized with rhetorical figures and tropes. There are interrogative motifs, sighs, dialogues, etc. c) Time is the great realizer. Numbers and harmony can certainly also be seen as potential time. Numbers follow a logical sequence; a score is only potentially music and, in principle, simultaneous, for in it everything is simultaneously – meaning next to each other, that is, spatially – joined together. The performative element of music (and of actions) is their realization in time. Time makes music audible; only in time can music be experienced sensually, and action is only actual in time. Time, like space, is an irreducible experience. Time is not sequence, but something empirical that is added to a logical, merely possible, sequence. Time is the actualization of the possible, the Complementum possibilitatis. 9. Space and Number: the Platonic Bodies The relation between space and number is primarily one of dimension. Di-mensions have two measures. The elementary factor of difference already appears in the etymology of the word. The ‘power’ of the number four to define the three dimensions has been known since Plato’s Timaeus. If, as is common in Pythagoreanism, one writes the number one as a point, then the number two defines the first dimension, the line. The third point determines the second dimension: Three points define a triangle. With the fourth point, space can be determined: the pyramid. The four makes the spatial world accessible. It determines the three dimensions of Euclidean geometry. The pyramid is a body with four equal sides, a tetrahedron. It is the most elementary of the equilateral bodies. There are five regular polyhedrons – the so-called Platonic bodies – that are counted according to their equilateral surfaces: the tetrahedron (pyramid), the hexahedron (cube), the octahedron, the dodecahedron and the icosahedron (twenty sides). These bodies in turn are an expression of the geometric and numerical nature of the universe; they are the elementary order of Euclidean space.

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These ‘Platonic’ bodies constitute the micro and macro structure of the universe. According to Plato, they also characterize the five elements: ether – dodecahedron, element of the heavens; fire – tetrahedron; air – octahedron; earth – hexahedron/cube; and finally water – icosahedron. These can be thought of as the symbolic molecules making up the world. Kepler struggled in the Mysterium Cosmographicum to grasp the five Platonic bodies as the measure of the planetary system. He surrounded the Platonic bodies that were nested in each other with balls touching the corners of the bodies. The resulting spheres were to correspond with the proportions of the planetary spheres. The spaces between the planetary spheres were thought of as being ordered by the Platonic bodies. The cube governed the space between Saturn and Jupiter, the tetrahedron governed between Jupiter and Mars, the dodecahedron between Mars and earth, the icosahedron between earth and Venus, and the octahedron between Venus and Mercury. If, along with these ideal proportions, one imagines that the planets are in movement, and if one combines this movement with the necessary numerical form of harmony, then one cannot avoid discovering a world harmony. Kepler, in principle, is employing the Pythagorean figure of world harmony. He is no longer describing the order of the world with an octave in eight spheres (seven planets and a sphere of fixed stars). Ptolemaic cosmology had a wonderful analogy to the Pythagorean scale: The moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn corresponded to the seven notes on the scale; the sun stood between two fourths in the middle; the eighth note was the heaven of fixed stars, which stood for the octave. Kepler has to reckon with the Copernican solar system. He then only has six planetary spheres with five gaps at his disposal. So he takes up the five Platonic bodies in order to make up for the harmony Corpernicanism had taken from the world. 10. Light and Sound as Material for Theater and Music So far only the forms, the spiritual structures, have been developed, and if anything is ‘idealistic,’ then these purely mathematical constructs are. We still can’t hear or see anything. The material that would give these structures a sensory valence is still missing. Materially, light makes space visually accessible, sound makes it acoustically accessible. There are speculative patterns for the emergence of both light and sound:

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a) Light. The emergence of light can be imagined as a bright, bursting point, which qualifies pure space as light or dark. The light is described as the radiance and glory of God, manifesting itself in the glory of his Sophia. This is why the command ‘Let there be light’ is the revelation of divine glory in its reflection, which can also be interpreted materially. Light is not ‘coarse’ matter; while it is already ‘finely material,’ it is to be understood as ethereal, as the very first external representative of the spiritual. This light, as Schelling claims, is “the most delicate physicality.” The internal, visual order of light is made up by the colors. Rainbows and crystals prove that these are heavenly appearances, deriving from the nature of light. The heavenly origin of colors is exemplified by the colors of the rainbow, which can be generated with crystals. How can light be thought without appearance? The appearance of the one contains the fullness of all colors. Visually, the indefinite one is differentiated in light, which separates dark from light. Indefinite unity was also indifferent in terms of light and dark, and thus passes away with the light that defines darkness. b) Sound. The material of notes and their order is sound. Sound acoustically makes space accessible, without it the most beautiful proportionality and harmony are inaudible. Here too theological patterns play a role. God spoke and it was so; the divine voice thereby created the space in which it resounded. Before his words there was no space. This sound of God is his acoustic presence in space, his audible omnipotence. The voice of the Kosmokrator, as both the prophet Daniel and the author of the Book of Revelation knew, roars like a waterfall. This divine voice, in its disorder audible as fury, is represented by the thunder of the heavenly theater. As light is the visual pleroma of space, from which all colors derive, so sound is the acoustic pleroma of space. All notes are ordered elements of sound. Sound also defines silence. In the indifferent there was neither sound nor silence. The acoustical appears in sound; sound is the acoustic appearance of the indifferent first, which differentiates into sound and silence. 11. The Reality of the Appearance With light and sound, spiritual potentiality becomes real. Light/color and sound/note are the materials of visual and acoustic performance. Proportion becomes visible and audible. The pure potentiality of spiri-

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tual harmony can be experienced with the senses and thereby becomes real. This realization is an essential element of all theater, particularly of the cosmic-musical variety. For theater it is true that without light, in which brightness, darkness and color appear, space remains concealed. For music it is true that without sound, all order, whether it be melodic or harmonic, is mere score, only a promise of realization. Without light and color and sound everything remains only possible, only conceptual. The spiritual order, which emerges from movement and is preserved in movement, only becomes actual with its appearance. The dialectic of appearance is at work here: The possible only becomes real once it becomes an appearance. In this sense, a text promises realization and a clock only shows the time if it has a pointing hand, regardless of how well it runs. The libretto promises the theatrical performance; the score promises the reality of the music; the build of the organ gives a visual promise of what will appear acoustically. 12. Dramas and Persons Everything comes to be real through time, through performance. Some things realize themselves, including in music. But theater needs actors. This is true for the world theater, and for the representation of the world theater on the stage. What do the actors represent? Are they even playing a role, or are they merely imitating becoming, experiencing time’s passing in their own bodies? They act or perform as if their actions were free. And this distinguishes their activity from the emanating events, from the impersonal, cosmic appearances. When persons act, or play-act, they present stories that play with meaning. Only in stories is there meaning. Every act is oriented towards a goal; this goal is the meaning of the act. It may be missed or refused, but it is part of the process. There is drama because there is meaning. The cosmos only becomes meaningful because of the dramas that take place between the actors, who use its mighty order as backdrop and material. The world theater is only meaningful in relation to the actors who act and perform on its stage. The cosmos has its time in which it eternally realizes itself. Stories are acts against the background and scenery of the cosmos. The dramas of salvation-history between God and man are performed on this stage, which is also the privileged place of the profane tragedies and comedies of humankind. Pythagorean cosmic musical theater provides the meta-

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physical conditions for these plays. But it is people who perform and live these dramas, not numbers. Translation: Millay Hyatt

WORKS CITED Kircher, Athanasius. Musurgia universalis. Rome, 1650.

FLORIAN NELLE

Eucharist and Experiment: Spaces of Certainty in the 17th Century Celestina – The Patched Virgin as Aesthetic Artifact The year 1499 saw the publication of a play that became a bestseller over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries. The play introduced a figure which was as scandalous as it was influential: Fernando de Rojas’s Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea, better known as La Celestina. Between 1499 and 1638 the play was printed 109 times in Spanish, 24 times in French and 19 times in Italian, not counting the many adaptations and imitations. The flamboyant main character of the play is an old whore and matchmaker who is chiefly concerned with the distribution and production of virgins. Celestina is said to have destroyed at least 5,000 virginities and to have then remade them with needle and thread, oxblood and pigskin. “She made some out of ox bladder and remade others with a few stitches.”1 Of course Celestina is far more than a matchmaker. She is an herb woman, creates beauty potions, occasionally performs devil’s invocations and has a medical laboratory which is outfitted with all of the trapping of contemporary knowledge of Magia naturali. She thus represents the essential medical and scientific knowledge of the early 15th century. But the recreation of virginity remains her characteristic ability. Even in 1613, when Salas Barbadillo publishes his Daughter of Celestina, the play takes its honorary title of second Celestina from her ability to remake virgins. “It was truly and honestly the case that in some years the virgins counterfeited by her were more desirable than real ones; that is how well buyers were pleased with the product.”2

1 2

Fernando de Rojas. La Celestina. Madrid: Santillana, 1994. 44. Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo. Die Tochter der Celestina. Trans. Egon Hartmann. Leipzig: Reclam, 1968. 34.

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The paradox consists in the fact that Celestina’s customers gain their pleasure from innocence and purity which they at once irrevocably destroy. Celestina turns this dialectic of admiration and destruction – just as it occurred in the conquest of America – into ready cash. This central motif is embedded in a vision of the world which ridicules the humanistic ideals of the Renaissance. Celestina shows all mediaeval ideals of tournaments, courtly celebrations and elaborate sonnets invoked by the Renaissance to be absurd. Wealth has replaced lineage and tradition as a status symbol, religion, as practised in churches and convents, has become a cover for sinful business. Sex and money are the only things that count. Thus Calixtos’s confession of love expressed in conventional style of the troubadour ballads is quickly followed by the attempt to purchase the object of desire from the matchmaker. The ‘old whore’ herself becomes the topic of a cosmic hymn in which all of creation praises her name in an orgiastic concert of voices, cries, blacksmith’s hammering and animal screams. The world turns into a lust-driven, sexualized universe whose idol is an old whore, who knows how to produce deceptively real counterfeits of purity and innocence. In the context of this grand scale travesty of all values, the stitching of the hymen is nothing less than a parody of art. Thus the painted lifelike grapes of Zeuxis which adorn the poetry and paintings of the time are replaced with the authentically remade hymen – a pragmatic and profitable application of illusionist technology, as it is associated with the Renaissance idea of the artist as second God. The stitched hymen is thus the emblematic beginning of the theatre of deception which unfolds in the comedy of mistaken identity of the siglo de Oro as it does in the art of dissembling of contemporary court life.3 Celestina’s art is none other than the art of simulation. But what she offers is something more. For the demand she fulfils desires the sensual experience of that which, by definition, eludes the senses. Celestina sells the phantom of virginity with a guarantee. Spots of blood and the experience of tearing the hymen are the empirical proof for the authenticity of the product. The destruction of that which is admired in the act of taking possession guarantees the singularity of the experience. But since real experience cannot catch up to the phantom and since experience itself eludes us temporally, the compulsion to repeat arises. Celestina’s art provides deceptive and inexhaustible mate3

August Buck. “Die Kunst der Verstellung im Zeitalter des Barocks.” Festschrift der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Universität. Frankfurt a. M.: Steiner, 1981. 85-103.

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rial for this drive. Thus she is able to sell the French ambassador the same girl three times as a virgin.4 Celestina thus transforms a metaphysical moment into an aesthetic artifact. For the stitched virgin is the aesthetic artifact par excellence. It becomes the object of desire because it ostensibly allows sensual experience of something metaphysical; the virgin is the epigone of the deceptive character of empirical evidence and thus reveals the pointless nature of the whole enterprise. The play is thus a parody of all contemporary attempts to gain access to the metaphysical moment. The play touched a nerve well into the early 17th century because it sketched a contemporary structure of desire which found its most striking application in the attempt to construct spaces of certainty and pleasure; spaces of faith, as in the case of the Eucharist, and spaces of knowledge, as in the case of scientific experiment. The stitched virgin finds its religious equivalent, so the thesis goes, in the artfully choreographed host, its scientific equivalent in the staging of knowledge gained from experiment. Standpoints of Belief The Eucharist and the experiment appear to be opposite poles of a culture in transition. The staging of the Eucharist is the center of CounterReformation religious faith which dominates the development of culture and society particularly in Spain and Italy and which, at least in Spain, coincides with the decline of the empire. Experimental science, on the other hand, is chiefly located in seventeenth century England, in particular at the Royal Society, and accompanies England’s ascent to a new world power. This inviting juxtaposition of the attempted saving of the religious world view on the one hand with the enlightened scientific forerunner of modernity on the other hand, does not, however, survive scrutiny. Differences notwithstanding, the staging of the Eucharist and the staging of scientific experiment follow a common cultural logic which is chiefly informed by aesthetic strategies – that is, both rely on theatrical means in order to create a new space of certainty. It is a space, not merely metaphorically understood, but understood as a concrete place and time with defined dimensions; it takes up a particular locality for a determined length of time, in order to make certainty experiential. 4

Rojas. La Celestina. 45.

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This attempt at establishing spaces of certainty takes place in a time in which the conception of space has dramatically shifted. The invention of perspective had given a shape to the new consciousness of knowledge as perspectival and had thus turned the world into a labyrinth: But the universe to the eye of the human understanding is framed like a labyrinth; presenting, as it does, on every side so many ambiguities of way, such deceitful resemblances of objects and signs, natures so irregular in their lines and knotted and entangled. And then the way is still to be made by the uncertain light of the sense, sometimes shining out, sometimes clouded over, through the woods of experience and particulars; while those who offer themselves for guides are (as was said) themselves also puzzled, and increase the number of error and wanderers.5

In this sense, it is more than a coincidence that the invention of perspective at the turn of the 16thcentury stands in such temporal proximity to the collapse of the church. Nor is cultural and philosophical speculation needed to market the connection. For in 1533 Hans Holbein brings together the phenomenon of the perspective boundness of knowledge with the loss of the unity of faith in his painting The Ambassadors (fig. 1).6 Holbein’s Ambassadors appear in ostentatious garb and in dignified poses which bespeak the state and church honors they embody. Surrounded by the insignia of power, knowledge and art, they express the unison of the harmony of the spheres and inner worldly efficacy which are hallmarks of the newly gained self-confidence of the 14th and 15th centuries. This radiance is reflected in the trompe-d’œil depiction. The picture, however, is disturbed by a strange, formless blot. The blot receives its shape only once the viewer steps out of the center and all the way to the right side of the painting. From this perspective, the blot reveals itself to be an anamorphically depicted skull. The vanitas motif warns us not to pursue worldly things at the cost of eternal salvation. Reference to the latter is made by a crucifix hidden in the upper corner of the painting. The crisis of faith is evoked by the fact that here the

5 6

Francis Bacon. “The Great Instauration.” Works. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Vol. VIII. New York, 1870. 32. Cf. Jurgis Baltrušaitis. Anamorphoses ou Thaumaturgus opticus. Paris: Flammarion, 1984. An overview of research and in particular of how insights gathered through the restoration of the work can be found in: Susan Foister, Ashok Roy, and Martin Wyld. Making & Meaning. Holbein’s Ambassadors. London: The National Gallery Publ., 1997.

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Fig. 1: Hans Holbein the Younger The Ambassadors (1533).

memento mori is placed in a position in which the viewer must change positions in order to see it and not, as it usually is, placed between the symbols of knowledge and art. This change of place evokes a crisis of faith as well as of perception. The allegorical depiction of this crisis is the subject of the painting. The theme of the depiction of the vanitas motif is made palpable by the ordering of illusory and disillusioned reality, inner-worldly power and faith into two separate levels of the painting. They can and must be reconstructed by the active viewer in the space before the painting itself. At the same time, the picture can be separated into two perspectives which exclude one another. There were more than enough reasons for the macabre division of the painting; did not the world fall apart in 1533, just like the painting, albeit into more than two parts. Indeed, the fragments could hardly be counted. This was the time in which Erasmus ironized that there were no more groves on the Elysian fields because they had all been cut down to build pyres for the “shadows of heretics.”7 Erasmus had tried to mediate between Luther and the church but had failed and was now himself quarrelling with Luther. As Erasmus saw it, the reformation 7

Erasmus von Rotterdam. Vertraute Gespräche. Cologne: Pick, 1947. 41.

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was itself the “splitting of a fragment.” In 1527 German and Spanish serfs had sacked Rome, thus sealing the end to the high Renaissance in Rome. In England, the year 1533 saw the preparation for the foundation of the Church of England and the final break between the Vatican and Henry VIII. This new constellation of power which had thus been established was the subject of Holbein’s double-portrait of Jean Dinteville and Georges de Selves.8 Thomas Moore, inventor of the term Utopia, had to step down and was beheaded shortly thereafter. The humanistic ideal of a better world began to disappear in the confusion of reformation and Counter-Reformation. By reaching back to the art of perspective as it had been reinvented in the 15th century and to the special form of the anamorphism, Holbein’s painting reflects this collapse of the world by ably staging the division of the world in the division of the painting. It is this technique which allows the visual depiction of two planes of reality via the overlaying of two separate constructions of perspectives, each with separate points of view. Anamorphosis, which concerns us here, is actually the result of a decentering of the central perspective. According to Jean François Niçeron, “Figures seem to depict something completely different outside of their point of view than they are.” From the central perspective of the right corner before the picture, the figures look “deformed and make no sense, but from the correct perspective they look well proportioned.”9 Holbein does not just use the alienation effect to make vivid the illusory character of sensory perceptions of the world, but plays anamorphosis off against the central perspective and thus allows the new art of perspective itself to become part of the allegory. The central perspective places the viewer in the centre of the world and thus symbolizes the nascent usurpation of the power of nature by humanity. 10 Anamorphosis undercuts the rationalization of the world 8 9

10

Foister, Roy, Wyld. Making & Meaning. 16. “[...] ces figures, lesquelles hors de leur point monstrent en aparence tout autre chose que ce qu’elles representent en effet [...]. […] hors de leur point sembleront difformes & sans raison, & veuës de leur point, paroistront bien proportionnées.” Jean François Niçeron. La perspective curieuse. Paris: Dupuis, 1663. 89. Perspectival construction was the result of the mathematization of space. Panofsky called the “transition from psychological space into mathematical space” the “objectivization of the subjective.” For the perspectival depictions do not reconstruct proportions and measures according to their objective relations, but as they appear to the eye of the viewer. Erwin Panofsky. “Die Perspektive als symbolische Form.” Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft. Berlin: Wissenschaftsverl. Spiess, 1992. 123.

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suggested by the central perspective. Thus Holbein’s painting invalidates the central perspective world view by disillusioning the first plane of the painting in an exemplary way. The curtain has literally fallen on the dream of the newly won world and on the balance of human action and spiritual certainty. It ends the background of the painting where lines must converge with infinity or into symbols of faith in central perspective depictions. To the viewer it seems an accident that in the upper most corner a small crucifix, banished to the side of the painting, is visible behind the curtain. Thus Holbein marks the religious boundaries of infinite space which is made available by perspectival depiction, at the same time he indicates that faith has been marginalized by worldly concerns. The torn string of the lute symbolizes the lost harmony of a world in which knowledge and belief, life and religion no longer permeate one another. For this reason the real secret of the painting is itself enigmatic and hidden. For the represented instruments and planispheres reveal the precise date being depicted: Good Friday, the 11th of April, 1533, between three and four in the afternoon, the onethousand-five-hundredth anniversary of Jesus’ death.11 The presence of God in the world is hard to grasp and reveals itself only from the margins and in unusual perspectives. Holbein’s painting is an assessment of a historical break in which the connection between art, politics, faith and history are fashioned into an allegory of a historical crisis which is made palpable to the spectator through his or her own movement in viewing the picture. The council of Trient began in 1545, and with it the attempt to counter the protestant reformation with a renewal of Catholic faith. The recognition of true faith was thus irrevocably made dependent on the choice of the right standpoint. For the Counter-Reformation, this perspective was drawn on the floor of a church. In 1685, Andrea Pozzo made vivid the path to a reconstitution of the lost unity of art and religion, of inner worldly work and the practise of faith in a fresco dedicated to Ignacio de Loyola. This fresco (fig. 2) is, at first glance, an allegory of Jesuit mission work. Thanks to the missionary accomplishments, souls now converted to true faith tear themselves loose from the four corners of the world, Asia, Europe, America and Africa, and drift up to the opening of the heavens, where Jesus sits on his thrown. At the same time, however, the painting dramatizes the spiritual exercises of Ignacio de Loyola. It represents the three stages which the practicing person must 11

John North. The Ambassadors Secret. Holbein and the World of the Renaissance. London: Hambledon and London, 2002.

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go through in uniting with God: the purification of vices is represented by the earth which tears itself loose from devils and demons, enlightenment is represented by angels and saints, finally, Ignacio whose heart emanates a ray of light connected to the monogram IHS, the sign of Jesus, represents the unification with God.12 The fact that this is the way to God is represented not merely allegorically, but is stressed through the construction of perspective in the painting and thus becomes a spatial experience to be recreated by the viewer. The finesse of the constructed perspective is the result of the painted tromp d’œuil architecture. It extends the church space so that, from the perspective of the viewer, the converted souls seem to leave the church and enter heaven. For this to occur, however, the correct perspective is required. In a letter Pozzo explains that “to deceive the eyes, a certain fixed point” is necessary, from which the deformation of perspectival construction is not apparent as such. The disadvantages and “all that displeases [...] when the work is not seen from that perspective is made up for by the equally great pleasure of seeing it from its true and only point of view.”13 This “vero e unico punto” is indicated by a round marble disk on the floor of the church. This is the only point from which the trompe d’œuil architecture is effective, draws the gaze of the spectator toward heaven and turns into a “domain of the visionary.” Only here does “wonder” become “an immediate experience of the viewer,” this occurs because “supernatural events at once break into the ostensibly natural space of viewing and become all the more vivid through their ‘supernatural character’.”14 The ‘true and only point’ guarantees the visionary experience and allows painting to become an event which breaks into the space of the viewer. An anonymous critic in 1704 comments on what happens when one steps outside this point, here referring to a stone cupola painted by Pozzo in Vienna. This, he claims is marred by mistakes: 12

13

14

Jeromy Pryor (S. J.). Parallel Structure in Brother Pozzo’s Triumph of St. Ignatius and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Detroit, 1972. 100-03. Felix Burda-Stengel. Andrea Pozzo und die Videokunst. Neue Überlegungen zum barocken Illusionismus. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2001. 88-89. “[...] devono havere un punto stabile, e determinato, onde siano rimirate, accioche non appariscano al risguardante quelle deformità, e storcimenti, che la curvitá, & irregolarità delle Volte suole far nascere, e cosi tutto quel dispiacere, che potrebbono cagionar nello spettatore simili lavori rimirati dal punto non suo, sarà compensato con altrettano diletto, qualora saranno risguardati dal suo vero, & unico punto.” Quot. from: Bernhard Kerber. Andrea Pozzo. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971. 98. Panofsky. “Perspektive.” 126.

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Fig. 2: Andrea Pozzo The Ascension of St. Ignatius into Paradise (Sant’Ignazio, Rome, 1691-1694).

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which are common only to such optical works, namely that, when seen from the wrong place in the church, the fresco appears to be nothing but a confused heap of columns, friezes, windows and other fragmented decoration which thus break into fragments.15

Then, the enlightenment thinker Friedrich Nicolai agrees “the objects all fall to pieces.”16 If one steps out of the ‘true and only point’ the whole world falls into chaos. The opposition of perfect illusion and unredeemable chaos is not a technical deficiency but itself part of the allegory. The point of the fresco lies precisely in the fact that heavenly happiness can only be discovered from one perspective. It thereby also makes manifest the consequences of the wrong choice. For, if one steps outside the magic circle, the pleasures of faith remain as inaccessible as those of art. Thus the zenith perspectival construction of the fresco becomes the allegory of Jesuit missionary work in general. The kingdom of heaven is attainable only from the standpoint of true faith. But while Holbein uses perspective to depict the decline of the world, Pozzo uses it to reconstitute it. This also thematizes the cost of establishing this unity. We are here dealing with an acuity, an argutezza or acutezza, a central component of the mannerist poetics of the 16th and 17th centuries, which used the artistic effects of surprise and enchantment to win over its audience. In his canonical compendium of aesthetic strategies and slights of hand – as they appear in literature, the stage, gardens and painting 17 – Emanuele Tesauro describes the technique of making a point by surprise as the method of choice in making a dumb and meaningless world speak again. Thanks to this not only does the language of the ingenious person distinguish itself from that of the people, like that of the angels from terrestrial being. Thanks to it, dumb things can talk, soulless things (insensate) live, the dead be resurrected: this enchantress of the senses lends graves, marble relief and statues voice, soul and movement. Ingeniously they speak to the ingenious person. Quite simply, only that is dead which has not been awoken to life by the argutezza.18 15 16 17

18

Quot. from: Kerber. Andrea Pozzo. 101. Christoph Friedrich Nicolai. Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz, im Jahre 1781. Vol 2. Hildesheim: Olms, 1783. 650. Sebastian Neumeister. “‘Tante belle inuentioni di Feste, Giostre, Balletti e Mascherate.’ Emanuele Tesauro und die barocke Festkultur.” Theatrum Europaeum. Festschrift für Elida Maria Szarota. Ed. R. Brinkmann. Munich: Fink, 1982. 153-68. “Ma non solamente per virtù di questa diuina Pito, il parlar degli Huomini ingegnosi, tanto si differentia da quel de’ Plebei; quanto il parlar degli Angeli, da quel degli Huomini; ma per miracolo di lei, le cose Mutole parlano: le

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Fig. 3: Frontispiece of Emanuele Tesauro Il Cannocchiale aristotelico (Turin, 1670).

By making surprising connection between, for example, questions of faith and constructions of perspective, argutezza allows hidden similarities to appear. It provides a standpoint from which the surprising insensate viuono; le morte risorgono: le Tombe, i Marmi, le Statue; da questa incantatrice degli animi, riceuendo voce, spirito, e mouimento; con gli Huomini ingegnosi, ingegnosamente discorrono. Insomma, tanto solamente è morto, quanto dall’ Argutezza non è auuiuato.” Emanuelle Tesauro. Il Cannocchiale aristotelico o sia Idea dell’ argute et ingeniosa elucvtione che serue à tutta l’Arte oratoria, lapidari, et simbolica. Ed. August Buck. Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1968 [Facsimile of the edition Turin, 1670]. 2. For the phenomenon of the argutezza see also Klaus-Peter Lange. Theoretiker des literarischen Manierismus. Tesauros und Pellegrinis Lehre von der “acutezza” oder von der Macht der Sprache. Munich: Fink, 1968.

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chaos of the dead world collates to form a wonderful unity. The optical work of art on the title page of the Cannocchiale Aristotelico (fig. 3) becomes the central allegory for this method. It consists of a conic anamorphosis whose distorted image can only be made out with the help of a cone shaped mirror.19 If correctly deciphered, it reveals the motto Omnis in Unum. While for Holbein anamorphosis was a warning memento mori in a seemingly well-ordered world, reality has now become a puzzling chaos which can only be understood in its wider context from the correct standpoint. Pozzo’s zenith perspectival construction works just like the mannerist poetics in that it brings to life and supplies with hidden meaning that which, without this argutezza, would remain lifeless and unconnected – art and religion. Thus, this poetic illustrates the need for questions of faith to be mediated aesthetically. Even true faith must make use of mannerist method in order to manifest its own certainty. The process seems comparable to the production of true to life hymens. For does not the fresco dramatize, and this is the real point, the program of that holy man whose missions it really deifies. In his Spiritual Exercises Ignacio delivers a program of instructions for creating mental worlds of faith which is as detailed as it is extensive. In the course of a closely regulated program of meditation the person training must imagine scenes from the passion and eschatology in order to gain unio mystica through this meditative imitatio Christi. The closely defined visualization of these scenes proceeded from a concern for space, the composición viendo el lugar, and move to a mental representation of concrete sensory experiences. When meditating on hell, the scene must be imagined in its breadth and depth. This is followed by a sensorial calling to mind of the tortures of hell, of seeing burning bodies, of hearing pained cries, of smelling sulfur and putrid matter, of tasting bitter tears, and of feeling burning souls.20 The unio mystica becomes an aesthetic experience. Whereas the space of certainty is still created meditatively here, the Counter-Reformation, as Andrea Pozzo illustrates, stages it theatrically. The center of this architecture of faith was, in a certain sense, its ‘true and only standpoint,’ the Eucharist. 19

20

Baltrušaitis. Anamorphoses. 222-23, and Horst Bredekamp. Thomas Hobbes visuelle Strategien. Der Leviathan: Das Urbild des modernen Staates. Werkillustrationen und Portraits. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999. 95-97. Ignacio de Loyola. Exercitia Spiritualia. Textuum antiquissimorum nova editio lexicon textus Hispani. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societas Jesu, 1969.

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The Dramatization of the Eucharist and the Space of Faith The ritual of the Eucharist was the transformation of a metaphysical moment into an aesthetic artifact. It was concerned to make the presence of God in the world experientially felt by all means possible. The brief duration of the taking of the host was replaced by theatrical performances which took on ever greater dimensions. The worship of the Eucharist developed in the late mediaeval period and gained in meaning with the worship of pictures and the cult of relics. The ritual of the Eucharist gradually turned from a communal meal into a drama celebrated before an audience. The transformation took center stage and the host became the highpoint of the mass. This made it the occasion for the development of simple scenographic devices. For instance, black cloth was stretched behind the alter so that the raising of the host could be seen better. The host moved from being an edible object to an object of spectatorship.21 This was in part fomented by the ever stricter regulation of faith that placed ever greater obstacles in the way of those wishing to take communion. This made communion more difficult, elevated the respect for the sacrament and transformed it into an object of fascination – the believer became a voyeur and the church became an exhibition space. In 1564, the Bishop of Haarlem describes the consequences as follows: The uneducated people who are not instructed in the true religion watch only the lifting up of the Eucharist during the holy mass. The unfortunate situation thus arises that, in cities in which many masses are said, people rush from altar to altar and never take in a whole sacrifice. In smaller cities and in the country they wander around in the cemetery, speaking of worldly things, until the sign for the elevation is given; if they then see the host from a distance and have greeted it, they believe they have satisfied their duty as Christians.22

Indeed, the result was ambivalent. Though the Counter-Reformation increased the number of communions taken – that is, the taking of the host – it also drastically elevated the level of theatricality in the Eucharist. This is ultimately connected with the fact that the space of faith became, more than ever, a political space. Indeed, the Eucharist was the only object whose worship was unequivocally legitimated by church dogma. For the substantial pres21

22

Josef A. Jungmann. Missarum Sollemnia. Eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe. Vienna: Herder, 1962. 451-52. Peter Browe (S. J.). Die häufige Kommunion im Mittelalter. Münster: Regensberg, 1938. Quot. from: Peter Browe (S. J.). Die Verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter. Rome: Herder, 1967. 68.

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ence of God was only given in this sacrament. The insistence on the certainty was all the stronger for being linked to a separation of the Eucharist from images of the saints and reliques. The Tridentium declared the latter two to be signs in order to counter the charges of idolatry made by Luther and Calvin.23 In the context of this dilemma, the Eucharist became the only place in which theory and the practise of faith were unmistakably one.24 Here, in the Eucharist, the age of the Counter-Reformation found the “vero e unico punto,” the standpoint of true belief which alone could grant access to heaven. The Eucharist thus finally moved to the center of the mass and the church. Vasari’s alteration of the churches of Florence was primarily meant to provide an unobstructed view of the host in the center of the church.25 Thus the space of Counter-Reformation faith constructed itself around the transformed host. It became the object and legitimation – not to say excuse – for a dramatization which utilized contemporary stage technology. The church of Escorial, for instance, constructed under Philipp II in the last third of the 16th century, so locates the sacramental tabernacle that José de Sigüenza is lead to declare that it is “the real purpose for which the whole house, the temple and altarpiece have been created.”26 The most advanced lighting techniques are used to drama23

24 25

26

Picture could only be objects of ‘veneration’ (veneratione), ‘worship’ (adoratio) was reserved alone for God and the host. This was, however, problematic since the outward forms of these different levels of inner veneration and worship could not be distinguished. As Paletti explains in his work on the imagines sacre, it is only the inward posture which is different. Gabriele Paleotti. “Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane.” Trattati d’arte del cinquecento. Fra manierismo e controriforma. Vol. 2. Ed. Paola Barocchi. Bari: Laterza, 1961. 250-52. Christian Hecht. Katholische Bildertheologie im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1997. 227. Thus the complex scholastic theory reveals itself to be a defense maneuver which aims at keeping a practise which ultimately resembles a substantialist concept of the image, from which, however, it tries to distance itself. Heinrich Denzinger. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse. Freiburg: Herder, 1991. 534. Joseph Imorde. Präsenz und Repräsentanz oder: die Kunst, den Leib Christi auszustellen. Das vierzigstündige Gebet von den Anfängen bis in das Pontifikat Innocenz X. Emsdetten: Ed. Imorde, 1997. 46-47. Also Giorgio Vasari. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori. Vol. VII. Florence: Salani, 1932. 709-11. “Este tabernáculo es el último fin para que se hizo toda esta casa, templo y retablo y canto aquí se ve.” Alfonso Rodríguez G. de. Ceballos. “Espacio sacro teatralizado: El influjo de las técnicas escenicas en el retablo barroco.” En torno al teatro del Siglo de Oro. Ed. Agustín de la Granja Heraclia Castellòn and Antonio Serrano. Almería: Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, 1992. 139.

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tize the Eucharist. Behind the tabernacle there is a niche in which lights can be placed which make the priest who performs the sacrament appear mystically backlit. The aura was given the correct coloring (according to the liturgical calendar) by reflecting paper of different colors and by filtering light through transparent silk sheets. This technique was a specialty of the Italian theatre, but would not make its appearance on Spain’s secular stages for quite some time.27 The Italian Quarantore-meditation was, however, without a doubt the highpoint of the staging of the Eucharist. The duration of the fortyhour worship of the host was originally meant to represent the time between the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The presence of God was to be guaranteed and ritually invoked for exactly that period of time during which it was most open to question. In other words, the Quarantore-meditation staged the presence of God in the world as the answer to his ostensible absence, as the answer to the bible’s “Oh God, why have you forsaken me.” From its introduction in Milan in 1530, the meditation took on ever more professional forms in the course of the 16th and 17th Centuries. The staging of the host used many of the same artists and techniques that were utilized in celebrations at court. And, just as the celebrations of the court, the Quarantore meditations in church became the subject of printed descriptions which barely differ from those of court celebrations and other theatrical events – apart, of course, from some characteristic differences. In Giovanni Battista Alaleone’s description of Teatro Sacro during the carnival of 1608 in the main church erected by the Jesuits in Rome, it is only the reference to the ‘holy shudder’ brought on by ecstasy and downcastness in the face of the spectacle, that let the reader surmise the religious character of the aesthetic experience.28 The ecstatic effect brought on by the ‘well equipped theater’ attests to the ‘humano ingegno’ of the artist who has managed to stage the host as ‘oggetto di Paradiso,’ as the centerpiece of a multimedia spectacle which involves the eyes, the ears and the olfactory in equal parts.29 It was particularly important that there was indeed 27 28

29

Ceballos. “Espacio sacro.” 142. “Tal era l’vnione, e la forza del ben’intenso Teatro col disgeno di sopra detti lumi, che nell’istesso entrar della Chiesa, o da lontano, o da vicino restauano gl’animi, e gl’occhi di ciascheduno in quel sacro orrore non sò se mi dica abbatutti, o rapiti.” Imorde. “Präsenz.” 146. “Fu dunque nel ce[n]tro della gran Macchina con singolar grandezza, & eminenza collocato, e d’ogni intorno di così pretiosi broccati, e più fini ricami cirondanto, che il tutto insieme vnito rassembrar pareva vn’oggetto di Paradiso, & vna celeste sembianza, appagandosi in vn’istesso tempo con sommo diletto l’animo per la real presenza di Christo Signor nostro, la vista per il

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an ecstatic effect, since the spectacle needed the essential participation of the audience – just as a Boy-Band is not a Boy-Band without a screeching audience, the presence of god seemed not to be guaranteed completely without eruptions of piety. The proper direction of the public’s energy was itself part of the drama. Thus regulations for the building and furnishing of churches were connected to regulations for the Eucharist. According to these regulations, women had to be separated from men by a curtain so that the energy which was discharged in religious ecstasy would not turn into erotic energy. “Families and individuals of the community were to partake of the prayer in a particular time order so that there are always a satisfactory number of persons before the Eucharist.” 30 In 1570 in Bologna Gabriele Paleotti had so-called “polizze,”31 letters of summons, distributed, on which sacrament helpers and the faithful had to indicate at which time they would come to prayer. No space of presence without the presence of the audience. The presence we are dealing with here is not merely about the function of the room since God’s presence must be experienced temporally. We are here dealing with the extension of the moment in which the host is taken to a sensual and enduring but nonetheless limited spectacle. This creates the space of a different time which is to be as long as possible but still clearly delimitated from normal time. A time of celebration; it is no accident that the Quarantore-meditation was placed in the time of the secular carnival to provide a counter pole. The times at which the forty hours of prayer, which could take as long as three days, did not suffice, the forty hour prayer could be repeated – this is what occurred in Milan, where the Quarantore-meditation moved from church to church during the entirety of the year 1537. The people who came to the host-spectacle were repeat offenders, just like Celestina’s clients and – as I will show – experimenters. The Experiment and the Space of Knowledge A sensorally experiencial space of knowledge, as it is constituted in the staging of the Eucharist, is also reproduced in experimentation – it is the answer to an epistemological dilemma which touches science much

30 31

vago, & altresi diuotissimo apparato, e gl’orecchi per il piu dolce, & armonico concerto d’ogni istrumento […].” Ibid. 146. Quot. from: Imorde. “Präsenz.” 41. Quot. from: Imorde. “Präsenz.” 40.

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more than it does religion. Just as the Celestina’s technique of positioning blood spots and restitching the hymen undercuts the virginity test, and just as the perspective makes available certain questions of faith for discussion through the subjectivization of its standpoint, so the gaze through the telescope one hundred years later relativizes both the limits of the visible and the reliability of sensorial perception. Knowledge is no longer the result of immediate sensory perception. Therefore it is necessary to create a space of knowledge and demonstration in which science can anchor its authority. Concepts such as empty space must be made visible before an audience in order to be convincing.32 This explains the new meaning of experiment which constitutes such a space of experience. “To the immediate and proper perception of the sense therefore I do not give much weight,” Bacon writes in 1615, but I contrive that the office of the sense shall be only to judge of the experiment, and that the experiment itself shall judge of the thing. And thus I conceive that I perform the office of a true priest of the sens (from which all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless men mean to go mad) and a not unskilful interpreter of its oracles.33

Thus a spectacle of nature becomes a subject of science and the instrument of knowledge distribution which is staged in the laboratory or has been devised in the mind of the researcher. Thanks to this spectacle the processes of nature which evade the eyes or the senses can become visible and measurable. Simultaneously, it provides a way to make the increasing mathematically informed explanations of nature by science palpable and convincing. This double function, however, does not adequately explain the actual contemporary forms of experimentation. For one, the contemporary practise of experimentation is far more heterogeneous than Bacon’s statement makes it seem. During the meetings of the Royal Society – beginning in 1645 – everything from snake hearts to Pulvus sympatheticus is used, everything, that is, which might be found in the laboratory of an herb woman suspected of witchcraft like Celestina.34 The experi32

33 34

Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin. Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Florian Nelle. “Descartes und der Regenbogen im Wasserglas. Von der beobachteten zur inszenierten Natur.” Theatralität und die Krisen der Repräsentation. Ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte. Stuttgart: Metzer, 2001. 374-92. Bacon. Works. Vol. VIII, 8, 44. Thomas Birch. The History of the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge. Hildesheim: Olms, 1968 [Facsimile of the edition London 1756-1757].

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ments themselves are characterized more by a type of experimental play drive than by being ends in themselves. It seems that experimentation acquired a quality which places it beyond pure pragmatic considerations. Why did one spend hours watching water freeze, why did hecatombs of birds have to find their end in air-pumps, why did masses of animals have to be sliced open, why do dogs’ lungs have to be set in motion with the help of bellows and chicks be serially beheaded in order for the viewers to enjoy their still beating hearts? The dogmatic answer is simple: the worth of an experiment stands and falls with its repeatability. It seems, however, that particularly those experiments in which knowledge was linked to an act of destruction where popular. This is all the more surprising since the new science greatly aestheticized the object of its research. That is to say that just as the staging of the Eucharist transformed the host into an object of spectatorship, the discovery of the new experimental science turned nature into an aesthetic and experimentally reproducible artifact. Thus Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke demanded that philosophers of nature regard everything unaffectedly. Colors, forms and surface structures must be disconnected from their context and be examined in their particularity.35 For this alienating art of viewing, any object becomes an amazing spectacle under the gaze of the telescope or microscope. Boyle describes nature as a work of art which only reveals itself in its whole beauty before the eyes of the expert. So much admirable workmanship, as God hath displayed in the universe, was never meant for eyes that willfully close themselves. [...] God’s wisdom is much less glorified by the vulgar astonishment of an unlettered starer. [...] And on the opened body of the same animal, a skilful anatomist will make reflections, as much more to the honour of its creator, than an ordinary butcher can.36

Experimental research into nature permits insight into the foundations of its aesthetic effects. In closing, I would like to show just how close Robert Boyle’s poetics of experiment are to the staging of the Eucharist. As we saw, the 35

36

In this period the terms ‘wonderment’ and ‘curiosity’ change in status. Wonderment, previously characterized by religious reverence turns into the blank staring of the common folk while ‘curiosity’ previously close to ‘miserliness’ and ‘avarice,’ achieves new respectability. Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature. 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. 303-05. Robert Boyle. The Works. Vol. 2. Ed. Thomas Birch. Hildesheim: Olms, 1966 [Facsimile of the edition London, 1772]. 63.

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staging of the Eucharist quite explicitly took advantage of the entire available artistic technology of its time. Boyle and Hook likewise construct their experimental method according to the same rules of artistic ingenuity which are also in the holy theater and are so crucial in Andrea Pozzo’s ceiling frescos. Thus, Boyle and Hook’s considerations on experimental research into nature, the extensive art of observation and disciplined dissection of the human body, parallels Emanuele Tesauro’s Cannochiale Aristotelico discussed above. Both Tesauro and Boyle see the strategy of producing surprising insights as the decisive means to make the world of mute objects speak and to bring it into a harmonious order. Both draw their metaphors from the space of exhibition which has been made available by optical instruments and perspectival constructions. As already noted, a conic anamorphosis which deciphers the motto Omnis in Unum decorates the title page of Tesauros’s Cannochiale Aristotelico. The conic anamorphosis is thus an emblem for the unity of the disparate. It represents the unifying power of manierist poetics which is celebrated in Tesauro’s work. This legerdemain is used not only in the frescos of Andrea Pozzo but also by Robert Boyle’s defense of experimental philosophy. …as he, that looks upon a picture made up of scattered and deformed pieces, beholds them united into one face by a cylindrical looking glass aptly placed, discerns the skill of the artist, that drew it, better than he, that looks only on the single part of that picture, or upon the whole picture, without the uniting cylinder,37

just so the scientist dissecting a body is able to see hidden connections where a superficial observer sees only chaos. Both Tesauro and Robert Boyle are thus concerned to regain an absolute point of view with the help of aesthetic strategies, just as Andrea Pozzo had drawn it on the church floor and as it is represented by the Eucharist in the center of the mass and church space. The precondition of this unity, however, is destruction. Thus the cylindrical anamorphosis becomes the emblem for the unifying power of the dissecting knife for Robert Boyle. The dissection knife paradoxically becomes a ‘unifying cylinder,’ the dismemberment of the body produces unity and harmony. The core of Robert Boyle’s experimental practise is characterized by making an artful and artificial illumination out of the fragmentation of unity and the destruction of natural connections. This is obviously informed by a dialectic of adoration and the destruction of that which is 37

Boyle. Works. Vol. 2, 50.

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adored, as it was already described in Celestina’s clients. The object in this case, however, is knowledge rather than the phantasm of virginity. But it is in no way possible to simply verify this knowledge through experimentation. Thus the Accademia del Cimento, which stands in Galileio’s legacy, warns in the forward to its Saggi di Naturali Esperienzie – a beautiful volume discussing the experiments undertaken by the society – against exaggerated faith in experimentation. “After having lifted the initial veil of error, experimentation often makes visible certain misleading appearances, which appear to be true,”38 but are not necessarily so. The work of the experimenter is thus in a way related to the occupation of the john, who never knows and who ultimately does not care whether he has purchased a true or fake virgin. The only thing that is decisive is the tearing of the veil. For this is the moment in which the second nature, which one can never possess completely, appears behind the deceptive immediate appearance of the first. And this second true nature is only uncovered when the illusion of the first is destroyed. The experiment stages a rupture in the world of sensory perception which is at its most convincing when the rupture appears only for a short moment – such as when the dying bird in the vacuum pump makes the vacuum appear. As Edgar Wind has noted in his habilitation on experimentation, this rupture of the first sends forth what might be called a ‘metaphysical signal.’ The impressiveness and amazing nature of this moment is inversely proportionate to its capturability. It is thus ideally connected to the moment of destruction – the fleeting moment of death. From this perspective, the repeatability, the most important guarantor of the exactness and practicability of the experiment according to scientific logic, appears as a compulsion of repetition which is due to the paradoxical attempt to grasp this moment of pure knowledge experientially. The pleasure which is experienced here is comparable to the pleasure at the presence of God. Both are situated in a space whose sensorial quality has become the criterion of truth. Translated by Stefan Bird-Pollan

38

Lorenzo Magalotti. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell’ Accademia del Cimento. Florence: Cocchini, 1666. 2.

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WORKS CITED Bacon, Francis. “The Great Instauration.” Works. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. Vol. VIII. New York, 1870. Baltrušaitis, Jurgis. Anamorphoses ou Thaumaturgus opticus. Paris: Flammarion, 1984. Birch, Thomas. The History of the Royal Society of London for Improving of Natural Knowledge. Hildesheim: Olms, 1968 [Facsimile of the edition London 1756-1757]. Boyle, Robert. The Works. 6 vols. Ed. Thomas Birch. Hildesheim: Olms, 1966 [Facsimile of the edition London, 1772]. Bredekamp, Horst. Thomas Hobbes visuelle Strategien. Der Leviathan: Das Urbild des modernen Staates. Werkillustrationen und Portraits. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999. Browe, Peter (S. J.). Die häufige Kommunion im Mittelalter. Münster: Regensberg, 1938. Browe, Peter (S. J.). Die Verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter. 1933. Rome: Herder, 1967. Buck, August. “Die Kunst der Verstellung im Zeitalter des Barocks.” Festschrift der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft an der Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe Universität Frankfurt a. M.: Steiner, 1981. 85-103. Burda-Stengel, Felix. Andrea Pozzo und die Videokunst. Neue Überlegungen zum barocken Illusionismus. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2001. Ceballos, Alfonso Rodríguez G. de. “Espacio sacro teatralizado: El influjo de las técnicas escenicas en el retablo barroco.” En torno al teatro del Siglo de Oro. Ed. Heraclia Castellòn, Agustín de la Granja, and Antonio Serrano. Almería: Instituto de Estudios Almerienses, 1992. 137-51. Daston, Lorraine and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature. 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Denzinger, Heinrich. Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse. Freiburg: Herder, 1991. Erasmus von Rotterdam. Vertraute Gespräche. Cologne: Pick, 1947. Foister, Susan, Ashok Roy, and Martin Wyld. Making & Meaning. Holbein’s Ambassadors. London: The National Gallery Publ., 1997. Hecht, Christian. Katholische Bildertheologie im Zeitalter von Gegenreformation und Barock. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1997. Imorde, Joseph. Präsenz und Repräsentanz oder: die Kunst, den Leib Christi auszustellen. Das vierzigstündige Gebet von den Anfängen bis in das Pontifikat Innocenz X. Emsdetten: Ed. Imorde, 1997. Jungmann, Josef A. Missarum Sollemnia. Eine genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe. Vienna: Herder, 1962. Kerber, Bernhard. Andrea Pozzo. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971. Lange, Klaus-Peter. Theoretiker des literarischen Manierismus. Tesauros und Pellegrinis Lehre von der “acutezza” oder von der Macht der Sprache. Munich: Fink, 1968. Loyola, Ignacio de. Exercitia Spiritualia. Textuum antiquissimorum nova editio lexicon textus Hispani. Rome: Institutum Historicum Societas Jesu, 1969. Magalotti, Lorenzo. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell’ Accademia del Cimento. Florence: Cocchini, 1666. Nelle, Florian. “Descartes und der Regenbogen im Wasserglas. Von der beobachteten zur inszenierten Natur.” Theatralität und die Krisen der Repräsentation. Ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2001. 374-92.

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Neumeister, Sebastian. “‘Tante belle inuentioni di Feste, Giostre, Balletti e Mascherate.’ Emanuele Tesauro und die barocke Festkultur.” Theatrum Europaeum. Festschrift für Elida Maria Szarota. Ed. R. Brinkmann. Munich: Fink, 1982. 153-68. Niçeron, Jean François. La perspective curieuse. Paris: Dupuis, 1663. Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich. Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz, im Jahre 1781. Vol. 2. Hildesheim: Olms, 1783. North, John. The Ambassadors Secret. Holbein and the World of the Renaissance. London: Hambledon and London, 2002. Paleotti, Gabriele. “Discorso intorno alle imagini sacre e profane.” Trattati d’arte del cinquecento. Fra manierismo e controriforma. Vol. 2. Ed. Paola Barocchi. Bari: Laterza, 1961. 117-693. Panofsky, Erwin. “Die Perspektive als symbolische Form.” Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft. Berlin: Spiess, 1992. 99-168. Pryor, Jeromy (P. J.). Parallel Structure in Brother Pozzo’s Triumph of St. Ignatius and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Detroit, 1972. Rojas, Fernando de. La Celestina. Madrid: Santillana, 1994. Salas Barbadillo, Alonso Jerónimo de. Die Tochter der Celestina. Leipzig: Reclam, 1968. Schaffer, Simon and Steven Shapin. Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Tesauro, Emanuele. Il Cannocchiale aristotelico o sia Idea dell’ argute et ingeniosa elucvtione che serue à tutta l’Arte oratoria, lapidari, et simbolica. Ed. August Buck. Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1968 [Facsimile of the edition Turin, 1670]. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architettori. Vol. VII. Florence: Salani, 1932.

BARBARA MARIA STAFFORD

Artificial Intensity: Images, Instruments, and the Technology of Amplification

If one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is ‘given’ and perhaps that something is always a reality outside the self. (May Sarton, Journal of Solitude)

Aby Warburg proposed that visual images – that complex knot of imaginative spatial forms ranging from high art to popular media – rouse the eyes into action.1 But these fleeting shapes and mutable figures also excite our memory, consciousness, and desire by their ability to intensify, and so alter, reality. Not surprisingly, then, such vivid apparitions – spun merely from light, shadow, and color – engage the total person at the sensory, psychological, and social levels. When optical devices – such as mirrors, lenses, magic lanterns, peepshow boxes, or computer screens – are placed between our eyes and the world, ‘natural’ images become ramped up into high-fidelity. Perception-amplifying technology is entangled with quests for otherwordly revelation, escapist entertainment, and worldly pursuits of knowledge. It lures us with the prospect of boundlessness, immediacy, connectedness. Viewers are swiftly displaced from their normal surroundings and effortlessly thrust into a synthetic or better-than-ordinary hyper-realm. The exhibition, Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen, offers a haunted view of eye-machines, old and new.2 1 2

Georges Didi-Huberman. “La tragedie de la culture: Warburg avec Nietzsche.” Visio. Les statuts de l’image/The State of the Image 4 (2000-2001): 5, 13. Barbara Maria Stafford. “Revealing Technology/Magical Domains.” Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen. Ed. Barbara Maria

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This installation has less to do with tracing the function of modern scientific equipment in art – from the futurist and constructivist movements and their enthrallment with machines to kinetic sculpture, space imaging, artificial intelligence, and Cave Automatic Virtual Environment VR systems3 – than with exposing the enduring fascination for personal-reality enhancers. Part of what it means to be human has increasingly involved the instrumentalization of the biological self. We routinely construct our emotional and cognitive states not just from the inside out but from the outside in – with gadgetized additives. Yet already since the sixteenth century, mind-bending apparatus has been busy altering solid bodies into more vibrant virtual events. These dazzling artificial entities are made, not begotten.4 We also wanted to propose the paradox that, frequently, what persists within the cultural imaginary is the obsolete artefact most remote from the future-obsessed present. Even the most dead-seeming media hint at an undercurrent of unsatisfied desires still alive, but submerged, in the new media world. The potency of sense-extending instruments links today’s motorized joysticks, mobile mouses, and haptic touchpads to the ‘optical contrivances’ of a prior, curiosity-ridden age.5 Seven years ago, I was very fortunate to be invited by Salvatore Settis to become a Getty Scholar. I had just completed my Artful Science book. It investigated a host of interactive special-effects gadgets – first described in late Renaissance books on natural magic and cresting with the experimental ‘mathematical recreations’ of the Enlightenment – that distracted in order to instruct. These illustrated works dramatized, in spectacular demonstrations, the uncanny exchanges between visible and invisible forces harnessed by showmen through refined, if eccentric, equipment. Simultaneously occult and practical, entertaining and

3

4

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Stafford, Francis Terpak, and Isotta Poggi. Los Angeles: Getty Museum of Art, 2001. This has been done. See NTT’S Intercommunication Center, in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. This gallery is dedicated exclusively to high tech art and includes a timeline representing the history of technology in art. Also see the spate of recent shows devoted to new technology: Bitstreams at the Whitney Museum, ArtCade, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Game Show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams (all these in the Spring/Summer of 2001). See the illuminating discussion of the poet as maker in J. Leeds Baroll. Artificial Persons. The Formation of Character in the Tragedies of Shakespeare. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1974. 4. Barbara M. Benedict. Curiosity. A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 13.

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educational: these ancestors of today’s wireless assistive technologies were smart tools to conjure by and think with.6 During my year’s residency at the Getty, my greatest good luck was to meet and eventually collaborate with Francis Terpak and Isotta Poggi. Francis, an historian of photography and curator of Special Collections, had recently acquired key pieces from Werner Nekes’ importants collection for the Getty Research Institute. These constituted a delightful, if daunting, accumulation of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century optical toys, animated games, and boxed instruments generally classified as ‘pre-cinematic.’ Isotta Poggi – soon to become master of databases – had just gotten a degree in library and information science. She was faced with the Herculean task of helping to strike order in this mountain of unruly material, stored in a forbidding warehouse on Euclid Street in Santa Monica. We three were to spend many months navigating that sealed metaverse bristling with tantalizing plastic-shrouded machinery à la Christo. In retrospect, I believe it was the frequent immersion in that cavernous, computer-game-like space (a bit like Dungeons and Dragons) – teeming with enigmatic and alluring objects – which convinced us that reality has long had a competitor. Initially, the idea of the exhibition had been simple enough. Using the former Nekes material, and major items from the Getty Rare Books Department, and the Painting and Decorative Arts sections of the Getty Museum – fleshed out by key loans from around the world – we wanted to blast these complex and ingenious artefacts out of the developmental narrative of film, an exclusive story of progress which tends to see such devices only as imperfect stages on the road to moving pictures and convincing simulations. Optical technology is a vast and diverse region. It contains multitudes. We hoped to recuperate glimmers of its multiple functions and multiple realities by demonstrating the vicissitudes of instrumentation’s supernatural, wonder-inducing, and knowledge-producing evolution that have become obscured over time. As our labors continued in the Wunderkammer-warehouse on Euclid – stocked with secret marvels occluded from sight – we came to realize, however, that even the most arcane mechanism is as much an extension of as a stand-in for reality. Visual technology has been used in collaborative, intimate ways for centuries. Among their irresistible attractions,

6

Cf. my Artful Science. Enlightenment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

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apparently, is the promise both to extend us prostetically and to deliver transcendence. This almost viral draw of instruments down the ages was to become an important concept in the exhibition. The folks at Microsoft, Dream Works, and Electronic Arts may be at the leading edge of breaking the boundaries of the monitor, but the tendency of fictional experience to bleed into real life and real life to emancipate itself through sublime gadgetry started much earlier. From rococo automata – rouged, powdered, and bewigged – to Steven Spielberg’s and Stanley Kubrick’s A.I. – with its winsome robot child – biology has been steadily leaking into cybernetics. Both early-modern and post-human engineered organisms resonate with this symbolism of domesticated technology. Whether we consider Vaucanson’s refined eating, digesting, and defecating Duck (17331734), Van Oeckelen’s virtuoso android Clarinetist (1838), or Spielberg’s industrial prototype, David – waiting to be persuaded by his programming that he exists in the flesh – they inhabit a familiar, if ambiguous, informatic universe. In the digital hereafter – just as in the rhapsodic rhetoric of virtual reality – the goal is to extend the rule of mind over matter. As David Melville mystically said, “the idea is to have a function without the object.”7 Scenes from an Exhibition Perhaps only contemporary viewers can fully appreciate that the earlymodern cabinet of wonders is no mere period piece (fig. 1). Its global project to order an actual complex world of information, coming from many different fields and standpoints, still beckons and vexes us. This is why the first room of the exhibition contains a fully deployed and retrofitted seventeenth-century Wunderschrank. The mysterious gatherings concealed inside are hinted at by an encyclopaedic mountain of creation’s marvels crowning the top (fig. 2). The remainder of the gallery space – all 6000 square feet – is a treasure hunt in pursuit of the afterlife of the singular components in this universal tool box and the optical collecting devices they provoked.

7

Quot. in Fred Moody. The Visionary Position. The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who are Making VR a Reality. New York: Times Books, 1999. 65.

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Fig. 1: A. van Büÿsen Wunderkammer from Levinus Vincent Wondertooneel der nature... (1715).

The visual dynamics of this museum-in-miniature8 – in which apparently unrelated objects are juxtaposed to encourage the search after 8

As a comprehensive collection of singularities it resembles those “nouns of multitude,” “group terms,” and “terms of venery” analyzed by James Lipton. An Exaltation of Larks. The Ultimate Edition. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991. 5-6.

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Fig. 2: Front of a display case with Assemblage.

deeper resemblances – underpin the spatial organization of the exhibition. Merritt Price, Brian Consadine, and Tim McNeil constructed a visible environment where the concept of analogue and digital media crisscrossing in time and space can be experienced as well as imagined. As in phylogenetics which tries to show how species – both extant and extinct – are related,9 the potency of these objects derives less from sheer number than from their complex branchings, surprising groupings, and multitudinous interactions with the changing environment. Both a crafty container – housing a microcosm of natural and artificial prodigies – and an absolute instrument – drawing into itself no less than everything – the Wunderschrank invites the user to join the dis9

Cf. Henry Gee. In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to A New History of Life. New York: Free Press, 1999. On “cladistics” or phylogenetics which attempts to reconstruct the evolutionary relationship of organisms.

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tributed singularities into a network of correspondences.10 This need to handle or perform the contents in order to understand them connects the Wunderschrank to the worlds of commerce and theater. As late as the 1770’s, Sir Ashton Lever (1729-1788), founder of the Holosphusikon in Leicester Square, London, was described by a contemporary “as busy in the arrangement of his curiosities as a tradesman in his shop.”11 Collections of rarities: shells, gems, coins, sculpture, painting, clocks, and automata produced new kinds of aesthetic objects the way ‘windows,’ web pages, and avatars continue to arise from digital culture. Transforming the relationship of human beings to matter, these attempts at physical patterning expressed the turn towards the empirical emerging in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.12 An intersensual medium for personal realization and transformation, such complex assemblages constituted a cultural inventory and artisanal archive exposing the collective heritage of nature’s and humanity’s greatest handiwork. What hasn’t been remarked, however, is that these amazingly wrought physical substances also pointed elsewhere. They broadened horizons by exposing an intangible domain lying beyond the boundaries of the unaided senses and accessible only through optical devices. Cabinets and instruments share certain formal properties. The practice of confining and isolating rarities in a compressed space (ranging from Europe to China and Japan) intensifies the aura and strangeness of those objects. (Think of Joseph Cornell’s hyperreal constructions – those densely packed shrines that transform discarded scraps into precious relics.) Like the wooden cabinet with its squirreled away oddities, optical devices similarly capture and frame transitory phenomena. Just as the Wunderschrank compartmentalizes the scattered bounty of the cosmos in niches and drawers to accentuate them, so instruments “box” a universe of disembodied images. The rush of space and time is stopped for an instant in flat and curved mirrors or halted temporarily 10

11 12

Roberto Calasso has spoken of poetry as “absolute literature.” Cf. Roberto Calasso. Literature and the Gods. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. 171. I take the Wunderschrank to operate in an analogously inclusive way. Clare Haynes. “A ‘Natural’ Exhibitioner: Sir Ashton Lever and his Holosphusikon.” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 24.1 (2001): 3. On the profound shift of early-modern European culture towards material things and the impetus for this in a craft tradition, see the excellent essay by Pamela H. Smith. “Science and Taste. Painting, Passions, and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Leiden.” Isis 90 (1999): 421-61. Also see Lisa Jardine. Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution. New York: Nan A. Talese, 1999. 7.

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Fig. 3: Multiplying Spectacles (England, ca. 1650).

inside the lenses of microscopes and telescopes letting us observe miniscule objects in great detail. Thus sharpened and concentrated, these visions appear doubly real and hallucinatory at the same time (fig. 3). Excess drove the Baroque machinery of transcendence. Fantasy, religious anguish, and a parade of witty, metamorphic devices blurred the lines between the natural and the supernatural. Instead of providing a smooth repetition of outward appearances, cylindrical and pyramidal mirrors exaggerated and tormented shapes. They thinned and thickened, fragmented and overturned regular forms, warping them beyond recognition into irregular or hybrid creatures only to miraculously restitute them again. Bodily deformations and monstrous transformations shimmered in the glazed catoptrical cabinets of the Jesuits. Among the hundreds of hermetic mechanisms13 – from the hydraulic to the magnetic – devised by the natural magician, Athanasius Kircher, for the Jesuit museum in the Collegio Romano, many were perception-altering crystalline boxes. These glassy metaphysical instruments, manipulated in ocular demonstrations, ingeniously probed the hidden workings of creation. Anamorphic apparatus exposed secrets: whether – at the organic level – it happened to be the transposability of the human into the non-human, i.e., the biological into the geological; or, at the symbolic level, it was the revelation that fallen humanity inhabits an inverted moral universe whose skewed perspective must be righted by spiritual converting machines. 13

Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman. Instruments and the Imagination. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. 34.

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Fig. 4: A pair of English mirrors (early eighteenth century).

The ascent of glass in secular surroundings is evident in the wealthy residences proliferating throughout pre-Revolutionary Europe (fig. 4). Large, clear, level mirrors multiplied the flesh-and-blood occupants of Parisian salons and London drawing rooms generating bright companions, airy artificial persons that came and went according to the viewer’s movements and position. Their cool presence intensified the emotional heat of the moment.14 Not just a replicating technology but a taut coordinating system, bouncing reflections swiftly transfigured the material, spatial, and social dynamics of a room. The solid world of interior decoration generated an unstable, parallel land of illusion where light plays with everything it touches. Crisscrossing emanations sprang from gleaming woodwork and rebounded from shiny fixtures to optically network the home. During the Enlightenment, living quarters mimicked the practical magic of the laboratory. Projecting and focussing furnishings – concave or convex porcelain cups and saucers, 14

Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob. “The Affective Revolution in 1790s Britain.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.4 (2001): 510-11, speak of the importance of a “pattern of affective experimentation,” but they don’t consider the role of instruments in furthering it.

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knobby silver knives, and facetted crystal bowls – were the entrancing stuff of experiment. Shadow arises from the expanding and contracting effects of light swiftly traveling over a surface. Shades are phantasms. These faint and fleeting apparitions suddenly climb the walls of a room or invade the hallucinatory chamber of the mind. They belong to a dark, urgent universe where people are trapped in spatial systems beyond their control. At the dawn of human history, sputtering torches magnified or diminished human and animal shapes inside dim caves. Modern projection technologies are the spectral descendants of this ancient shadow-show that cast mobile silhouettes, first, on natural rock faces and later on muslin sheets and translucent screens. This distortion of translucent or volumetric forms into an opaque, mutant, or flat physiognomy continues on and off the computer screen.15 We see it in the liquid architecture of Greg Lynn’s digitized folds and blobs, in the canted floors and walls of Morphosis, and in Kara Walker’s mordant caricature cut-outs of black and white racial stereotypes. David Hockney is right to see various sixteenth and seventeenthcentury lenses as having developed, in part, from mirrors.16 The concave mirror (Archimedes’ ‘burning mirror’ used to incinerate a fleet of ships by intensifying the sun’s rays), especially, has the wondrous property of projecting images as well as reflecting them. This amazing ‘painterly’ ability to thrust the three-dimensional – and even extra-dimensional – world onto a two dimensional surface lurks behind a spate of mechanized projections creating entities separate from our bodies. Magic lanterns, first referred to by the physicist Christiaan Huygens, were primarily used to amaze and edify in the seventeenth century. Figures were painted on mica or glass slides and cast from a lightemitting box so as “to make strange things appear on a wall, very pretty.” Like the Wunderschrank, these popular demonstrations conducted with the help of mechanical intermediatries opened up spaces of excess, flickering displays of worldly and otherworldly powers. At first, the subjects were scary, rooted in the religious upheavals of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and invoked hellish regions: skeletons, devils, demons, phantoms. Later, they displayed exotic flora and fauna for the stay-at-home and views of distant lands for 15 16

Anthony Vidler. Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. 245. David Hockney. “When the Mirror Becomes A Lens.” Essay-fax sent to Frances Terpak January 5, 2001.

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the would-be tourist without ever abandoning the destabilizing repertory of comical and frightening phantasmagoria. Projective technology also became a powerful tool in the Enlightenment critique of irrationalism, superstition, and the ‘despotic’ alliance of wonder to thaumaturgy. It exposed the dangerous proximity of the visionary to the grotesque. The craze for boxing light – as dematerialized colors, tones, and shifting sights – was fed by a succession of room-size and portable “dark chambers” in whose confines images glowed and sparkled with a preternatural clarity. The camera obscura – the poetic device probably used by Vermeer to paint his odd, yet measured, interiors that appear so easy to walk into17 – is basically a dim booth equipped with an aperture that may or may not contain a rectifying lens. This cabinet for images meant-to-be-seen-in-the-dark compressed the ceaseless flow of visual representations coming from the outside world into an intense beam that projected them upside down on the back wall. The dreamy effect of such hovering phantoms – a sort of natural automaton – is at once filmy and lucid. Smaller perspective boxes similarly play with disorienting and orienting illusions (fig. 5). From a predetermined angle – usually dictated by a peephole fitted with a lens – the viewer is rewarded with that rarest of visions: a perfect, spatially coherent artificial universe wrested from an imperfect world. Perspective – a theory of vision as well as a technique of pictorial representation founded on geometry – promises an essential or truthful depiction. To the unequipped eye, the anamorphically painted interiors of these small boxes look chaotic. But since the composition is rooted in a mathematical system for rendering space, its elements are precisely locked together. So when the beholder shifts to the correct viewpoint scrambled signals become magically aligned. An ideal invisible grid pulls disorder into order in a snap. These domestic microcosms are also allied with stage sets where actors, props, and scenery do not just copy reality but dramatize it. Like the Wunderschrank, the trompe l’oeil still lifes they contain embody a radicalization of naturalism, a better-thanreal realism. In the seventeenth century, perspective boxes remained elite objects elevating curiosity and interiority. By the eighteenth century, myriad pleated paper theaters – to be viewed with or without a box – popular17

See the fine analysis by Philip Steadman. Vermeer’s Camera Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpiece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

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Fig. 5: Samuel van Hoogstraten Perspective box of a Dutch interior (1662/63).

ized charming dumb shows on every conceivable topic, secular and profane, from the Lisbon earthquake to the interior of famous churches and notable museums (fig. 6). Mass-produced folding Engelbrecht Theaters, and their many variants and descendants, had the uncanny ability to have every shape appear both as its sculptural self in depth and as a flat silhouette. This simple toy was also a sophisticated apparatus that turned a sequence of images into a play. Such free-standing set pieces recall the ‘number operas’18 of the period where a chain of 18

Peter Kivy. “Music in the Movies.” Film Theory and Philosophy. Ed. Richard Aden and Murray Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 310-13.

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Fig. 6: Martin Engelbrecht Book-binding workshop (ca. 1730-50).

separate musical movements is linked together to form a dramatic ‘fabric.’ Users were encouraged to imagine the sets from the inside by emotionally participating in a fictional story and animating the silent scenery. Prints were often technically re-purposed from their fine art categories into broader cultural applications. The Guckkasten – which wandered into the middle-class parlor from open-air fairs and markets – utilized pricked, hand-colored, varnished, and oiled engravings or etchings pirated from famous vedusti like Piranesi. Through a flourishing cottage industry, these opaque scenes were then tortured into transparency the way nineteenth-century photographs, originally documenting travel or destined for souvenir albums, could be altered into postcards. Magic lanterns by night and Guckkasten by day provided thrilling intimacy with rootless visions projected from inside a sealed box. Commodious and episodic, these loosely linked collections of glowing images had no overall plot that rolled them into a single unified picture. Like camcorders, high-resolution television, and video games, these customized – but still circumscribed – do-it-yourself kits prefigure the impending privatization and internalization of mass media. While not yet a fulfillment of Ray Kurzweil’s misty assertion that technology’s rapid pace of change, so rapid, in fact, “that people may not notice it,

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because in its wake it will leave a very good facsimile of the real world,”19 they forecast the ascent of the in-house electronic sanctuary. Ubiquitous computing, with its exaltation of the ‘aware user,’ and the emergence of ‘experience design,’ similarly promise an almost divine, direct interactivity at the interface. As in certain religious cults, personal experience is the ultimate form of credibility. By contrast, the engulfing panorama looked ahead to the rise of streamlined industrial design. A new glass-and-iron building technology supported urban high-tech mass entertainments like the “allview.”20 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the development of the comprehensive wraparound picture redrew the boundaries between the painter, architect, engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. Vast murals seamlessly collated and standardized the tinkered topographic vedute featured in hand-sized zograscopes and optiques, transforming them into hyperbolic collections in the round. An endless flow of metropolitan landmarks like the Crystal Palace, suburban landscapes of leisure from Naples to Hamburg, and grim battle fields like the frozen wastes that decimated the Bourbaki army in Switzerland (exhibited in Lucerne’s famous panorama building) and glimpsed in Jeff Wall’s sweeping lightbox, Restoration – surged around viewers perambulating on an elevated platform and gazing down at the fray from above. These immersive ensembles drowned the spectator in self-contained and pre-programmed ambient media – insulated from the polluted, crowded physical geography of the booming cities and manufacturing centers of the Victorian Age. Analogously, the encompassing electronic environment is often described as a noetic ‘new space’ – woven from an infinity of invisible nets, webs, and threads – that both transcend mortal flesh and connect the far reaches of the globe. At first blush, the relentless quest after augmenting digital technologies that insulate us from physical realities while vaulting us into hyperreal must appear remote from the creaking wooden boxes, crude cardboard devices, and overt apparatus of the pre-modern era. Yet a number of older and younger techno-artists are tapping into this rich repertory to escape the spate of rapidly morphing computer graphics spinning endless simulations of terrifying lifelike creatures and violently vivid mortal combat.

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Online at: www.kurzweilai.net Carla Yanni. Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

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As part of his ongoing Roden Crater Project in the Arizona desert, James Turrell has produced a dream-like series of three-dimensional ‘skyscapes’ that demand leisurely viewing and tap into our reveries. These hovering video projections – literally boxing a translucent cube of luminous blue air – manage to be as immersive, and as contained, as the monumental color-field paintings of Ellsworth Kelly. Diana Thater’s dioramic video of scudding clouds evokes the meteorology of cyberspace: either blank or shifting with the mounding nebulosities of electronic information. Tiffany Holmes’ computer and sensor-based installation, entitled , relies on liveware – that is, real-world and realtime viewer collaboration – not hardware. Hidden throughout the Devices of Wonder exhibition are tiny spy cameras that capture people looking at and interacting with other works in the show (e.g. multiplying spectacles, salon camera obscura, and the Mondo Nuovo peepshow). The live video is ported wirelessly into a computer that integrates the imagery into a large montage displayed on a plasma screen. The space around the plasma screen acts as the interface for the piece. In its resting state, with no viewers in front, the screen displays a panoramic image of Robert Irwin’s garden lying just outside the museum’s walls. When a viewer approaches the screen the animation changes. Slowly, the video is fractured by small rectangles; as they multiply, the larger image of the gardens is replaced by smaller still images grabbed earlier by the hidden cameras. The longer the viewer stays to watch, the more fractured the panoramic image becomes. Conceptually, the piece draws on the metaphor of armchair travel, moving from material terrain into datasphere. The longer the viewer lingers in the gallery, the more she ‘travels’ virtually, away from the seemingly infinite landscape into a series of highly localized spaces that ultimately incorporate the watching subject into their confines. This multimedia installation thus links earlier optical technologies (Wunderschrank, mirror, camera obscura, Engelbrecht theater, panorama) with contemporary digital tools to create an interactive piece in which a coherent and collective field of vision (the big landscape) yields to a fragmented field of data (spy shots, maps, computer code). In the process, the viewer is made acutely aware how visual technology structures perception and how we structure visual technology. The observer of the projection not only becomes the observed, but also the creator of the rupturing tableaux.

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Back to the Future Recently, William Gibson declared that “the nonmediated world has become a country we cannot find our way back to.” He goes on to say: “I don’t think it’s possible to know what we’ve lost, but there is a pervasive sense of loss, and a sense of Christmas morning at the same time.”21 The science fiction writer encapsulates our technological ambivalence in a nutshell. We seem to vacillate between elegy and marvel, estrangement and enthusiasm. But is such nostalgia accurate in history? Was there ever a past free of optical technology, given that the eye was the first tool extending humans beyond the outer edge of their bodies? Devices of Wonder explores the surprizing age, depth, and complexity of the mediated world. It works to undo our forgetfulness by recognizing that visual technologies are both discrete implements, thriving within specific historical contexts, and interrelated events that become layered and superimposed over time. The pattern of intensifying reality, and the practice of visually or virtually collecting the world in some sort of integrating box, cross-link and array of apparatus from the late Renaissance to the twenty-first century. By recovering a bit of the imagination and excitement aroused when these old, experience-augmenting gadgets were new, perhaps we can better understand why people now play multi-user global online games or animate and simulate galaxies of synthetic objects. We live in an era that longs for direct interaction. The desire for faster links ranges from manipulating the interior of our brain through intimate neuroprostheses to accessing an interactive dimension in real time. This futuristic third space – whether diminutive or distributed – has many names: nanospace, cyberspace, hyperspace, data space, information space, netscape, ethernet, connective Web.22 But this contemporary urgency for immediacy that, paradoxically, can only be achieved through media is not revolutionary. It evolved from a vast reservoir of earlier mechanisms casting the beholder into supernatural, spooky, and wondrous dimensions. There has always been something so beautiful, beguiling, or terrifying about technologically produced images that they make us believe in the existence of another reality. In this sense, the exhibition points to what does seem to be novel about 21 22

See/hear William Gibson in Mark Neale’s film No Maps for these Territories (2001). www.nomaps.com. Andrew Leyshon and Nigel Thrift. Money/Space. Geographies of Monetary Transformation. London: Routledge, 1997. 325.

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current technoloy. Instead of extreme fictions breaking out of the monitor to merge symbiotically with reality, ‘legacy’ applications possessed modest gifts of compression and intensification that were as limited, impermanent, and mysterious as life. WORKS CITED Barroll, J. Leeds. Artificial Persons. The Formation of Character in the Tragedies of Shakespeare. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1974. Benedict, Barbara M. Curiosity. A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Calasso, Roberto. Literature and the Gods. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Didi-Hubermann, George. “La tragédie de la culture: Warburg avec Nietzsche.” Visio. Les statuts de l’image/The State of Image 4 (2000/01): 9-19. Gee, Henry. In Search of Deep Time: Beyond the Fossil Record to A New History of Life. New York: Free Press, 1999. Hankins, Thomas L. and Robert J. Silverman. Instruments and the Imagination. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. Haynes, Clare. “A ‘Natural’ Exhibitioner. Sir Ashton Lever and his Holosphusikon.” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 24.1 (2001): 3-13. Hockney, David. “When the Mirror Becomes a Lens.” Essay-fax sent to Frances Terpak on January 5, 2001. Hunt, Lynn and Margaret Jacob. “The Affective Revolution in 1790s Britain.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.4 (2001): 491-521. Jardine, Lisa. Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution. New York: Nan A. Talese, 1999. Kivy, Peter. “Music in the Movies.” Film Theory and Philosophy. Ed. Richard Aden and Murray Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 308-28. Kurzweil, Ray. Online at: http://www.kurzweilai.net. Leyshon, Andrew and Nigel Thrift. Money/Space. Geographies of Monetary Transformation. London: Routledge, 1997. Lipton, James. An Exaltation of Larks. The Ultimate Edition. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991. Moody, Fred. The Visionary Position. The Inside Story of the Digital Dreamers Who are Making VR a Reality. New York: Times Books, 1999. Smith, Pamela H. “Science and Taste. Painting, Passions, and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century Leiden.” Isis 90 (1999): 421-61. Stafford, Barbara Maria. Artful Science. Enlightenment, Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Stafford, Barbara Maria. “Revealing Technology/Magical Domains.” Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen. Ed. Barbara Maria Stafford, Francis Terpak, and Isotta Poggi. Los Angeles: Getty Museum of Art, 2001. Steadman, Philip. Vermeer’s Camera Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpiece. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Vidler, Anthony. Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000. Yanni, Carla. Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

HARTMUT BÖHME

The Metaphysics of Phenomena: Telescope and Microscope in the Works of Goethe, Leeuwenhoek and Hooke 1. Goethe’s Misgivings Goethe knew very well that modern science would never have come on track without instrumental techniques, despite proposing his own, phenomenological study of nature in opposition. He writes: Out of the greatest and the smallest likewise (and only presentable to man through most artificial means) emerge the metaphysics of phenomena. In the middle lies the particular, what befits our senses, what I rely on. Bless thus from the heart those talented individuals, who bring this region nearer to me.1

No sign of Goethe’s much cited aversion to microscopes and telescopes can be found here. Since his youth, Goethe had used both of these instruments which had been so influential in setting the natural sciences; astronomy, biology, mineralogy and medicine in motion in the 17th century. He had eagerly consulted the microscope, in particular, in his botanical, zoological and mineralogical studies.2 Both telescope and mi1

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“Aus dem Größten wie aus dem Kleinsten (nur durch künstlichste Mittel dem Menschen zu vergegenwärtigen) geht die Metaphysik der Erscheinungen hervor; in der Mitte liegt das Besondere, unsern Sinnen Angemessene, worauf ich angewiesen bin, deshalb aber die Begabten von Herzen segne die jene Regionen zu mir heranbringen.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. “Maximen und Reflexionen Nr. 507.” Werke [Hamburger Ausgabe = HA]. Ed. Erich Trunz. 14 vols. Hamburg: Wegner, 1961-67. Vol. XII, 435. Punctuation according to “Über Naturwissenschaft im Allgemeinen. Einzelne Betrachtungen und Aphorismen.” Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche [Frankfurter Ausgabe = FA]. Ed. Hendrik Birus et. al. 40 vols. Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1989. Sec. 1, vol. 25, 100. Cf. for example, the letter to Jacobi, January 12, 1785: “Before I write a syllable of meta physika, it is necessary that I complete the physika. [...] Set up a microscope in order to repeat the observations and control the experiments of v. Gleichen, known as Rußworm, at the onset of spring.” In 1785 Goethe bought the book written by von Gleichen (1717-1783), a botanist: Wilhelm Friederich von

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croscope had long been standard research instruments, despite their rejection by Thomas Sydenham and John Locke. They were also important props in spectacular scientific entertainment, in which astonishing experiments were presented both to educated audiences and at fairgrounds as popular amusement. They occupied a space between objective enlightenment and sensationalist charlatanry.3 Goethe knew that as well. In his aphorisms, however, Goethe emphasizes the serious side: the ‘most artificial means’ (one can also read here ‘the most technical means’)4 open completely unknown worlds in the ‘greatest’ and ‘smallest,’ subliminal and supraliminal universes. This by no means implies the platonic topos of the analogia entis of microcosm and macrocosm, to which Goethe often refered. Instead, he uses the surprising phrase of ‘the metaphysics of phenomena.’ Microscope and telescope do indeed create ‘phenomena,’ namely experimental and observable sensory objects. But metaphysics? Does Goethe mean objects ‘beyond,’ ‘behind’ (meta) physics, in reference to the structure of Aristotle’s works? But didn’t both these instruments provide a basis for physics or at least extend them? Or does he believe that there are phenomena ‘beyond’ the physis, namely the ‘nature’ of the senses, another antique idea? Beyond the ‘world of appearance’ that presents itself to the ‘unarmed’ senses? Certainly. However, Goethe does not interpret this to mean other-

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Gleichen (called: Russworm). Abhandlung über die Saamen- und Infusionsthierchen, und über die Erzeugung: nebst mikroskopischen Beobachtungen des Saamens der Thiere und verschiedener Infusionen; mit illuminirten Kupfertafeln. Nuremberg, 1778. Cf. idem. Auserlesene Mikroskopische Entdeckungen bey den Pflanzen, Blumen und Blüthen, Insekten und anderen Merkwürdigkeiten. Nuremberg, 1771. Cf. also Goethe’s letter to Charlotte von Stein, June 27, 1785: “I am bringing my microscope with me. It is the best time to watch the dances of infusoria.” Goethe to Jacobi, April 14, 1786: “Botany and the microscope are now my main enemies. [...] If infusoria were of any help to you, I could administer you several million.” Goethe, it seems, still works in von Gleichen’s wake. Notes on his microscope studies of infusoria are in FA, sec. 1, vol. 24, 46-61. Goethe uses the microscope regularly in both his zoological-anatomical and his botanicalmorphological studies. Cf. the term “microscopic elementary biology” introduced by Goethe (FA, sec. 1, vol. 24, 801). A late document: Goethe’s letter to Nees von Esenbeck, September 27, 1826. See especially Barbara Stafford. Artful Science. Enlightenment, Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. 95-152. The term ‘artificial’ need not be interpreted pejoratively. It can also be interpreted according to the Latin root ‘ars,’ as art and technique. ‘Means’ means both instrument and medium, so that the sentence can be interpreted as follows: ‘highly technical media’ open new universes.

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worldly objects. He qualifies precisely the ‘phenomena’ as metaphysical. But what does this mean? ‘In the middle’ lies the world of appearance, the world that Goethe also calls ‘the particular’ without, however, calling the experimental phenomena ‘the general.’ Belonging to both the ‘metaphysics of phenomena’ and to the particular of unarmed sensory perception is: presentation. What ‘emerges’ through the new instruments becomes ‘presence’ to ‘the person,’ just as a tree becomes on sight the presence of the onlooker. But a difference remains: no ‘metaphysics of phenomena’ ‘emerge’ from the perceived tree, but they do from the telescope and microscope. ‘Emerge’ is a conspicuous word in this context, as if these ‘metaphysics’ grow from alone out of the instrumentally revealed world. As sensitive to language as Goethe is, the conceptual tension contained in the expression ‘metaphysics of phenomena’ would not have escaped him, neither from the newest, Kantian philosophy nor from the older academic philosophy, and especially not from the prevailing understanding of metaphysics.5 What becomes the ‘middle’ through the continuous extension of the limits of perception by the ‘most artificial means,’ namely the appearance, was never ‘middle.’ It was the naturally given. It was under the dome of or, in Kantian transcendental philosophy, based on metaphysical constructions that defied any realisation by the senses. As Goethe correctly observed, the appearance only becomes the ‘middle’ through margins that have neither essential nor categorical validity but, instead, delineate historically variable capacities of technical media. The aphorism is, however, not only epistemological, but also confessional and normative. Goethe calls the middle realm of appearance ‘that which befits our senses.’ Instruments thus become ‘unbefitting’ or at least ‘unsuitable.’ Goethe gives unaided sensory experience a higher priority in a scale of values than technically mediated sensory experience.6 At the same time, he admits that he depends on natural sensory 5

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One solution would be a Spinozistic resolution of the “metaphysics of phenomena”: “Quo magis res singulares intelligimus, eo magis Deum intelligimus.” In the 80s, Goethe searched in this vein for “the divine in herbis et lapidibus” (Letter to Jacobi, June 9, 1785): In the ‘particular’ lies the presence of the divine. However, in the late aphorisms one cannot simply presume this identification. Quot. from: Carl Otto Conrady. Goethe. Leben und Werk. 2 vols. Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum. Vol. 1, 419-20. Goethe’s practise by no means conforms to this dogmatic aphorism: “Microscopes and telescopes actually confuse man’s clear senses.” Johann Wolfgang Goethe. “Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years or The Renunciants.” Goethe’s Collected

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perceptions (although they are themselves always theory, as he states elsewhere)7. The subject of Goethean science thus acknowledges that he is a subject constituted primarily by sensory experience. This does not, however, lead to a devaluation of instrumental sensory experience. Goethe blesses their inventors from the heart in an expressive gesture floating oddly between sentimentality and religiosity. These inventors ‘bring’ something ‘nearer’ to the Goethean subject. They are the ‘gifted,’ who have a gift to bestow: that which ‘has been brought nearer,’ the greatest and smallest worlds of ‘metaphysical appearances.’ Goethe is grateful for the technical inventions and experimental philosophy (in contrast to the relationship to Newton). A careful reading reveals how polysemantic this aphorism is. It leads directly to the centre of the conflict-laden relationship between Goethe’s science of the senses and the new science. The audacious expression ‘metaphysics of phenomena’ does not lose its tension. Ultimately, it suggests that the experimental sciences, which constitute themselves, not only alone, but also through technical means, contain a metaphysical philosophy or at least have metaphysical consequences. To show this, it is necessary to go back to the epoch in which telescope and microscope were invented and developed their scientific effect, the 17th century. To this Goethe remarks, “After the second half of the seventeenth century owed so infinitely much to the microscope, the eighteenth century tried to treat it with disdain.”8 The development of the microscope did, in fact, largely stagnate in the 18th century, not in the least due to Newton’s false dictum on the principle impossibility of constructing achromatic objectives.9 Goethe, an enemy of Newton, may have been alluding to this. The telescope as

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Works in XII Volumes. Ed. James K. Brown. Cambridge, Mass.: Suhrkamp, 1989. Vol. X, 301. In the following indicated as WMJY. “The hightes wisdom would be to comprehend that everything factual is already theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the primary law of chromatics. Do not look for anything behind the phenomena; the themselves are the lesson.” Goethe. WMJY. 308. Precisely this correspondence between “fact” and “theory” does not apply in the sciences. It is, however, characteristic for Goethe’s phenomenological study of nature. “Nachdem man in der zweiten Hälfte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts dem Mikroskop so unendlich viel schuldig geworden war, so suchte man zu Anfang des achtzehnten dasselbe geringschätzig zu behandeln.” Goethe. HA. Vol. XII, 435. Wolfgang Gloede. Vom Lesestein zum Elektronenmikroskop. Berlin: Verlag Technik, 1986. 66, 81. John Dolland and in particular Chester Moor Hall were the first to construct achromatic objectives. Cf. ibid. 88.

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well only experienced a qualitative leap through William Herschel.10 One must thus return to the 17th century, not forgetting the ‘phenomenon’ that provoked Goethe’s phenomenology even more than telescope and microscope, namely the vacuum.11 Like the world of the ‘greatest’ and ‘smallest,’ the experimentally created and investigated void represents just that sphere of the ‘supernatural’ that constructs modern science. And experimental arrangements of technical media play a crucial role. More than anything else the vacuum, created by the ‘most artificial means,’ belongs to the ‘metaphysics of phenomena.’12 2. The Contemplation of the Heavens and the Telescope The astronomy scene in Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre refers to the time of the discovery of Uranus by William Herschel. At the same time, it alludes to Galileo’s epochal discovery of the moons of Jupiter. For Wilhelm it is by all means characteristic that he interprets Jupiter astrologically as a ‘favourable omen’ and as a ‘planet of good fortune.’ As he contemplates the star “through a telescope, significantly enlarged and accompanied by its moons, as a wonder of the heavens” (WMJY 178) – the Galileo situation – he is not thinking of this epochal date in the history of astronomy. In the history of consciousness 10

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William Herschel’s fame was based on the discovery of Uranus in 1781. James Bradley presented the first reflecting telescope to the Royal Society in 1781 – a breakthrough. Herschel greatly improved this system and initiated the paradigm change, according to which optical enlargement was no longer paramount. Important was capturing as much of the weak light as possible from distant stars. To that end Herschel built his famous reflectors. Their pure capacity would, however, not have been as effective, had Herschel not been such an excellent analytical observer. Cf. Richard Panek. Seeing and Believing. The Story of the Telescope or how we Found our Place in the Universe. New York: Viking, 1998. 106-20. It is characteristic that the only passage in which the void is elevated to the rank of the “metaphysics of phenomena” is a cynical remark from Mephistopheles on the occasion Faust’s death: “Gone by and utter nothing are all one:/ Why then, does this Creating still go on?/ Gone by? What means it? – What a sorry trade!/ Making, and making nothing of what’s made./ And then this nothing evermore we see/ Making pretence a something still to be./ So on it goes, the same dull circle spinning/ – ‘T were better with the Eternal Void beginning!” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust II. Trans. John Anster. London, 1864. V. 11597-11603. In Goethe’s opinion, the only role vacuum physicists could play was that of Satanists in disguise. On the vacuum, I can only cite Hartmut Böhme. “Das Volle und das Leere. Zur Geschichte des Vakuums.” Luft. Ed. Hartmut Böhme. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Göttingen, 2003.

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Wilhelm remains between the Warburgian poles of ‘belief in the stars and knowledge of the stars,’13 between a hermetic Renaissance-like astrology, as embodied in the corporeal-mystical characteristics of the mysterious figure of Makarie (‘the Blessed’), and the beginning systematic telescopic observation of the heavens and mathematical calculations, as represented by the astronomer who leads Wilhelm to the observatory. First, Wilhelm’s naked eye is confronted with the “brilliant realm of the ether” (WMJY 177). Overwhelmed and amazed, he covered both eyes. The colossal ceases to be sublime; it exceeds our power to understand, it threatens to annihilate us. ‘What am I in the face of the universe?’ he asked his spirit. How can I stand before it, stand in its very midst?” (Ibid.)

Well within the scheme of the Kantian sublime, Wilhelm recognizes neither the architecture nor the mechanics of the heavens. Instead, he experiences aesthetic marginality, namely the overwhelming, self-dissolving experience of a principle disproportion between spatial ‘magnificence’ and his own physical insignificance. He fends off this aesthetically overwhelming experience by closing his eyes. Kant has also called it a violence to the imagination.14 Goethe speaks of an overextension of the ‘power of aesthetic apprehension.’ It summons up the reflexive question of the decentred self’s ability to exist. Henceforth, the questionable ‘middle’ of the self stands in the foreground of Wilhelm’s inner monologue. This “middle,” which Goethe calls the middle of “what befits our senses” is by no means inherent to unarmed vision. It corresponds to the subject’s previous centeredness, which is threatened in this situation in which the sense of vision is aesthetically overwhelmed. One finds here the Kantian correspondence between the “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”15 This, in turn, echoes the pre-modern correlation of microcosm and macrocosm. 13

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Aby Warburg, fully under the influence of his elliptical-dipolar thought, organized an exhibition with this title in the Hamburg planetarium. It opened posthumously in 1930. Uwe Fleckner et al., ed. Aby Warburg: Bildersammlung zur Geschichte von Sternenglaube und Sternenkunde. Die Sammlung Aby Warburg im Hamburger Planetarium. 2 vols. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1993. Immanuel Kant. Critique of Judgment. Ed. and trans. Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. In the following indicated as CoJ. “[...] as it were doing violence to our immagination.” Kant. CoJ. 129. “That is sublime in comparison with which” Ibid. 134. “[...] that surpasses every measure of the senses.” Ibid. “[…] by which it does violence to the inner sense.” Ibid. Cf. ibid. 143-48 etc. Idem. Critique of Practical Reason. Ed. and trans. Lewis White Beck. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. 169.

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After this self-reflexive turn at the sight of the heavens, the dispassionate, Galilean astronomer allows his guest to peer through the telescope. Wilhelm then experiences an effect familiar from the early history of the telescope: a confusing loss of context. The ‘most artificial means’ focus on a tiny section of the heavens and “now it stands disproportionately in my imagination,” (WMJY 178) Wilhelm remarks, and he therefore loses the relationship both to the heavens in their entirety and to himself. He no longer ‘sees’ the semantically meaningful constellation of Jupiter and no longer experiences the reflexive call of the uncentred self in the face of the ‘monstrous.’ He looks at an isolated object of the heavens, a star-thing without semantics and without reference to the self. Thus, Wilhelm experiences the epochal transition to an astronomy based on instrumental observation, with which modern science began. He experiences it as a loss and an abstraction. It provokes the well known criticism, which, however, cannot be attributed to Goethe, that the “aids with which we enhance our senses have no favourable moral effect.” “Whenever I look through spectacles,” Wilhelm reasons, “I am another person and do not like myself.” (WMJY 178-79)16 He thus anticipates the narcissistic slight to the ego through the Copernican turn, as Freud expressed it, or the humiliation of perfect instruments, as described by Günther Anders.17 It applies analogously to the telescope and microscope and to all experimental-technical realisations of phenomena. ‘The guardian of public morals’ has a duty to watch over changes in humanity wrought by the technical media of his perception. One ought not simply follow Wilhelm’s critical jab at technology (the author certainly does not), but neither should one ignore the effects the historical introduction of optical media had on the study of nature in the 17th century. They were inscribed as faszinosum or tremendum, in any 16

17

Wilhelm’s experience here has been described by Goethe in a famous aphorism that succinctly summarizes his misgivings, which are based on a phenomenology of the body, about experimental systems and about Newton’s in particular: “The human being in himself to the extent that he makes use of his sound senses, is the greatest and most accurate physical apparatus there can be; and that is the greatest disaster of modern physics, that it has effectively separated experimentation from the human element and recognizes Nature only in what artificial instruments can register, and indeed, wants to limit and establish thereby what Nature can achieve.” Goethe. WMJY. 427. Sigmund Freud. “Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.” The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. Vol. XVI , 282. Günther Anders. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution. 2 vols. Munich: Beck, 1956/80. Vol. 2, 21-95.

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case as a modifying power, into the experimental systems and the subject structure arranged within them. 3. Mediological Episteme in the 17th Century In the 17th century, the basic assumption was that in order to conduct science, one must radically mistrust the ‘world of appearances.’ At the same time, sensory representations of previously unknown worlds were created in media-based controlled experimental situations. They became models of an episteme that operates through media. Science is constituted on the basis of the subliminal. This development provoked Goethe’s loyalty to the middle realm of the senses. The scientistic world no longer means the experiential space of natural senses but the media-based, experimentally regulated world of observation.18 Mediabased processes create phenomena that are subjected to controlled observation and conceptual synthesis. ‘Experimental systems’ come into play. The fields of objects created by media representation and control of the invisible are not the ‘particular’ of what ‘lies in the middle’ and ‘befits our senses.’ Nonetheless they are fundamental for the birth of the new sciences. Four fields of objects can be identified. Firstly, opaque inner realms of the body that are hidden by the skin were opened and dissected, but were also symbolically secreted. The scientification of medicine is based on anatomical visualization. Secondly, the invention of the telescope opened up the macroscopic world and led to mathematical astronomy. Thirdly, the subliminal world of the microscope placed in particular botany and zoology on a new foundation. Fourthly, neither the many pneumatic-hydraulic technologies nor Newtonian mechanics in general would have been possible without the experimental demonstration of the vacuum. These four forms of invisibility have nothing to do with metaphysical invisibility. Instead, they are front lines in the media-based presentation of what had previously been invisible, and what the new scientists maintain is the ‘real’ world, and, indeed, in comparison to the ‘world of appearance’ even predominant in this world.

18

Cf. Gunnar Schmidt. Von Tropfen und Spiegeln. Medienlogik und Wissen im 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhundert. Online at: http://www.medienaesthetik.de/tropfen.html.

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In the 17th century it became generally accepted that that which is accessible to the ‘unarmed’ senses creates a false picture of the world. By trusting in the erring testimony of the eye, the so-called ‘salvaging of phenomena,’19 as practised both by defenders of the AristotelianPtolemaic system and by Goethe, proves to be the wrong path. Typical for the epoch is also a ‘boundless desire for sensory accessibility and visualization,’20 an insatiable hunger for visual proof achieved through media. This primacy of visual evidence is especially dominant in the experimental sciences that methodologically doubted the eye. There was no possibility of something being acknowledged as a scientistic fact, if it could not be made visible, observed, controlled, represented through media and calculated. The invisible does not belong to the ‘metaphysics of phenomena’ (Goethe). It is, in contrast, a relative and variable limiting category of the potentially visible, a contingent marker between what is ‘already’ visible and what is ‘still’ invisible. This de-materialisation of the invisible has an origin: For the first time, technical media of representation are extensively inserted between the traditional categories of visibility and invisibility: anatomical images, telescope, microscope, demonstrations of the vacuum. They all tie the relationship between visibility and invisibility to historical stages in the technical capacity of media and no longer to ontological distinctions. This is a far-reaching epistemological turning point. The media of representation transform the invisible into a mere comparative of what has already been made visible. The scientist’s ambition presses on to finer bodily tissues, into more minute dimensions of the subliminal world, further into the depths of the universe or from the fine vacuum to the ultra high vacuum. This effect of the media carries with it the shudder of infinity, the vertigo of infinitely great and infinitely small, the abyss of the absolute void. Blaise Pascal was the first to distinctly recognize this consequence of the scientific revolution. Pascal’s analyses of mankind’s precarious position between two infinities and the danger it faces of becoming a ‘nothing’ between them 19

20

Cf. Jürgen Mittelstraß. Die Rettung der Phänomene. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1962. Hans Rudolf Schweizer and Armin Wildermuth. Die Entdeckung der Phänomene. Dokumente einer Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis. Basle and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1981. Theda Rehbock. Goethe und die “Rettung der Phänomene.” Philosophische Kritik des naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbildes am Beispiel der Farbenlehre. Konstanz: Verlag am Hockgraben, 1995. Richard Alewyn and Karl Sälzle. Das große Welttheater. Die Epoche der höfischen Feste in Dokument und Deutung. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959. 64.

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clearly react to the spatial revolution initiated by the telescope, microscope and infinitesimal calculus.21 Kant’s idea of the mathematical sublime (CoJ 131-43) can be traced to the extension of spatial dimensions and the infinite void. Seen thus, Goethe is right to speak of the ‘metaphysics of phenomena.’ In the cool pathos of their experiments, the sciences of the 17th century generate a metaphysical shudder that continues up to Nietzsche. Modern scientists thus follow the imperative to unconditionally visualize spaces that had previously been surrounded by metaphysical or intellectual taboos. Hence, they are more dependent upon visualization media than ever before, since their objects are altogether invisible. That is, the effects of these invisible objects must be made visible and accessible to investigation. But these effects must first be induced, fixated, represented, measured and calculated. This necessitates complex, media-based and technological experimental arrangements. In his pre-critical phase, Kant would later remark in the aftermath of the earthquake of Lisbon, which he viewed as a gigantic natural experiment intended to maintain physical laws, ‘What nature hides from our eyes and our direct experiments, she reveals herself through her effects.’22 In his critical phase, Kant states more precisely, “Reason only perceives what it itself produces according to its own plans.” (CoPR B12) We only see what we create. Ubi generatio, ibi cognitio. But in regard to the lively media consciousness of 17th-century scientists, theoretical Kant forgot the role of media in the experimental arrangements of categorized and synthesized phenomena. To be more precise, he hid the function of the media in his concept of ‘schematism.’ Kant reduces transcendental schemes that ‘mediate’ between concrete perceptions and abstract concepts to “a hidden art in the depths of a human soul […] through which and in accordance with which the images first become possible,” images that are “a product and as it were a monogram of pure a priori imagination.” (CoPR B181) Kant overlooked, however, that this primordial ability to create images, this schematism of possible 21 22

Blaise Pascal. Thoughts. Trans. William Finlayson Trotter. New York: P. F. Collins, 1958. 26-32. Immanuel Kant. “Geschichte und Naturbeschreibung der merkwürdigen Vorfälle des Erdbebens welches an dem Ende des 1755sten Jahres einen großen Theil der Erde erschüttert hat.” Geographische und andere naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. 1756. Ed. J. Zehbe. Hamburg: Meiner, 1985. 44. Cf. Gerd Held. “Die Erscheinung einer Erscheinung. Zur Ästhetik des indirekten Gegenstandes bei Kant und Duschamp.” Unter Argusaugen. Zu einer Ästhetik des Unsichtbaren. Ed. Gerd Held, Carola Hilmes, and Dietrich Mathy. Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 1997. 11-32.

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objects of experience had already been technologically enhanced and remodelled through the media of the 17th century. Kantian schematism is thus no longer an a priori principle of construction. It is itself the result of historical experimental systems and their compact media technologies. Kant’s statement must be modified: Reason only perceives what it itself produces according to its own plans within the arrangement of applied experimental media. In Amintors Morgen-Andacht, George Christoph Lichtenberg writes on telescopes and lenses, “that man may not have the power to form the world as he pleases, but he does have the power to grind lenses through which he can make it look any way we would like.”23 This remark is important both in terms of media theory and experimental history. It claims that we do not become sovereign over phenomena through transcendental schemes, but through media armament. Wilhelm experiences this domination as an ethically dubious consequence of instruments of sensory enhancement. Hans Blumenberg describes the “sheer symbolic status of the telescope for the confirmation of theoretical curiosity.”24 Elsewhere he mentions the “as yet unwritten history of the idea of the invisible” (that must also be a history of the media) and calls the telescope “the great, metaphysically unexpected and thus so relevant surprise of the beginning Modern Age.”25 “I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes,” claims Tycho Brahe, who was unfamiliar with the telescope, programmatically.26 That means that the perceptions of the eye must be controlled through disciplined observation and media armament, and both through calculation. Only thus did it become possible to refute both the Aristotelian world picture of appearance and the authority of the traditional corpus of knowledge. The project of mediasupported experimental visualization conformed to the Royal Society’s motto, “nullius in verbo,” and emblems, the telescope and microscope. And the name of the illustrious Accademia dei Lincei, which counted 23

24 25

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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Werke in 6 Bänden. Ed. Wolfang Promies. 5th ed. Frankfurt a. M.: Zweitausendeins, 1994. Vol. 3, 79. Reinhard Heinritz. “Teleskop und Erzählperspektive.” Poetica 24.3/4 (1992): 341-55. Hans Blumenberg. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Trans. R. M. Wallace. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983. Idem. “Das Fernrohr und die Ohnmacht der Wahrheit.” Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius. Nachricht von neuen Sternen. Ed. Hans Blumenberg. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1980. 16. Quot. from: Panek. Seeing and Believing. 50. The divine potency of the eye can be found as early as Alberti. Cf. Horst Bredekamp. “Albertis Flug- und Flammenauge.” Die Beschwörung des Kosmos. Europäische Bronzen der Renaissance. [Exhibit. cat.] Duisburg, 1994. 297-392.

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Galileo amongst its members, was given under the auspices of sharpsighted perception. Lincei are lynxes.27 In his book on the telescope, Richard Panek pushes the pathos of media-experimental scientists so far that they proceed “from being the apple of god’s eye to being god’s eye.”28 This ‘Copernican pathos’29 driven by a new visual media aesthetics of the sublime, has another side, however. Blumenberg describes as follows: Galileo, by making the invisible visible and believing that he could thus prove the Copernican conviction, surrenders himself to the danger of visibility as the last authority of truth. At the same time, by using the telescope to create this visibility, he breaks with the visibility postulate of astronomical tradition and opens a space for the inescapable suspicion that, no matter to what extent it may be taken, technically mediated visibility is an accidental fact bound to conditions that are alien to the subject matter.30

That experimental media, claimed to possess the power of truth and to overcome the eye’s deception, to objectify perception and to ‘discover’ unknown spaces and things, that they offer no protection from the aporia of accident but, in contrast, seem to provoke it – this belongs to the most unsettling experiences with experimental systems from the 17th century to the present day. There are many reasons for this. The imagegenerating apparatus was first and foremost subject to technical limitations such as chromatic and spherical aberrations, poor depth perception, weak light.31 They especially impaired a definitive identification of the objects of perception: Does one see an object or is the object an effect of the instrument’s optical imperfection or even a product of the observer’s theoretical assumptions? Already in the 17th century, critics objected that it was possible to see anything one wanted to with a microscope.32 27

28 29 30 31 32

Interestingly, the frontispiece of Robert Hooke’s paradigmatic book on microscopy includes both the motto of the Royal Society, which financed the publication, and the motif of the lynx. Robert Hooke. Micrographia: or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses. London, 1665 [reprint Stuttgart, approx. 1974]. Panek. Seeing and Believing. 61. Blumenberg. “Fernrohr.” 23. Ibid. 21. Goethe is well informed on the technical-optical problems of the telescope: Goethe. FA. Sec. 1, vol. 23/1, 410-13. Goethe found the best expressions for the optical-hermeneutic problems I will be discussing in greater detail below. Remarking on Caspar Friedrich Wolff, the first epigenetic embryologist, he states, “Notwithstanding the excellence of these me-

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Secondly, and applicable to both telescope and microscope, the size of the sector open to observation decreased with the factor of enlargement. It became increasingly difficult to spatially and environmentally contextualize an ‘image’ and thus to situate it within the surrounding ‘order’ of the visual. Goethe points this out in his description of Wilhelm’s confusion in the observatory. The result was an increase in uncertainty, for example, when interpreting what a microscopic segment actually ‘meant’ within the whole organism or a new star in a celestial system. In addition, the new devices do generate images, but the images disappear when no one is looking through the apparatus. The problem of image storage remained unsolved until microscope and telescope were coupled with photography in the 19th century.33 Until then, ‘image storage’ meant making a sketch or letting someone else make a sketch or engraving of what one thought one had seen. Bredekamp has shown, using Galileo’s splendid moon drawings as an example, what pictorial evidence with valid scientistic conclusions Gali-

33

thods [the microscopic, HB], through which he achieved so much, the admirable man did not believe that there was a difference between seeing and seeing, that the eye of the spirit need operate in perpetual living connexion with the eye of the body. Otherwise, one risks the danger of seeing and yet overlooking.” Goethe. FA. Sec. I, vol. 24, 432. This conforms to Goethe’s quote from an osteological work of the painter, anatomist and archaeologist Eduard Joseph d’Alton on scientific illustrations in Zur Morphologie (1823): “[…] thus it is essential that every natural researcher possess the most complete knowledge of light and shadow and of linear and overhead perspectives. Without possession of this knowledge, one can neither make correct microscopic observations, since they do not allow confirmation through touch, nor can one adequately assess any illustration. The most complete knowledge of the laws of vision, through which the nature of phenomena is revealed, […] cannot be deemed an unimportant formality in natural research.” Goethe. FA. Sec. I, vol. 24, 601. A type of visual ‘recording system’ of microscopic seeing was, however, created with the invention of the projection microscope, resp. the helioscope in the middle of the 18th century. At the same time, by projecting the visual image, it allowed several individuals to participate in the ‘privacy’ of the act of seeing in ordinary microscopes. This last aspect was particularly important for the attestation of what had been seen and for scientific entertainment. There are connections to the camera obscura. Projection microscopes had a particularly impressive effect when living objects were projected. One then had ‘living images,’ i.e. a sort of proto-cinema. Cf. Goede. Lesestein, 86-88. A beautiful illustration can be found on p 91. The entertainment value of microscopic presentations cannot be underestimated. Cf. Martin Frobenius Ledermüller. Mikroskopische Gemüths= und Augen=Ergötzung: Bestehend, in Ein Hundert nach der Natur gezeichneten und mit Farben erleuchteten Kupfertafeln Sammt deren Erklärung. 3 vols. Nuremberg, 1760, 1761, 1778. Ledermüller (1719-1769) was a lawyer and assistant to the chamber of curiosities in Bayreuth.

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leo drew from his sketches.34 But if one looks at the moon today with a telescope of the same power as Galileo’s, the visual findings will by no means agree with those of Galileo. What does one see, when one sees? And what is the status of the primary visual image in relation to its translation into another pictorial medium? In scientific papers, in addition, these secondary images, instead of the primary visual image, were usually also transformed into language. Thus, the object undergoes multiple transformations from one medium into another. This corresponds to the general fact that one medium ‘translates’ another medium (M. McLuhan), but it also increases contingency, or what can be called the epistemological risk of experiments based on mediating processes. 4. Microscopic Fundamentalism On the title page prefacing the German translation of the English microscopist Henry Baker (1698–1774) is a quote from Pliny’s Natural History: “Rerum natura nusquam quam in Minimis tota est” (Pliny, Hist. nat., XI, c. 2).35 Since the invention of the microscope around 1600, researchers have been driven by the idea of discovering the whole of nature in its most minute parts, even the atoms, the building bricks of nature (rerum natura). The polyhistor Athanasius Kircher recognizes the scientific significance of the microscope when he writes in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae in 1646: Of many things one did surely believe until today that they were completely without life and soul, whereas the microscope shows that they do indeed live. Who would have believed that vinegar and milk crawl with an infinite number of worms if the art of microscopy had not recently taught this fact, to the greatest amazement of everyone.

He then goes on to speak of the ‘divine science of optics, which leads what is hidden out of the deepest darkness into an astonishing light.’36 The discoveries and mistaken identifications that were possible during the expedition into the seen and through which the tension Goethe describes between empiricism and metaphysics arises, will in 34

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Horst Bredekamp. “Galileo Galilei als Künstler.” Übergangsbogen und Überhöhungsrampen. Ed. B. Ecker and B. Sefkow. Hamburg: Hochschule für bildende Künste, 1996. 54-63. Heinrich (Henry) Baker. Das zum Gebrauch leicht gemachte Microscopium. Zurich, 1753. Title page. Quot. from: Richard Julius Petri. Das Mikroskop. Von seinen Anfängen bis zur jetzigen Vervollkommnung. Berlin, 1896. 10 note 3.

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following be illustrated by the examples of the most famous microscopist of the 17th century, Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723),37 and the Royal Society’s ingenious experimenter, Robert Hooke, whose Micrographia38 of 1665 provided Leeuwenhoek with crucial encouragement. In 1680 Leeuwenhoek, a merchant and scientific amateur who had command of neither English nor Latin, was elected member of the Royal Society on the basis of his excellent, tiny, single-lens microscopes and the zoological, botanical, embryological and crystallographic knowledge obtained with them.39 He reported continuously to this highly respected community of scientists on his research, submitting sketches and two hundred letters written in Dutch. Leeuwenhoek believed he had ‘seen’ the decisive solution to the decades-old dispute on the question of generation (abiogenesis versus preformation; ovists versus spermaticists) in the microscope. He thought he had recognized complex anatomical and animated structures in microscopic semen (of animals and men), preformed beings that admittedly did not exhibit an identical morphology to fully formed crea37

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Citations according to Alle de Brieven van Antoni van Leeuwenhoek/ The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. A Complete Edition of the Works of Van Leeuwenhoek, Annotated and Considered in the Perspective of the History of Science and Medicine, with Special Reference to General and Biological Microscopy. 15 vols. Ed., ill., and ann. by a Committee of Dutch scientists. Amsterdam and Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1949-1999. Quotations are abbreviated as Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. The numeration of the letters indicates the serial numbers of the this chronological edition, the numbers in square brackets are Leeuwenhoek’s own, which are commonly used in previous editions, such as: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Arcana naturae detecta. Delphis Batavorum (Delft): apud Henricum a Krooneveld, 1695. Or Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Opera Omnia. Vols. I-IV. Leiden, 1715-1722. Vol. II, 1-515 [reprint Hildesheim: Olms, 1971]. Quot. from: Hooke. Micrographia. Due to space limitations, I can only discuss Hooke briefly later. Leeuwenhoek concludes Letter 33 to Hooke, November 12, 1680: “These, Sir, are a few of my observations which I thought fit to send to you and to the Honourable College of the Royal Society, one of whose humble Brethren I now am, thanks to the College’s favours.” Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. III, 341. Leeuwenhoek was proposed in 1673 by Reinier de Graaf and Constantijn Huygens in a letter of recommendation to Henry Oldenburg, Secretary to the Royal Society: Brian J. Ford. Single Lens. The Story of the Simple Microscope. London: Harper & Row, 1985. 28. In 1981 Ford discovered a bundle of unknown letters and preserved experimental objects from Leeuwenhoek in the collections of the Royal Society: (ibid. 40-59). With them he was able to prove the hypothesis that had until then remained unsubstantiated, “that Hooke was the genius from whom Leeuwenhoek’s life work stemmed” (ibid. 59).

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tures.40 Leeuwenhoek differs thus from the Dutch mathematician, microscopist and instrument maker, Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656-1725), who had made precisely this claim based on falsified images showing the semen as homunculi. Hartsoeker was a gambler among scientists anyway. He declared the discovery of spermatozoa by his acquaintance Leeuwenhoek to be his own.41 Leeuwenhoek punished him henceforth by ignoring his works. For both of them, nonetheless, female eggs constituted a receptive vessel for male semen, which contained the entire developing living being within itself. The egg was merely a nutritive environment for the semen. None of the specialists for seeing had ‘seen’ this. Nevertheless, it opened a double line of battle. On the one hand, it was believed to empirically refute the doctrine of spontaneous generation. According to this theory, which goes back to Aristotle (De generatione animalium), living creatures develop spontaneously out of decaying matter or mud. A false theory was battled with a false premise, admittedly one with an empirical gesture, and thus the preformation theory was born. It contained a correct premise: Life is created by sexual reproduction. But what was correct was based on a mixture of microscopic experiments and false interpretation. Living semen and eggs (follicles, to be precise) had really been identified, but both had been incorrectly interpreted. The so-called ovists, to whom the young anatomist Reinier de Graaf (1641-1673), also from Delft, belonged, then confronted the spermaticists, Leeuwenhoek and Hartsoeker. Graaf supported the hypothesis of the generative function of the female egg (although he considered the ovarian follicles that bear his name to be themselves the eggs), while still others attributed generative potency to both egg and semen. Hartsoeker and Leeuwenhoek were united in rejecting spontaneous generation, united in the (false) theory of preformation, but enemies in regard to priority in the discovery of spermatozoa, the function of which they both in unison incorrectly identified. Both agreed with de Graaf in regard to the preformationist premise, but they challenged his theories on the function of the eggs, which de Graaf had, in addition, incorrectly identified. For this reason, Leeuwenhoek thought that he had empirically refuted de Graaf, when he showed in 40

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E. G. Ruestow. “Leeuwenhoek’s Perception of the Spermatozoa.” Journal of the History of Biology 16 (1983): 185-224. Brian J Ford. “First Steps in Experimental Microscopy. Leeuwenhoek as Practical Scientist.” The Microscope 43.2 (1995): 47. Ford. Single Lens. 1985. Such priority disputes were common, and Hooke as well was involved in many feuds.

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his investigation of the follicles, which he also considered to be eggs, that they could not possibly assume a generative function. He believed he had thus micro-anatomically ‘proven’ his false dogma of generation through male semen alone.42 To this is added the evocative power of images. The sketch of multiple, identical spermatic homunculi also gave visual support to the dogma of preformation and with it the ‘claim of the singular responsibility’ of male semen for the transmission of life. The discursive hegemony of preformationism was secured for a good century, until the epigeneticists were able to assert themselves.43 But what a chaos of correct and incorrect identifications of microscopic images, what a transformation of empirical findings by theoretical assumptions, what fantastic progress in the microscopic substantiation of the principle of the sexual creation of life, had this not been itself completely incorrectly interpreted! In summary, like the telescope, the microscope functioned as a symbolic instrument of worldviews with a high degree of uncertainty. When a respected expert observer believed he could identify a visual image as this or that, he ‘translated’ it into the medium of a sketch, which was then technically reproduced through printing, commented upon in language, theoretically generalized and, finally, formatted into a complete discourse. The ‘epistemic thing’44 of Leeuwenhoek, de Graaf or Hartsoeker was, in addition, an imagination certified by multiple media transformations. Experimental media must not necessarily generate phantasms, but they can. And yet, Leeuwenhoek’s experimental microscopy represents a sound form of scientific rationality. He does not proceed any differently than Galileo did with his images of the moon obtained through a telescope, images that provided a veritable argument for Copernicanism. Leeuwenhoek’s investigations of the blood are similar. He discovers the red blood cells and identifies within them so-called globuli, which 42

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Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. IV, 11-17 (letter no. 70 [37], January 22, 1683 to the famous architect, Christopher Wren, who collaborated with Hooke). The conclusion states: “And why, seeing that the womb or tuba fallopiana is as it were an entire world in comparison with an animalcule in male sperm […] cannot we imagine that […] this animalcule will, within no time […] assume the figure of a human beeing […] having all the perfections of man?” Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. IV, 15-7. Helmut Müller-Sievers. Epigenesis. Naturphilosophie im Sprachdenken Wilhelm von Humboldts. Paderborn, 1993. Peter McLaughlin. “Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb. Zum Verhältnis von epigenetischer Embryologie typologischem Artbegriff.” Medizinhistorisches Journal 17 (1982): 357-72. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. Towards a History of Epistemic Things. Sythesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

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he occasionally also calls corpuscula. For him, they are analogous to atoms, the elementary building blocks of life described by Descartes. It is certain that Leeuwenhoek had not read Descartes, but he had heard of the globuli theory. What he heard, he then saw.45 Leeuwenhoek’s theory of generation provides much evidence of the dogmatisation of empirical findings. He writes to Robert Hooke in 1680, as his almost obsessive study of the sexuality of fleas begins: And so I have now set myself to an examination of the male sex of the flea, solely to find out whether there are also animalcules in this male sperm. Finally to my great satisfaction, I discovered very distinctly a great quantity of animalcules which also had the shape of little snakes but were uncommonly long and thin […]. But then I have constantly found that the animalcules in male sperm are not at all in proportion to the size of the animals.46

At least the discovery of semen containing animalcula does not lead him to automatically assume that these animalcula are morphologically identical to the future living organism. Nevertheless, the animalcula obtain the status of an empirical proof “that no animals, however small they may be, take their origin in putrefaction, but exclusively in procreation.” At the same time, preformationist phantasms form: “Animals, from the largest down to the little despised animal, the flea, have animalcules in their semen.”47 In the animalcula theory, future living beings are completely encapsulated in the semen. In a letter to Christopher Wren from 1680, the male fantasy about “the ovary of Woman (as 45

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Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. III, 301-9 (letter no. 65 [33], November 12, 1680). Vol. VIII, 13-55 (letter no. 110 [65], September 17, 1688). Vol. VIII, 69113 (letter no. 113 [66], January 12, 1689). Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. III, 325 (letter no. 65 [33], November 12, 1680). Leeuwenhoek naturally also reaps resistance for his animalcula theory, which provoked both followers of spontaneous generation and ovists. He responds that his critics know nothing of “correct observation” and that he sees the animalcula in the microscope as clearly as he sees fleas, mosquitoes or scampering mice with the naked eye. Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. III, 331. Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. III, 329. In letter no. 140 [85] of November 30, 1694 Leeuwenhoek describes sexual reproduction succinctly as a principle of nature. At the same time, he declares species to be stable, thus conforming to preformationist dogma and far removed from any notion of evolution: “It is again apparent to us that provident Nature acts almost in the same way in all created things. And by this – contrary to the theories of Aristotle and his followers, who have provided us with so many fables about generation and even do not scruple to maintain that many Animals spring from putrified matter, decayed things or from mud, so that we are disgusted when we read this nonsense – all intelligent people must become convinced even more so than before that every animal, however insignificant it may appear in their Eyes, depends on a creature similar to that created in the beginning.” Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. X, 165.

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it is now called)” becomes principle: Ovaries supposedly contribute nothing to procreation; they are “nothing but the discharge of some vessels.”48 That is not without a touch of humour. Leeuwenhoek microanatomises Graaf’s follicle under de Graaf’s assumption (he is only named indirectly as a ‘learned Doctor of Medicine and Anatomy’) that these are the ‘so-called eggs.’ And he ‘proves’ that they cannot anatomically be these eggs. It is paradoxical. Leeuwenhoek proves through impeccable microscopic-anatomical findings that the follicles, which are considered to be eggs, are not eggs. And he thus ‘knows’ that women contribute nothing to procreation. The microscope gives birth to male fantasies. But now that I have discovered that the animalcules also occur in the male seed of quadrupeds, birds and fishes, nay even in vermin, I now assume with greater certainty than before that a human being originates not from an egg but from an animalcule that is found in male sperm, the more since I remember having seen that in the sperm of man and also of a dog there are two sorts of animalcules. Seeing these I imagined that one sort were males and the other sort females.49

With implied rationality, the instrument microscope makes not only the invisible but also the imaginary visible. The ‘envisioned’ is presented to the Royal Society, this bulwark of science as “observations and reasoning.”50 With reference to Goethe, one can, indeed, one must call this the ‘metaphysics of phenomena.’ Leeuwenhoek is still working on the sexuality of fleas in 1693. Returning to his studies of 1680 and 1682, he details his many experiments in a letter of over twenty pages in length (fig. 1). These meticulous studies and visualizations of flea development can even be called a pilot study of the sexual behaviour of minute life forms. Before Leeu48 49

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Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. IV, 5-7 (letter no. 70 [37], January 22, 1683). Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. IV, 11 (letter no. 70 [37], January 22, 1683). Leeuwenhoek reacts above all rhetorically to a letter from George Garden of Aberdeen, who quite convincingly explains the generative function of the ovaries: “I know that it might be objected against me: since provident Nature has not made anything in vain, what is the use of the Female ‘balls’ or ovaries? But to this I could say that we see many things the reason of which are hidden from us. For what is the use, in our opinion, of the Nipples of Male Quadrupeds? Nay what is the use of the Nipples which we Men have on our Chest? […] And just as (to my knowledge) the Nipples on the Chest of us Men are not used, in the same way I think the imagined Ovaries are not used in Women.” Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. X, 59 (letter no. 135 [81], March 19, 1694). Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. III, 349 (letter no. 66 [34], November 4, 1681).

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wenhoek’s eyes the flea reveals itself to be a true sex maniac. Leeuwenhoek is particularly interested in the copulation positions and performance of fleas and is amazed that the male flea mates the female flea from beneath (!). The sexual activity these tiny animals exhibit under the microscope seems to him so exorbitant that, Leeuwenhoek fantasizes, it would be fatal for larger animals. Something to imagine: death by copulation. What an intensity, frequency, variation spectrum and potency in the universal and in the subliminal especially virulent sex life! No mention of spontaneous generation! (fig. 2) The flea’s sex orgies are a welcome proof against the Roman authority of Athanasius Kircher, which he denounces, but not without a touch of humour: Now if we are to believe Kircherus, we must assume for certain that Fleas in Italy are of quite a different structure and procreation. […] If he had been equipped with magnifying glasses, he would have judged differently. I must say that, if Kircherus had spent a few days in studying Fleas with a good magnifying glass and keen observation, just as I have lost many days doing this, he would have spoken quite differently about the procreation of fleas, even apart from the manifold fables about procreation and other fantasies he put on paper, and as it were scattered abroad.51

Without a doubt, Leeuwenhoek considers the microscope to be an instrument of truth. Due to this ‘instrumental’ bias, he is susceptible to using the microscope not only as an instrument for seeing. It is also as an instrument for projecting his own imagination, which is then published, attested and proven. In Letter 83 of the Arcana from April 30, 1694, Leeuwenhoek polemisizes against the excellent microscopist, natural researcher and curator of the Museum Collegii Romani Kircherianum, Filippo Bonanni (1638-1725). In his Recreazione dell’occhio e della mente nell’osservazione della chiocciole of 1681 Bonnani had taken the side of his teacher, Kircher, in a dispute with Franscesco Redi, an ovist (Omne vivum ex ovo). Bonnani supported the theory of spontaneous generation and repeated it in his later Observationes circa viventia (1691).52 Leeu51

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Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. IX, 259 (letter no. 126 [76], October 15, 1693). The description of the flea is in: Leeuwenhoek. Arcana. 353-374. Idem. Opera Omnia II. 321-343. Filippo Bonanni (Buonanni). Observationes circa viventia, quae in rebus non viventibus reperiuntur, recognitae ad vivum experimentur. Rome, 1691. Bonanni not only built very good variable compound microscopes that were completely different from Leeuwenhoek’s single-lens apparatus, but which were the model for the so-called screw-barrel microscopes (which are usually attributed to Hartsoeker) throughout Europe. In this book he also reported with much specialist

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Fig. 1: Flea studies from Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Arcana Naturae Detecta (Leiden, 1722).

competence on different techniques of microscope construction. His illustrations of molluscs and insects are superb.

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Fig. 2: Flea testis from Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Arcana Naturae Detecta (Leiden, 1722).

wenhoek now intends to prove sexual generation on Bonanni’s main example, molluscs. But the result is clear from the outset. He opens the letter with a quote from the letter of an unnamed scholar: “Since the Author of this Book [Bonanny] holds to the Opinion of the Ancients, in particular of Aristotle, about the generation of the shell-fishes, asserting that they are born spontaneously in mud or sandy earth, etc.” And with this quote, Leeuwenhoek turns to his London colleges, certain of their agreement: “Here it is seen, Very Noble Sirs, how the [the opinion of] some of the Members of the Royal Society is disputed, who have ex-

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erted themselves in studying generation, and the numerous observations made by them as well as myself, and who always found that no creature is produced except by generation.”53 This clever, rhetorical performance of a coalition with the ‘strongest regiment’ of the 17th century is followed by the empirical part of the letter containing a micro-anatomy of molluscs. (fig. 3) The letter concludes: Here we see, Very Noble Sirs, that when we try to speak about some truth, and especially the generation of small Creatures, which we can never witness with our Eyes, we should not rely on reports or hearsay, but on our own findings, and that we should not treat a matter lightly, but must preserve a long time and indefatigability if we are to find the truth.54

Revealing for the letter’s performative quality is the anecdotal section. Leeuwenhoek confronts a mussel fisher who adheres to the mud theory of generatio with his microscopic findings. Although the fisher interrogates a ninety-year-old colleague, who, as to be expected, also supports the mud theory, he is convinced by Leeuwenhoek’s microscopic evidence: “He was amazed and added: ‘you know more than we do.’”55 5. Attestation and Visual Documentation Here, we come to a principle dilemma of the new experimental systems that operate with the invisible: They are by no means self-evident. They require additional confirmation. In his apostrophe to the members of the Royal Society, Leeuwenhoek, in a gesture of rhetorical comprehen53

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Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. X, 91 (letter no. 137 [83], April 30, 1694). Leeuwenhoek already mentions Bonanni’s new book, which he, admittedly, had not read, Letter 60 from March 26, 1694. As was often the case, the contents of the book, which was written in a language he did not understand, were summarized for him. Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. X, 31 (letter no. 134 [80], March 2, 1694). Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. X, 135 (letter no. 137 [83], April 30, 1694). Ibid. The persuasive aspect of visualisation also emerges clearly in the following quote: “I only had this little animal depicted in order to convince those who still maintain with all the force of ignorance that living Creature can be generated from putrefaction and to show the wonderful structure of so small and despictable a Fish, of which not one Man in a thousand knows that it exists in the World, apart from a great many more admirable Vessels, Sinews and Organs which one perceives in so small a Creature when it has just been taken from its little Shell or when the parts of the body are still moist.” Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. X, 123.

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Fig. 3: Mollusk with eggs (so called little fish = pisciculi) from Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Arcana Naturae Detecta (Leiden, 1722). “I had the animal drawn with the intention of convincing people who stupidly still stick to the opinion that such creatures emerge from decay, by presenting to them the wonderful formation of these pathetic little fish, which isn’t known to even a thousand members of human society, although it is worth the greatest admiration [...].” (Opera Omnia. Vol. II, p. 433.)

sion, draws the highly authoritative scientific community to his side. He shows that he conforms to their maxims of research practises: “own experiences, observations, experiments” are the laborious, but certain paths to ‘truth.’ The use of the old topos of ‘two paths’ secures, in addition, the ethical dignity of the ‘arduous effort’ of the experimental method. Leeuwenhoek stylises himself as Hercules.56 The scientifically 56

For Hercules as an ethical hero of labour on the ‘right’ path see Erwin Panofsky.

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insignificant but rhetorically effective anecdote of the aged and young fisher, in which the latter affirms Leeuwenhoek’s cognitive superiority, secures, in addition agreement with the “very learned and distinguished Gentleman.”57 Leeuwenhoek has skilfully strategically surrounded the Aristotelians both from the side of the new scientific elite and from that of ‘common sense.’ Aristotelians take the path that is ‘comfortable,’ ethically inferior, ‘unsensible,’ irrational, fabulous, dogmatically obdurate and immune to experience. The tactic of accusing the adversary of self-immunization, however, immunizes one’s own position as well. Revealing another’s dogmatism disguises one’s own. In a way, Leeuwenhoek dogmatises empiricism itself. It becomes a pretext for leading phantasms and imaginations to victory. This is supplemented by techniques for enacting attestation and selfperformance, the self-fashioning of a scientist. Leeuwenhoek has a talent for both, as can be illustrated by the example of the microscopic visualization of the arterial and venal thigh connection in the circulatory system. With his extremely powerful single-lens microscope, Leeuwenhoek is able to demonstrate this connection like no one before him. In Leeuwenhoek’s age, blood circulation, discovered in 1628 by William Harvey, had become widely accepted.58 Harvey had not worked with a microscope and could not have known of the transition from the arterial to the venal part of the circulatory system, namely the capillary system, which cannot be seen by the naked eye. Thus, the decisive component necessary to perfect the idea of the circulatory system was missing. A first degree of success was achieved, unsurprisingly, by a microscopist, namely the Italian professor of medicine, Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) in Bologna in 1660. An influential embryologist, he founded microscopic plant anatomy and was, more importantly in this context, the first to close the circulatory system by discovering the pulmonary alveoli and capillaries in a frog.59 In the footsteps of Malpighi, but also in those of the entomologist Jan Swam-

57 58

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Herkules am Scheideweg und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst. Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 18. Leipzig and Berlin, 1930. Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. X, 165 (letter no. 140 [85], November 30, 1694). William Harvey. An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Blood in Animals. Trans. Robert Willis. London: Parsons, 1923. See also Thomas Fuchs. The Mechanization of the Heart: Harvey and Descartes. Trans. Marjorie Greene. Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2001. Marcello Malpighi. Opera Omnia. 2 vols. London, 1686. Vol. 1 is on plant anatomy. Relevant for blood circulation is in vol. 2 “De viscerum structura exercitatio anatomica. Dissertationes eiusdem de polypo cordis, et de pulmonibus.”

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merdam (1637-1680), whose studies on frog larvae Leeuwenhoek read, Leeuwenhoek turns his attention in 1688 to frogs, spawn, tadpoles and newly hatched fish (since they are transparent, they are especially suited to microscopic experiments). Leeuwenhoek achieves sensationally clear insights into the capillary exchange system of arterial and venal blood, not an epistemological, but an optical breakthrough (fig. 4). I concluded that just as many times as this very rapid push forward was caused, so many times was the blood driven from the Heart. Nay, I saw this movement as clearely as I or anyone else could ever imagine the whole propulsion of the blood from the Heart, and the Arteries (at the place where they join up together) into the Veins. Although I contemplated this sight many times to my exceedingly great pleasure, I did not want to keep it only to myself, but I showed this circulation of the blood to five prominent Gentlemen who declared to me that they had never yet seen anything of mine that was so worthy of being beheld.60

He writes in the same letter: This sight, too, I did not wish to keep all to myself, but I showed the same to two prominent learned Gentlemen; […] how the blood was carried from the large Artery to the end of the tail, and that there lay near to this also large Veins which continuously carried the blood to the Heart […].61

These remarks, and there are many similar ones, show not only Leeuwenhoek’s enthusiasm and his pride in the discovery, they also show characteristic methods of negotiating secrecy and publicity. He surrounds the techniques of his microscopes – and he did not sell or give away a single one during his lifetime – with a theatrical mysteriousness, one which was palpable for visitors and contributed much to the aura of his discoverer persona. His research results, enacted in the intimate private space between the eye of the observer, the single-lens microscope directly in front of it and the object, need ‘publication,’ that is, to be portrayed (usually through a commissioned draughtsman), presented in written language, certified by honourable gentlemen and brought into public circulation. Not only Leeuwenhoek’s frequent references to the “agreeable” or “fascinating sight” reveal that this is all a theatrum.62

60 61 62

Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. VIII, 23-24 (letter no. 110 [65], September 7, 1688). Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. VIII, 37. Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. VIII, 45.

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Fig. 4: Arteries and veins connections in fish from Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Arcana Naturae Detecta (Leiden, 1722). Leeuwenhoek measures the flow and pulse of blood. He proposes quantitative relations of blood circulation. He investigates hydraulic and hydrostatic rules. He supports the visualising of blood vessels by injecting mercury and wax.

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Here, theatre means literally the scene of sight, the stage on which science creates itself by experimentally staging its results.63 Witnesses have here a similar function as sketches. They are ‘mediators’ between the idios kosmos of the private researcher and public recognition of his observations and conclusions as the ‘truth.’ Leeuwenhoek writes, and quite often in this vein, “I have put a fish before the magnifying glass, and ordered the Draughtsman to draw everything that he came to see; which is indicated here by fig: 9.”64 This statement contains multiple levels of suggestion. The draughtsman ‘records’ what he sees, and what he sees is seen by ‘us’ ‘here’ as figure 9 on the page of a book. It suggests a correspondence between ‘drafted image,’ ‘optical image’ and ‘object,’ implying that we are seeing as readers here and now ‘the same’ thing that Leeuwenhoek had seen. At the same time, the object, on which Leeuwenhoek had often worked for weeks, has already been rearranged, and this has naturally been done according to his directions. Of course, the draughtsman’s perspective is also not unbiased, as if he were standing over a microscope for the first time. Experimenter and draughtsman cooperated long-term, since the latter also needed to demonstrate a degree of expertise, and discussions and arrangements, for example, do take place between experimenter and draughtsman.65 Every ‘object’ that is handed over to the draughtsman or a witness for contemplation has already been selected by Leeuwenhoek, extensively manipulated, prepared, dissected or visualized 63 64 65

Cf. Helmar Schramm. Karneval des Denkens. Theatralität im Spiegel philosophischer Texte des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996. Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. VIII, 47 (letter no. 110 [65], September 7, 1688). The following passage shows that disagreements could arise between draughtsman and experimenter: “Nor did I intend to have the Flea drawn, but because a certain learned Gentleman strongly urged me to do so, adding that it would thus be possible to convince the world that Fleas are not generated by corruption but by procreation, I caused it to be done. And although very many blood vessels could be seen, especially in the abdomen, he was able to draw only a few of them, saying that it was impossible to depict the others. This Flea as drawn appears to my eyes to be some eight times bigger, and this as looked through the same glass as drawn here, although the Draughtsman says he does not see it any bigger. I could not imagine that there was such a great difference in men’s eyes as I now see. This Draughtsman was shortsighted.” Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. IX, 231-3 (letter no. 126 [76], October, 1693). Indirectly, this passage makes it clear that Leeuwenhoek wants his sketches made in exactly the same dimension as the microscope enlarges the object, so that the reader assumes that what he sees in the book is exactly what is seen through the microscope. This is, of course, an illusion.

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through mercury injection.66 By implying an equivalence of original experimental situation, draughtsman’s eye, drawing and reader’s gaze, attention is deflected away from the many transformations and media formations that generate the ‘result’ and create the community between scientist and public. It is to be forgotten that all images follow a persuasive rhetoric. The researcher’s credibility is especially at stake when confronting the invisible. This is why Leeuwenhoek purposefully implements the model of attestation. (fig. 5) Before taking my leave I feel compelled to add to this that, some time ago when I was reporting to a certain Professor of Medicine my discovery relating to the circulation of the blood, this Gentleman told me that, when people were discussing my observations, and referring to them in confirmation of certain Matters, the response frequently was: are we to believe it just because Leeuwenhoek says so; what certainty do we have of it. For which reason that Gentleman warned me, and said that I would do well to produce an attestation of a few prominent persons who might have been eye-witnesses to these my discoveries, in order that I might suffer less contradiction in such related matters.67

Similar is a passage on embryonic eels in the so-called eel matrix, which Leeuwenhoek believes to support his preformationist assumptions (and the animalcula theory): This was no small pleasure for me to contemplate, on the one hand because, after so much indefatigable work, I had last discovered the procreation of the Eel, and on the other hand because it silenced the People who would often say the following behind my back: Since he seeks to establish that all Animals are procreated, let him demonstrate to us how Eels are procreated. I did not wish to keep to myself the sight of these young, perfect, and unborn Eels, although they were quite fifty times thinner than a hair of our head, as stated heretofore, but I communicated it to some of my acquaintances, who were amazed that such small creatures were so perfect.68

Clearly, there is a performative aesthetics of experiments, and it is supplemented by the performance of witnessing. Both serve to create an 66

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For that reason, Hooke, who is a much more critical draughtsman and also spoke openly about the optical illusions of the microscope, explains in his preface the circumstances under which the visual representations of his objects are made and considers also optimisation possibilities and sources of error. Hooke. “Preface.” Micrographia. N. p. (= 24-32). Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. VIII, 55 (letter no. 110 [65], September 7, 1688). Leeuwenhoek. Collected Letters. Vol. IX, 155-7 (letter no. 123 [75], September 16, 1692).

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Fig. 5: Blood vessels of a butterfly wing from Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Arcana Naturae Detecta (Leiden, 1722). The scales – still indicated with the letters VTSWWW – have been removed. AG-EF describes a large blood vessel. PQR = branching blood vessel.

apparent self-evidence of truth and factuality, one that has, in the process, erased the traces of its stylisation. Included in this setting are the addressees of the letters, the highly respected honourable scholars of the Royal Society. Leeuwenhoek knows that his experimental methods conform to theirs, but just as important is that his letters’ opening addresses, their translation from the Dutch and their publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society have a rhetorical effect. It raises the provincial into the universal, the petty bourgeois into the intellectual elite. As the institution that sets the standards, the Royal Society certifies Leeuwenhoek’s authority, even in his weirdest phantasms. The performative quality of the letters creates a powerful aura; it raises prestige and increases symbolic capital. The empiricism that is born wears the features of the century, the saeculum theatralicum.

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6. Micrography as Art Robert Hooke’s (1635-1703) Micrographia (1665)69 contains 38 magnificent folio illustrations of exceptional artistic worth. A talented draughtsman, Hooke is here carrying on an artistic tradition that began with illusionist representations of minute animals and plants. One need only look at Albrecht Dürer’s watercolours of a crab, the wing of a roller, the Large Turf; Wenzel Jamnitzer’s miniature sculptures, Bernhard Palissy’s works in ceramics, the miniature-painters Joris and Jacob (Son) Hoefnagel, Thomas Moufet’s insect theatre. It is perpetuated in the superbly illustrated books of the first microscopic era by Francesco Stelluti and Frederico Cesi, Marcello Malpighi, Filippo Bonanni, Jan Swammerdam and into the hand-made sketches of Hooke and Leeuwenhoek, which were later translated into engravings. When Hooke declares in his introduction that “a new visible World” has been discovered, in that the telescope has opened up the heavens, and “the Earth itself, which lyes so neer to us, under our feet, shews quite a new thing to us, and in every little particle of its matter, we now behold almost as great a variety of Creatures, as we were able before to reckon up in the whole Universe it self:”70 then he has experienced that through mechanically enhancing the power of the eye, the world of middling magnitude has been joined by two new, manifold and teeming universes. The antique peripatetics would be unsuspecting strangers in these new worlds, states Hooke, claiming that he and his contemporaries live in a new ‘picture’ of the world, and this ‘picture’ is that of ‘experimental Philosophy,’ as it is constituted by the microscope and telescope. It is revealing that Hooke dedicates much space to a critique of the natural senses. Their imperfect capacities and susceptibility to error, our anthropologically deficient basic equipment, imprison us, Hooke claims, in an imperfect and false world. It is thus necessary to artificially enhance and model the senses, in order to compensate for the disproportion of our erring perceptions in relation to the true nature of things. Hooke develops a utopian future, in which all five senses are instrumentally enhanced and mechanically perfected, making unforeseen capabilities and treasures accessible. The Goethean ‘middle’ of the 69

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Informative: Allan Chapmann. “England’s Leonardo: Robert Hooke (1635-1703) and the art of experiment in Restoration England.” Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 67 (1966): 239-75. Simon Schaffner and Michael Hunter, eds. Robert Hooke: New Studies. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989. Hooke. “Preface.” Micrographia. N. p. (= 12).

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‘particular,’ that which ‘befits our senses,’ is for Hooke a deficient, limited, imperfect and defective world. If one compares Hooke to Leeuwenhoek, it is conspicuous that Hooke uses the microscope less as an instrument of research than of observation. He rarely and only unsystematically asks questions about functional processes or causes. Neither does he pursue the ‘great’ questions of contemporary discourses, such as generation, sexuality, or blood circulation, which occupy Leeuwenhoek’s mind and lead him to systematically apply the microscope. Nor does he practise the combination of anatomy and microscopy, a kind of micro-anatomy, that is characteristic for Leeuwenhoek or Malpighi and actually does lead to new knowledge. He did not even recognize the significance of the discoveries that have been attributed to him, such as cell structure (on a piece of cork). When he becomes interested in the obligatory parasites like fleas, lice, mites etc, he does not extend his research to general questions such as the parasitic infestation of agricultural crops, as Leeuwenhoek did. If he had possessed a microscope as powerful as Leeuwenhoek’s, one that would have enabled him to discover oral bacteria, it is certain that he would have drawn no conclusions for oral hygiene. Hooke’s gaze is neither particularly analytical nor causal or application-oriented. The results of his written and pictorial presentations of plants and animals represent breakthroughs in neither botany nor zoology. His strengths lie elsewhere (fig. 6). Hooke is perhaps the strongest representative of the res et verba formula or the motto from Cato, rem tene, verba sequentur, which was held in such high esteem by the Royal Society.71 He ‘captures’ the ‘object,’ namely the visual image, most precisely and lets the ‘words’ ‘follow.’ His written descriptions, as well, are superb examples of a scientific style of description. He is a master of scientistic ekphrasis. In word and image, Hooke aims for maximum morphological comprehension of a thing, a plant, an animal, and with such clarity that the function of the portrayed detail – the eye of a fly, an insect trunk – illuminating itself, as it were, enlightens the reader or viewer. Instead of proceeding from a causal-analytical model, Hooke takes a phenomenological-morphological approach to the aesthetically fascinating object (and

71

Both editors of the reprint of Sprat’s history of the Royal Society emphasis this, referring to Howell and Williamson. Thomas Sprat. A History of the Royal Society of London. Ed., intro., and notes I. Jackson Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones. St. Louis and London: Washington University Press, 1959. XXIX-XXXI.

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Fig. 6: Head of a grey drone fly with faceted eyes from Robert Hooke (London, 1667).

is thus closer to Goethe than to Newton).72 Filled with an artist’s marvel and obsession with presentation, Hooke takes visual evidence to the extreme and lets the written descriptio merge fully into the object that has become an image.73 But there is yet more proof that Hooke is an experimental artist. It must be shown that the Micrographia offers ‘pictorial proof’ with its perfect illustrations. Its aesthetic fascination is based on the elevation of the most mundane and negligible of things, a bit of cloth, a mite, a snow flake, a flea, the blade of a knife, the eye of a fly, a thistle leaf, to nobility. This enriches not only art and the senses, but also the reflecting consciousness. It changes the position of humanity. Things that 72 73

Goethe did not notice this. Cf. his rather derogatory characterisation of Hooke, in: Goethe. FA. Sec. 1, vol. 23/1, 741-42, 1053. A first attempt in this direction is undertaken by John T. Harwood. “Rhetoric and Graphics in ‘Micrographia.’” Schaffer, Hunter. Robert Hooke. 119-47.

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Fig. 7: Illustration of trombidiid and plant mites, a ‘crab-like insect’, that Hooke couldn’t clearly determine (book-scorpion), and a ‘silver-coloured bookworm’ (silver fish). from: Robert Hooke Micrographia (London, 1667).

appear to be mundane are only so because of the blindness of our senses. Under the microscope, they reveal themselves as they really are: as art, ars naturae.74 Never before, or at least not before the era of the 74

The otherwise splendid volume from Ford does not even approach to this idea. Brian J. Ford. Images of Science. A History of Scientific Illustration. London: Oxford University Press, 1992. Just as naive in this regard is Harry Robin. The

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microscope, could the – for want of a better expression – artistic dignity of things appear in such a light as here. The microscopic not only humbles the senses, but with them also traditional knowledge and traditional art. The wealth of minute forms and constructions is a cabinet of curiosities that surpasses every human collection. It inspires not only the human progress of knowledge and civilisation, but also gives birth to an unforeseen artistic enthusiasm and aesthetic satisfaction unknown to the unaided senses (fig. 7): And I do not only propose this kind of Experimental Philosophy as a matter of high rapture and delight of the mind, but even as a material and sensible Pleasure. So vast is the variety of Objects which will come under their Inspections, so many different wayes there are of handling them, so great is the satisfaction of finding out new things, that I dare compare the contentment which they will enjoy, not only to that of contemplation, but even to that which most men prefer of the very Senses themselves.75

Too little attention has been paid to the fact that this empiricist, technician and curator of experiments of the Royal Society, who is given no opportunity to approach the scientific greatness of a Boyle or a Newton, develops a grandiose aesthetic programme here, one that belongs as much to the history of art as to science. Micrographia is not only the performative development of a scientific paradigm, it is also an artistic program, and both are oriented towards the civilizing utopia of enormously enhanced senses. Contained with the empiricism of the hour is a new Epicureanism, which is celebrated as a release from the anthropological constraints imposed by our physiological equipment. This is, first and last, the message of the images. Translation: Elisabeth Neswald

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Scientific Image: from Cave to Computer. Historical foreword by Daniel Kevles. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1992. The situation is better in anatomy: K. B. Roberts and J. D. W. Tomlinson. The Fabric of the Body: European Traditions of Anatomical Enlightenment Art and Medicine. New York: Clarendon, 1992. Hooke. “Preface.” Micrographia. N. p. (= 23).

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WORKS CITED Alewyn, Richard and Karl Sälzle. Das große Welttheater. Die Epoche der höfischen Feste in Dokument und Deutung. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959. Anders, Günther. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution. 2 vols. Munich: Beck, 1956/80. Baker, Heinrich (Henry). Das zum Gebrauch leicht gemachte Microscopium [...]. Zurich, 1753. Blumenberg, Hans. The Legitimacy of the Modern Age. Trans. R. M. Wallace. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983. Blumenberg, Hans. “Das Fernrohr und die Ohnmacht der Wahrheit.” Galileo Galilei. Sidereus Nuncius. Nachricht von neuen Sternen. Ed. Hans Blumenberg. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1980, 7-75. Böhme, Hartmut. “Das Volle und das Leere. Zur Geschichte des Vakuums.” Luft. Ed. Hartmut Böhme. Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland Göttingen, 2003. Bonanni (Buonanni), Filippo. Observationes circa viventia, quae in rebus non viventibus reperiuntur. Cum Micrographia curiosa, sive rerum minutissimarum observationibus, quae ope microscopii recognitae ad vivum experimentur. Rome, 1691. Bredekamp, Horst. “Albertis Flug- und Flammenauge.” Die Beschwörung des Kosmos. Europäische Bronzen der Renaissance. [Exhibit. cat.] Duisburg, 1994. 297-302. Bredekamp, Horst. “Galileo Galilei als Künstler.” Übergangsbogen und Überhöhungsrampe. Ed. Bogomir Ecker and Bettina Sefkow. Hamburg: Hochschule für bildende Kunst, 1996. 54-63. Chapmann, Allan. “England’s Leonardo: Robert Hooke (1635-1703) and the Art of Experiment in Restoration England.” Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 67 (1996): 239-75. Conrady, Karl Otto. Goethe. Leben und Werk. 2 vols. Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum, 1987. Fleckner, Uwe et. al., eds. Aby Warburg. Bildersammlung zur Geschichte von Sternenglaube und Sternenkunde. Die Sammlung Aby Warburg im Hamburger Planetarium. 2 vols. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1993. Ford, Brian J. Single Lens. The Story of the Simple Microscope. London: Harper & Row, 1985. Ford, Brian J. Images of Science. A History of Scientific Illustration. London: Oxford University Press, 1992. Ford, Brian J. “First Steps in Experimental Microscopy. Leeuwenhoek as Practical Scientist.” The Microscope 43.2 (1995): 47-57. Freud, Sigmund. “Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.” The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Ed. and Trans. James Strachey. 24 vols. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. Fuchs, Thomas. The Mechanization of the Heart: Harvey and Descartes. Trans. Marjorie Greene. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001. Gleichen, Wilhelm Friedrich von [called Russworm]. Auserlesene Mikroskopische Entdeckungen bey den Pflanzen, Blumen und Blüthen, Insekten und anderen Merkwürdigkeiten. Nuremberg: Winterschmidt, 1771. Gleichen, Wilhelm Friedrich von [called Russworm]. Abhandlung über die Saamenund Infusionsthierchen, und über die Erzeugung: nebst mikroskopischen Beobachtungen des Saamens der Thiere und verschiedener Infusionen; mit illuminirten Kupfertafeln. Nuremberg: Winterschmidt, 1778.

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Gloede, Wolfgang. Vom Lesestein zum Elektronenmikroskop. Berlin: Verlag Technik, 1986. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. “Faust I und II.” Goethe’s Collected Works in XII Volumes. Vol. II. Ed. and trans. Stuart Atkins. New York, 1884. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. “Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years or The Renunciants.” Goethe’s Collected Works in XII Volumes. Ed. James K. Brown. Vol. X. Cambridge, Mass.: Suhrkamp, 1989. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Maxims and Reflections. Ed. Simona Draghici. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Werke. [Hamburger Ausgabe]. Ed. Erich Trunz. 14 vols. Hamburg: Wegner, 1961-1967. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche [Frankfurter Ausgabe]. Ed. Hendrik Birus et al. 40 vols. Frankfurt a. M.: Insel, 1989. Harvey, William. An Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the Blood in Animals. Trans. Robert Willis. London: Parsons, 1923. Harwood, John T. “Theoretics and Graphics in ‘Micrographia’.” Robert Hooke. New Studies. Ed. Simon Schaffer and Michael Hunter. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989. 119-47. Heinritz, Reinhard. “Teleskop und Erzählperspektive.” Poetica 24.3-4 (1992): 341-55. Held, Gerd. “Die Erscheinung einer Erscheinung. Zur Ästhetik des indirekten Gegenstandes bei Kant und Duchamp.” Unter Argusaugen. Zu einer Ästhetik des Unsichtbaren. Ed. Gerd Held, Carola Hilmes, and Dietrich Mathy. Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 1997. 11-32. Hooke, Robert. Micrographia: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses. London, 1665 [Stuttgart, reprint approx. 1974]. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Ed. and trans. Lewis White Beck. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Ed. and trans. Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Ed. and trans. Paul Guyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Kant, Immanuel. “Kritik der reinen Vernunft.” Werkausgabe. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. Vols. 3 and 4. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. Kant, Immanuel. “Kritik der praktischen Vernunft.” Werkausgabe. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. Vol. 7. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. Kant, Immanuel. “Kritik der Urteilskraft.” Werkausgabe. Ed. Wilhelm Weischedel. Vol. 10. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. Kant, Immanuel. “Geschichte und Naturbeschreibung des Erdbebens, welches 1755 einen Teil der Erde erschüttert hat.” Geographische und andere naturwissenschaftliche Schriften. 1756. Ed. Zehbe, J. Hamburg: Meiner, 1985. 43-80. Ledermüller, Martin Frobenius. Mikroskopische Gemüths= und Augen=Ergötzung: Bestehend, in Ein Hundert nach der Natur gezeichneten und mit Farben erleuchteten Kupfertafeln Sammt deren Erklärung. 3 vols. Nuremberg, 1760, 1761, 1778. Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van. Alle de Brieven van Antoni van Leeuwenhoek/ The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Vol. III (1679-1682). Ed., ill., and ann. by a Committee of Dutch scientists. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1948. Vol. IV (1679-1682). Ed., ill., and ann. by a Committee of Dutch scientists. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1952.

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Vol. VIII (1688-1692). Ed. J. J. Swart. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1967. Vol. IX (1692-1694). Ed. J. Heniger. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1976. Vol. X (1694-1695). Ed. C. C. Palm. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1979. Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van. Arcana naturae detecta. Delphis Batavorum [= Delft], 1695. Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van. Opera Omnia. 1715-22. Vols. I-IV. Hildesheim: Olms, 1971. Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph. Werke in 6 Bänden. Ed. Wolfgang Promies. 5th ed. Frankfurt a. M.: Zweitausendeins, 1994. Malpighi, Marcello. Opera omnia. 2 vols. London: Apud Robertum Scott & Georgium Wells, 1686. McLaughlin, Peter. “Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb. Zum Verhältnis von epigenetischer Embryologie typologischem Artbegriff.” Medizinhistorisches Journal 17 (1982): 357-72. Meyer, Klaus. Die Geheimnisse des Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Ed. and trans. Klaus Meyer. Soest: Meyer, n.d. [approx. 1995]. Meyer, Klaus. Geheimnisse des Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Ein Beitrag zur Frühgeschichte der Mikroskopie. Lengerich et. al.: Pabst, 1998. Mittelstraß, Jürgen. Die Rettung der Phänomene. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1962. Müller-Sievers, Helmut. Epigenesis. Naturphilosophie im Sprachdenken Wilhelm von Humboldts. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1993. Panek, Richard. Seeing and Believing. How the Telescope Opened our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens. New York: Viking, 1998. Panofsky, Erwin. Herkules am Scheideweg und andere antike Bildstoffe in der neueren Kunst. Studien der Bibliothek Warburg 18. Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1930. Pascal, Blaise. Thoughts. Trans. William Finlayson Trotter. New York: P. F. Collins, 1958. Petri, Richard Julius. Das Mikroskop. Von seinen Anfängen bis zur jetzigen Vervollkommnung. Berlin: Schoetz, 1896. Rehbock, Theda. Goethe und die “Rettung der Phänomene.” Philosophische Kritik des naturwissenschaftlichen Weltbildes am Beispiel der Farbenlehre. Konstanz: Verlag am Hockgraben, 1995. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. Towards a History of Epistemic Things. Sythesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Roberts, K. B. and J. D. W. Tomlinson. The Fabric of the Body. European Traditions of Anatomical Illustrations. New York: Clarendon, 1992. Robin, Harry. The Scientific Image: from Cave to Computer. Historical foreword by Daniel Kevles. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1992. Ruestow, E. G. “Leeuwenhoek’s Perception of the Spermatozoa.” Journal of the History of Biology 16 (1983): 185-224. Schaffer, Simon and Michael Hunter, eds. Robert Hooke. New Studies. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989. Schmidt, Gunnar. “Von Tropfen und Spiegeln. Medienlogik und Wissen im 17. und frühen 18. Jahrhundert.” Online at: http://www.medienaesthetik.de/tropfen.html. Schramm, Helmar. Karneval des Denkens. Theatralität im Spiegel philosophischer Texte des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996. Schweizer, Hans Rudolf and Armin Wildermuth. Die Entdeckung der Phänomene. Dokumente einer Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis. Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe, 1981.

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Sprat, Thomas. A History of the Royal Society. Ed. and intro. Jackson I. Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones. St. Louis and London; Washington University Press, 1959. Stafford, Barbara Maria. Artful Science. Enlightenment, Entertainment, and the Eclipse of Visual Education. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994.

SAMUEL Y. EDGERTON

The Sixteenth-Century Mexican Missionary Convent as “Theatre of Conversion” During the fifteen years following the military conquest of Aztec Mexico by Hernan Cortés in 1521, some three score missionary friars from the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian orders were dispatched to the new world for the purpose of converting the indigenous Indians to the Christian faith. By the next decade, these often rival mendicant brotherhoods, their numbers having swelled to nearly a hundred, had agreed upon a single architectural plan for the construction of teaching arenas to be set up in all the native population centers. By the end of the century, some four hundred such monumental complexes had been built all over New Spain, as the Mexican colony was called, a land larger than Spain, Flanders, and Italy combined, stretching over five thousand kilometers from Caribbean Sea to the Gulf of California. These unique structures were known in Spanish as conventos (over a hundred still survive), consisting of a church, abutting friary with interior cloister, and a large courtyard in front of the church called the atrio or patio, walled around with small vaulted chapels called posas set up at each of its interior corners (fig. 1). A tall stone cross usually stood in the center of the patio, and another much larger theater-like open chapel often faced into the courtyard, either attached to the church or set adjacent to it. Before this gathered the thousands of Indian neophytes in order to receive their Christian instruction. Before the friars had even arrived in America, however, they already possessed a mind’s eye conception of how an idealized religious community should appear, especially if it was to be the haven of a chosen people linked by covenant together in fundamental Christian faith, shielded against the venal world of sin and material greed. This was the fore-square ‘City of God,’ envisioned by St. John of Patmos in the Book of Revelations, and later elaborated on by St. Augustine. Renaissance painters like the sixteenth-century Fleming Martin de Vos, frequently depicted it as a gleaming architectural paradise enclosed within

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Fig. 1: Diagram of a prototypical Mexican convent. It shows the constitutional parts, and the normal processional route counter-clockwise around the patio: a) open chapel; b) apse with altar at the eastern end of the church; c) northern entrance to the church; d) western entrance to the church; e) choir gallery; f) monastery; g) Portería; h) monks’ cells; k) Sala de Profundis or refectory; l) Posas; m) walled patio; n) patio cross; o) western entrance to walled patio.

quadrangular protective walls, and with a glowing dome representing all-resplendent God in the center (fig. 2). Such a geometrical definition of a holy precinct, of course, was hardly unique to Christianity, and it is not at all surprising that the Aztecs, whom the Christian friars were about to convert, held almost exactly the same notion regarding their own sacred city, their capital of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) which likewise, as here in a modern reconstruction (fig. 3) was idealized as a quadrangle with its holiest temple in the center. According to the ancient legend, the Aztec god Huizilopochtli led an Exodus-like migration of the Aztec people from their prior prison of persecution to this beautiful lake and protected island where they would behold an eagle perched upon a nopal cactus tree, the sacred sign that Huizilopochtli had promised would symbolize their destined prosperity and imperial dream.

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Fig. 2: Martin de Vos, St. John of Patmos writes the Apocalypse (late sixteenth century).

Such a comparison becomes even more pronounced after the friars began to build their conventos in a similar quadrangular shape, walled around with the church likewise idealized in the center, as in this 1579 engraving, by Franciscan Fray Diego Valadés showing a schematic plan of a Mexican convento with the twelve original Franciscan apostles holding the church symbolically aloft on a palanquin (fig. 4). Surrounding this, are tiny detailed scenes showing the friars in various activities teaching Christianity to the Indians. Figure 5 reproduces the well-known plate from the native-painted Codex Mendoza, depicting a similar schematic plan of Tenochtitlan, quadrangular in idealized shape and with the eagle perched on a nopal cactus tree in the sacred center. Surrounding this are tiny detailed scenes of the Aztec founding lineage members likewise engaged in ritual activities.

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Fig. 3: Reconstructed model of a shrine around the Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan, as it might have looked before the Spanish conquest.

Fig. 4: Fray Diego Valadés, print showing the ideal convent patio and the activities of the monks and the indian Catechumens. From his Rhetorica Christiana (Perugia, 1579).

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Fig. 5: The formation of Tenochtitlan. From the frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza.

Interestingly, the Aztec centric nopal cactus is a direct descendent of a very ancient tradition shared among most Mesoamerican Indian nations before the conquest, that at the center of the primordial world stood a great tree whose roots descended to the underworlds of the dead and unborn and whose lofty branches stretched to sky realm of the gods. This world tree – like the sixteenth-century example in Figure 6 from the native-painted Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis – in effect served as a supernatural conduit, an antenna stretching between earth and heaven (fig. 6). From this tree, were born out of the underworld and blessed by the powers of the upper world, all the native races in America. Either inadvertently or on purpose, the Christian friars caused to be set up in nearly all their convento courtyards – called atrios or patios in sixteenth-century Spanish – large, sometimes three meters tall, stone crosses carved by native Indian sculptors, as this great masterpiece at Acolman near Mexico City (fig. 7). What is so curious about these atrio crosses is that no crucified Jesus is ever shown hanging from them. Rather the crosses are formed to look like branching, leafing trees with the head of Jesus alone depicted – not on, but imbedded in the cross! In

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Fig. 6: Detail from fol. 37, Codex Vindobonensis. It shows the Mixtex world-tree which is responsible for the creation of man.

other words, Jesus is the cross, and to Indian neophyte converts, this intertwined composition must have suggested a comfortable continuation between their pre-conquest pagan notion of the primordial world tree and the Christian cross as its divinely appointed successor. In my recently published book Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico, I present numerous cases where the missionary friars in old Mexico turned their convents literally into open-air theaters, especially after the 1570’s.1 Taking advantage of the Indians natural love of pageantry and ceremony, the friars urged their converts to perform dances and participate in autos (Spanish for ‘miracle plays’) celebrating the Christian lessons and Bible stories. These spectacles were called in the Mexican Nahua language, neixcuitilli. 1

Samuel Y. Edgerton. Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001.

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Fig. 7: Patio cross. Convento San Agustín, Acólman, Mexico.

The atrio/patio, whether originally so intended or not, turned out to be particularly adaptable for religious processions. On special days, such as the Feast of Corpus Christi on the first Thursday following Trinity Sunday, Indian celebrants would march out of the church carrying the Christian Host in a gilded monstrance, and first turn right (facing north) and proceed along the wall, turning left at the first interior corner and continuing so at each corner in a counter-clockwise direction. In fact, small chapels called posas were constructed at each patio/atrio corner where the celebrants would actually ‘pause’ momentarily to hear a lesson or even witness a brief performance of a miracle-play relevant to the message of that holy day. The friars needed to give the Indians a proper Christian substitute for their own traditional pre-conquest pagan pageants, particularly the Panquetzalitztli, also celebrated by a counter-clockwise procession in which the Aztecs carried aloft a tortilla (maize dough) image of Huizilopochtli. The already mentioned open chapels connected to the Mexican conventos also served as stage settings for native dances and religious

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Fig. 8: Open chapel of the Convento de los Santos Pedro y Pablo, Teposcolula, Oaxaca, from the east of the patio.

plays. Here illustrated is the magnificent open chapel in the Dominican convento at Teposcolula, Oaxaca state (Fig. 8). The sheer size of this chapel, almost imperial Roman in proportion, is utterly amazing, especially considering that it was built in a bleak desert area where the local Mixtec parishioners were suffering a terrible diminution in their population due to the small pox epidemic. Nonetheless, the friars were determined to create here a gigantic stage for miracle plays, including inset wooden mezzanine floors on either side of the altar center from which Indian actors dressed as angels could be sent flying from one side to the other on ropes (fig. 9). Let me quote from a near contemporary document, an eye-witness account by Fray Bartholome de Las Casas of a miracle play he witnessed in another similar convento in 1538. For another fiesta the Indians…represented the day of Our Lady’s assumption…and I sang the principal mass…with three choirs of Indian singers accompanied by an organ…and twelve expert flute players…there were the Apostles, or as the Indians represented them…no Spaniard mixed in the acts they performed…and he who represented the Virgin was an Indian and…they all spoke in their own language, and then with much singing and music when it was time for the elevation, the Virgin was raised up from the stage to another height that they had fashioned into heaven, all of which was observed in the grand patio by more than eighty thousand spectators.2 2

Bartolomé de Las Casas. “Apologetica Historia de las Indias.” Historiadores de Indias. Ed. M. Serrano y Sanz. Madrid: Bailly/Baillié y hijos, 1909. Vo1. 1, 65.

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Fig. 9: Open chapel of the Convento de los Santos Pedro y Pablo, Teposcolula, Oaxaca. Interior view in north-eastern direction (the author refers to the wooden Mezzanine on the left).

Not only were such theatrical rituals performed with stage props and machinery, but also with painted backdrops. Indeed, the friars insisted from the beginning that the Indians be taught the latest European styles of painting in order that Christian spectacles be accompanied by didactic ‘visual aids’ as it were. Figure 10 shows another engraving by Fray Diego Valadés, the already mentioned Franciscan friar-artist who also had the distinction of having been born in Mexico, perhaps even to a Tlaxcalan Indian mother, but who was then raised as a devout Christian and became an early student in the Franciscan art school for Indian students established in Mexico City in the early 1530’s. In this engraving, Valades depicted his famous teacher, Fray Pedro de Gante, preaching to an Indian audience and actually using such ‘visual aids,’ pictures painted in the European style by trained Indian artists, either on hanging linen cloths called lienzos, or directly on the walls as mural frescos.

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Fig. 10: Fray Diego Valadés, Fray Diego de Gante Preaches to the Indians. Print from his Rhetorica Christiana (Perugia, 1579).

The friars were well aware that the Indians were quite skilled in painting, but were horrified by the flat, wildly colorful, and grotesque manner in which they represented the humanoid figure – as in Figure 11, an indigenous conception of two back-to-back native deities from one of the few surviving Aztec codices. This is a so-called pagan representation, of course, which the Franciscans were convinced must be the deliberate work of the devil, and so should be expurgated and replaced by more human-looking figures rendered in the current Renaissance technique of perspective and chiaroscuro (light and shadow), as in Fig-

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Fig. 11: The Nahua gods Mictlantecuhtli and Quetzalcoatl. Illustrated in Codex Borgia, fol. 56.

ure 12, a mural of the Crucifixion on the wall of the Augustinian convento at Acolman. It is noteworthy that many if not most of the surviving Renaissancestyle Christian paintings by the newly trained Indian artists in the Mexican conventos, are only in black and white, with little or no additional color. The reason is two-fold. First, most of the models which the European teachers provided their Indian students were black and white prints from imported European books, from the neophyte artists-to-be learned the classic rudiments of the Renaissance style. But more important, I think, was the well-realized fact that images in this style, especially enhanced by whitened highlights and black shades and shadows, produces the unique illusion of three-dimensional reality, a psychological phenomenon lacking in the pre-conquest indigenous style, or in any other artistic style anywhere in the world for that matter. There is no doubt that the Indians, like anyone else who first encounters a Renaissance-style chiaroscuro rendering, were bowled over by the extraor-

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Fig. 12: Crucifixion. Mural in the upper cloister corridor. Convento San Agustín, Acolman, Mexico.

dinary illusionism, which the friars believed would then convince the Indians that the Christian god was just as real as his picture. An excellent example of how the friars and their now-trained Indian artists applied this illusionistic technique as a didactic conversion tool, can still be seen on one of the walls of the Augustinian convento at Epazoyukan. Figure 13 is of a painted chiaroscuro scene of the Last Supper, but please note how the illusionism has been further increased by the fact that the objects on the Last Supper table are not only shaded on their right sides but even cast shadows in this direction as if illuminated by an actual window in the wall opposite; that is to the right of the seated Jesus and his apostles (fig. 14). To Indian catechumens, the miracle of the Last Supper would seem to be actually recurring like a theatrical scene with living actors right in this very room. I would like now to demonstrate how another still extant convento example took advantage of the remarkable theatricality of Renaissance chiaroscuro illusionism by creating a stunning painted mural backdrop to a particular Christian religious occasion perhaps in tandem with a particular date that had critical significance for both the friar mission-

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Fig. 13: Flagellation Christi. Mural in the upper cloister corridor. Convento San Agustín, Acolman, Mexico.

aries and converted Indians in Mexico. But first, let me introduce the matter by describing an earlier event that may have set the precedent. On April 23, 1538, Franciscan friar Toribio Motolinia witnessed a most remarkable miracle play performed by Indians in the patio of the convento of Tlaxcala, some 160 kilometers southeast of Mexico City. After a procession around the convento, Fray Motolinia describes the amazing stage setting filled with live plants and animals, and then how live actors performed. Their lines, in their own native language, were often impromptu with touches of bawdy innuendo and Chaplinesque pathos. Here follows an abridged translation of the Franciscan’s account:3 The abode of Adam and Eve was adorned in such a way as to resemble Terrestrial Paradise. In it there were various fruit and flowering trees. Some of the

3

Fray Toribio Motolinia. Motolinia’s History of the Indians of New Spain. Trans. Francis Borgia Steck. Washington D. C.: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1951. 157-59.

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Fig. 14: Last Supper. Mural in the refectory. Convento San Andrés, Epazoyucán, Hidalgo, Mexico.

latter were natural, others were artificial with flowers made of feathers and gold. In the trees there was a great variety of birds, from the owl and birds of prey to the little birds. Most conspicuous were the many parrots, whose chattering and screeching was so loud that sometimes they disturbed the play. I counted on a single tree forty parrots. There were also artificial birds made of gold and feathers which were beautiful to look at. The rabbits and hares were so numerous that the whole place seemed full of them together with many other little animals, some of which I had never seen before. There were also two ocelots. These were tied because they are very fierce. Once, during the play, Eve was careless and went near one of them, and, as if well trained, the beast went away. This was before the sin; had it occurred after the sin, she would not have been so lucky. There were other artificial animals, all well simulated, with some boys inside them. These acted as if they were domesticated and Adam and Eve teased and laughed at them. Four rivers or springs flowed from the paradise, each bearing its label which read: Phiron, Gheon, Tigris and Euphrates. The tree of life was in the center of paradise and near it stood the tree of knowledge of good and evil with many beautiful artificial fruits in gold and feathers. Around the paradise were three large rocks and a high sierra. On these was a rich abundance of whatever can be found on a refreshing mountain, together with everything that is characteristic of April and May. For making a thinglook natural these Indians have a singular talent. On the rocks there were animals, some of them were real, others were artificial. One of the artificial animals was a boy dressed like a lion. He was tearing to pieces and devouring a deer that he had killed. The deer was real and lay on a crag which was made between the two rocks. As soon as the procession arrived, the play began. It lasted a long time because, before Eve ate, and Adam consented, Eve went from the serpent to her

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husband and from her husband to the serpent three or four times, Adam always resisting and, as if indignant, pushing Eve away; she, on the other hand, besought and molested him, saying that the love he had for her seemed small and that she loved him more than he loved her; then, taking him in her lap, she so importuned him that he finally went with her to the forbidden tree. Here, in the presence of Adam she ate of its fruit and gave him to eat. Although they hid themselves as well as they could, they were not able to prevent God from seeing them. And God entered with great majesty accompanied by many angels. When God called Adam, the latter blamed his wife; whereupon she put the blame on the serpent. God condemned them all and imposed a penance on each one. What made the greatest impression was to see the two depart, banished and in tears. Three angels carried Adam and three others carried Eve; they all left the place, singing to the accompaniment of the organ, Circumdederunt me. Thereupon the world was represented as another land, quite different from the one from which Adam and Eve had been banished. It was full of thistles and thorns and many snakes together with rabbits and hares. When the new inhabitants of this world arrived there, the angel showed Adam how he would have to work and cultivate the land, while to Eve were given spindles to spin and make clothes for her husband and children. After consoling the two who remained there and showed great sorrow. This play was presented by the Indians in their native language, so that many of them were deeply moved and shed tears, especially when Adam was banished from paradise and placed in the world.

I would now demonstrate with an especially vivid example, how the missionary friars in Mexico even employed the convento cloister as theatrical setting for a similar didactic performance of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man. In this instance, however, rather than inserting living plants and animals into the scenery, as in Motolinia’s description, the producers depended on the striking illusionism of the new Renaissance-style perspective and chiaroscuro painting, such as native Indian artists were already trained to limn on the convento walls of Epazoyukan and Acolman. But first, a few words about the architectural arrangement of a standard convento cloister which will indicate how ideal were its spaces to the presentation of religious spectacle. In all New, as well as Old World monastic complexes, the cloister was built within the residential friary, typically framed by a vaulted corridor around a central garden, separated only by a low wall supporting an arcade. Usually, a second arcaded gallery rose over the lower corridor, to which the cells of the friars had access. The garden in the center remained open to the sky, often planted with neatly tended flowers and manicured trees with a sculptured fountain in the middle. Ideologically, this structure was the soul-center of the whole convento, the Hortus Conclusus or “Enclosed Garden” symbolizing the pu-

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Fig. 15: Studio of Rogier van der Weyden Annunciation (detail, late fifteenth century).

rity of the Virgin Mary’s womb. European Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation frequently show such a garden adjacent to the Virgin’s bedroom emphasizing her chastity, as in a fifteenth-century Flemish painting of that subject from the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden (fig. 15). The origin of this popular Marian association derives from the Old Testament Vulgate version of the Song of Solomon (4:12-15) wherein Solomon, prefiguring God of the Annunciation, sings to his beloved, in turn prefiguring the Annunciate Virgin, and referring to her as “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut and a fountain sealed >…@ A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters....” In this sense, the real “enclosed garden” of the monastery symbolized both Mary’s immaculateness and the friars’ own rule of celibacy. Positioned in the very center of the monastic complex, the enclosed garden epitomized the collective sanctity of the entire convento.

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Fig. 16: Mural in the eastern cloister corridor. Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

Let us now take a vicarious processional walk through one of the most iconographically intriguing as well as aesthetically pleasing monuments of convento decoration in all colonial Mesoamerica; namely, to examine the murals in the lower corridor of the Augustinian house at Malinalco about seventy kilometers southwest of Mexico City (fig. 16). Only uncovered in 1974-75 after removal of centuries of grime and whitewash, these unprecedented paintings, finished around 1570, depict what appears to be a native American forest in black and white chiaroscuro. Originally the murals ran uninterrupted around the south, east, and north corridor walls between a chest-high dado and overhead cornice. The same forest imagery continues onto the vaults, changing only to a greenish/bluish grisaille. Gamboling in the tangled branches of the fictive jungle on the lower walls is a veritable zoo of indigenous fauna, including monkeys, coyotes, rabbits, squirrels, opossums, snakes and birds of all sorts likewise painted in chiaroscuro indicating European

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influence but interspersed with enough pre-conquest stylisms to convince most scholars that the artists here were native Indians. Indeed, we have here an extraordinary, almost Dioscourides-like encyclopedia of New World biology with dozens of actual species of native plants and animals drawn from life, yet so artfully arranged they give the effect of a woven tapestry. No comparable painted murals exist anywhere else datable to the sixteenth century in post-conquest colonial America. Several investigators, most recently Jeanette Favrot Peterson in a prize-winning book,4 have already identified the iconography of these lower cloister paintings as an Indian representation of the Christian Terrestrial Paradise, especially revealing how the native artists syncretized indigenous zoological and botanical lore with traditional Christian subject matter. Interestingly, garden imagery was regarded by both European Christians and pre-conquest Indians as signifying human rejuvenation and moral redemption. Peterson, nonetheless, has insisted that the purpose of the Malinalco murals, in spite of being executed by Indian painters was reserved for the friars’ private meditation and edification, and generally off limits to the surrounding Indian community. As she then postulates, the basic pictorial message, only for the friars’ benefit, was of an “idealistic vision … a utopian scheme,” as she states, of monastic life in the newly discovered Americas. Peterson argues that the Augustinians at Malinalco would have wanted to depict in their convento the same “Thebaid” theme that was traditional to their order since the early Middle Ages. Such scenes of celibate monks abandoning the contemplative privacy of their solitary abbeys in order to evangelize publicly in the temporal world were especially expressive of the intensifying missionary zeal during the great age of monastic reform and are frequently painted in Europe. Curiously, however, what is also evident in the Malinalco murals is that there are no human inhabitants painted in this fictive Garden of Eden. Instead, the scenes show only masses of unruly trees and vines inhabited by a plethora of untamed animals. I will here argue instead that Peterson errs in assuming the Malinalco cloister murals were not intended for an Indian audience. Rather, I want to demonstrate that the Malinalco cloister was purposely decorated as a theatrical stage for a native religious procession celebrating the moral dilemma of mankind’s

4

Jeanette Favrot Peterson. The Paradise Garden Murals of Malinalco: Utopia and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

Fig. 17: Detail of the Portería Façade, Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

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Fig. 18: Eastern cloister corridor, seen from western corridor. Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

first sin in the Garden of Eden, and the Virgin Mary’s gift of redemption in her cloister Hortus Conclusus. It’s crucial to note, before going further, that the Malinalco forest images are represented as if behind a row of shield-like medallions depicted suspended at even intervals of three along the north, east, and south walls (fig. 18). Each medallion bears one of three common Christian symbols. These are the same images as those carved above the portería arches outside on the friary façade (fig. 17). Here, they are to be ‘read’ left-to-right as follows: the thrice-pierced heart, emblem of the Augustinian brotherhood; an A interlaced with an M, which stands for Ave Maria and thus an insignia of the Annunciate Virgin Mary; and third, IHS, Iesus Hominum Salvator [Jesus, the savior of mankind]. Each group of three (six groups altogether along the portería) is separated on the by a Malinalco place-sign, a bunch of grass after its name in the native Nahua language. The medallions also have their own outer edges bound by what appears to be twined rope, perhaps in punning reference again to the community’s Indian name. Inside the cloister corridor the same groups of three are represented once more as painted symbols, one group to each cloister-corridor wall (fig. 19). Notice, however, that the three Christian emblems here are so arranged as to be read in right-to-left sequence, the mirror-reverse of the order on the portería facade. Clearly, the repeated presence of these

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same symbols, first on the portería facade and then in reverse in the cloister, reveals that they once served a deliberate ritual purpose. For example, a celebrant exiting the convento church through the west portal and turning left to walk along the portería facade toward the entrance of the cloister would first see the sculpted medallions above the portería arches at his/her left hand. Then, when the celebrant turns left again and enters the cloister, he/she once more observes the same arrangement of medallions, but now in their same proper order at right hand, and continuing so as he or she walks around the corridor in the traditional counterclockwise direction. The first medallion encountered on the south wall of the cloister corridor, now at the celebrant’s right, is the Augustinian emblem, followed by the Annunciate Virgin Mary’s insignia more or less in the middle section of the wall, and third the IHS medallion just before confronting the east wall. Next, turning left along the east wall, the same order is repeated again at the right, ending with the IHS preceding the east corner of the north wall. Finally, turning left along the north wall, the series is once more restated with the IHS symbol preceding the corner of the west wall. What is the peculiar meaning of this arrangement in which the same repetitive order of carved medallions as perceived on the left as one walks along the portería facade is then continued in painted versions, but only as perceived from the right as one moves counterclockwise along the cloister corridor wall? Furthermore, why is the IHS emblem always third in order? Surely we have here a set of directional indicators mapping a processional route leading from the church along the portería facade, then into the cloister through its west portal, then around the corridor, and finally out through the western portal and back to the church once more. This pattern demonstrates beyond any doubt that the Malinalco cloister entertained native processional functions just like the convento patio. At each cloister corner there are even indented niches called testeras which like the patio posas, were intended as halting places where the procession might pause briefly to hear a lesson or even witness a theatrical scene from a holy story. At Malinalco, the testeras are all so positioned that one can only face them by proceeding in a counterclockwise direction. We may further assume that the consistent order of all the medallions contained its own moral message. As the Indian celebrants passed along each wall, they should contemplate, first their conversion by the Augustinian friars, next the miracle of the Virgin’s Annunciation (prompting a look left into the cloister garden), and then their newly

Fig. 19: Detail, wall of the eastern cloister corridor. Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

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Fig. 20: Detail, Coca Tree with Apes. Wall of the eastern cloister corridor. Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

achieved salvation because of Jesus’s divine sacrifice on the Cross, before pausing to hear an inspirational message before each corner testera. Interesting as all this might be, however, what has it to do with the imagery of the terrestrial paradise behind the row of medallions? When observed from within the central cloister garden, the forest imagery appears to be occluded by these large images. Indeed, the depicted jungle seems illusionistically beyond the very convento itself, thus figuratively outside the protective environs of Malinalco’s ‘spiritual fortress.’ The medallions, which have their own outer edges bound by what look like twined or braided rope in reference to the native meaning of ‘Malinalco,’ as already mentioned, was also a Nahua symbol for a topographical boundary. Moreover, twisted grass and tree branches – note how the initials IHS are formed of twisted twigs in this medallion – were also Indian symbols for topographical boundaries, and many sixteenth-century native land titles extant in the Mexican National Archives actually describe how, whenever a new native community is to be founded, the Indians marched in ceremonial procession counterclockwise around the perimeter, during which the elders would set the new community’s borders by: “>…@ joining together boughs and pasture grass, one with the other, and in this manner they were capable

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of identifying their borderlands, tying the branches as it was mentioned, isolating the lands pertaining to this town.”5 Following this ritual, markers of stone or some other permanent material, known as teteles, were then set up along the borders. In the manuscript land titles, these are often depicted as circular in shape, similar in form to the Augustinian medallions. I submit that both Indian painters and Augustinian friars saw these medallions as framing an allegorical boundary analogous to the actual demarcated boundaries of native Indian communities, but here tropologically separating orderly Christian community life within the convento from paganism and the chaotic secular world without. In other words, the lower cloister corridor murals at Malinalco were not intended to depict a contiguous extension of the actual garden in the center of the cloister but rather its dualistic, symbolic opposite, the savage wilderness of terrestrial paradise lost as Adam and Eve fell from God’s grace. The impresarios of the Malinalco convento murals meant from the beginning that there be ‘two gardens’ in their cloister, the outer primordial but fictive, the inner orderly and actual; each an exegetic cue that the birth of Christ by Mary, the New Eve of the ‘Garden Enclosed,’ finally granted divine salvation from the Original Sin of First Eve in Paradise Lost. No doubt, the artists and the friars chose to tone the wall murals in dark grisaille, to enhance this solemn moral message, in sharp contrast to the vivid ‘living’ color of the actual ‘garden enclosed’ in the center. Looking now at the east wall of the Malinalco cloister corridor (fig. 19), we observe that there are a number of significant trees, flowers, and animals here depicted; namely two indigenous American trees, one a white sapote which bears a sweet apple-like fruit (to the left of the Augustinian medallion), and the second further right (fig. 20), the unique cacao tree so treasured by the Indians that not only were its seeds brewed as the ‘drink of the gods’ but even circulated as money. The animals represented climbing among these trees include, besides a number of bird species, two native spider monkeys picking cacao beans, and a coyote eating grapes while what looks like another smaller coyote with head turned almost full-face to the viewer clings to its back 5

Quot. from: García Angel Zambrana. “Early Colonial Evidence of Pre-Columbian Rituals of Foundation.” Seventh Palenque Round Table, 1989. Ed. Merle Green Robertson and Virginia M. Fields. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, 1994. 217-27.

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Fig. 21: Detail. Coyotes. Wall of the eastern cloister corridor. Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

Fig. 22: Detail. Hare Eating Pomegranates. Wall of the eastern cloister corridor. Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

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Fig. 23: Prototypical mediaeval “T and O”- Mappa mundi. It shows the three known continents of the world, arranged schematically around Jerusalem in the middle. East is above, the place of the “terrestrial paradise“, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

(fig. 21). Nearby, a number of rabbits nibble on grapes and pomegranates (fig. 22). Roses, a flower not indigenous to the New World but introduced by the Spanish, are also depicted. The rose, of course, was especially prized in the Old World as having traditional association with the Virgin Mary: ‘a rose without thorns.’ The east side of any Christian religious structure had special theological imprimatur. Not only does the Bible specify that God planted Terrestrial Paradise ‘eastward in Eden,’ and that east is the source of the sun-rise, but it was from this sacred direction that the Angel Gabriel supposedly came to the Virgin Mary in her own cloistered domicile. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, the Terrestrial Paradise as Garden of Eden was always represented on the schematic mediaeval Tand-O maps as being in the orient; indeed, even in the preferred ‘up’ position on these charts (fig. 23). With that in mind, we should be aware that any image depicted on the east side of a convento cloister would have enhanced iconographical importance. The depicted roses, pomegranates, and grapes on this wall certainly referred respectively to the Virgin’s purity and Jesus’s sacrifice.

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Fig. 24: Detail. A Snake Threatens a Bird. Wall of the eastern cloister corridor. Convento San Salvador, Malinalco, Mexico.

There can be no doubt that the sapote tree was further intended here to represent the Biblical Tree of Life, and its fruit likened to Eve’s apple. In the tree to its left, perhaps representing the Tree of Knowledge, the Indian artist indicated a serpent coiled around a branch and menacing a small bird, a clear reference to the Devil’s temptation in the Garden of Eden (fig. 24). Also related to Eve’s temptation were the pair of monkeys in the cacao tree, whose association with Eve and the Virgin Mary has been cogently summed up by Erwin Panofsky: “The monkey symbolized all the undesirable qualities thanks to which Eve brought about the Fall of Man and was thus used as a contrastive attribute of Mary, the ‘new Eve,’ whose perfection blotted out the sin of the ‘old.’”6 6

Erwin Panofsky. Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. Vol. 1, 133.

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I would again emphasize that the Malinalco murals had profound meaning for sixteenth-century native catechumens. Even as the didactic message of the murals was intended to reinforce the Indians’ newly acquired Christian religion, it was planned to do so in the comfortable context of the Indians’ traditional, even pagan, symbol system – the Augustinian friars were fully aware that conversion was most easily expedited when the natives perceived Christianity as not so dissimilar from their previous faith – a little heresy notwithstanding. In sum, the corridor murals at Malinalco depict the Terrestrial Paradise at the specific moment of Eve’s temptation; that is, before mankind’s redemption through Mary’s Annunciation in the Hortus Conclusus. If the sapote tree, the serpents, and monkeys so clearly allude to ‘Eve who sinned,’ then it’s quite possible that the coyote refers to Adam. Surely, the second smaller coyote clinging to the larger coyote’s back was meant to signify the Devil, often similarly represented fullfrontal-faced in mediaeval Christian art. Furthermore, there is compelling evidence of such an Indian analogy in, of all places, the peculiar allegorical imagery associated with the native Aztec calendar reckoning of years and days. As I shall now show, the convento cloister provided a temporal as well as spatial stage to the theatrical spectacle of Adam and Eve in Terrestrial Paradise. According to the pre-conquest calendar of Aztec Mexico and still followed by the native peoples throughout the sixteenth century, every year was called by one of four different names, Flint, House, Rabbit, or Reed, and numbered consecutively in that order up to thirteen – One Flint, Two House, Three Rabbit, Four Reed, Five Flint, Six House, Seven Rabbit, and so on until Thirteen Flint, and then the numeration starts over again with One House, Two Rabbit, etc. In this system, the same numbered year can only repeat itself every fifty-two years, a time cycle the Aztecs considered as having providential implications, somewhat as the Christian world regards a hundred-year century. The Aztec calendar is rather complicated, since it actually involved two different counting systems, one of 260 days intermeshing with another of 365 days. I will spare readers a long and complicated explanation, by fast-forwarding to the point in its rationale where the Indians insisted that every sequence of thirteen days – days, now, not years – be governed by a special deity, one of whom was named Huehuecoyotl, bearing, as his name implies, the crafty attributes of a wild coyote. His rule began on the special thirteen-day sequence named One Flower.

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Fig. 25: Detail from fol. 4, Codex Borbonicus.

It so happened that only during Rabbit years (which if you have paid attention to the consecutive arithmetic, occur every four years apart), this deity (fig. 25), who was also the patron of music, painting, dancing, and acting, participated in a ceremony, beginning day One Flower, which the Christian friars, when they first encountered his description in Mexico, were surprised to discover had remarkable similarity to the Old Testament Biblical story of the Garden of Eden. This belief was further reinforced because Huehuecoyotl had a female consort named Ixnextli who supposedly picked a forbidden flower in a sacred garden called Tamoanchan, which so angered the Aztec gods that she was expelled. You see her here in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (fig. 26), contritely weeping, and holding a pot of brown material that has been labeled by a later scribe over-writing in Spanish, as ‘mierda.’ In fact, the Spanish scribe who wrote this and many more comments on the same pages of this codex, was a Christian friar, who then drew the obvious analogy that Huehuecoyotl and Ixnextli, were no less than preconquest Aztec versions of Adam and Eve. Many of the friars at that

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Fig. 26: Detail from fol. 11, Codex Telleriano-Remensis.

time were convinced that the Apostle Thomas, Jesus’s designated evangelizer of India according to the Christian Bible, likewise converted the American Indians, who Columbus and European contemporaries believed shared the same Asian continent. Meanwhile, after St. Thomas’s death, the devil returned to woo the Indians once more back to heathen worship. Nonetheless, the sixteenth-century friars, believing themselves to be latter-day apostles, claimed to detect ancient surviving vestiges of Christian doctrine still concealed in the natives’ pagan religion, such as the story of Adam and Eve. The same friar who had inscribed all this in the Codex TellerianoRemensis, added that ever since the Spanish missionaries arrived, the now-Re-Christianized Indians celebrated a fiesta during every subsequent Rabbit year, in special remembrance of ‘Eve Who Sinned.’ By coincidence, the Malinalco convento is recorded as having been completed, including most likely the painting of the cloister murals, during the overlapping months between the years 1570 and 1571, corresponding to Aztec years Thirteen Rabbit and One Reed. It will be recalled that among the animals painted on the east wall as well as else-

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where in the cloister were a number of rabbits, which may well allude to those Aztec Rabbit years when the “eve Who Sinned” play should be performed. But even more significant than Thirteen Rabbit year 1570, was that the next year 1571 coincided with Aztec One Reed, an especially crucial ideological anniversary for both the friars and their converted Indian neophytes. 1571/One Reed marked exactly fifty-two years since Hernan Cortés first landed in Mexico in 1519, on Holy Thursday before Easter, coinciding with the Aztec day One Flower. As mentioned, the fifty-two year cycle between repeated same-year names was deemed sacred in pre-conquest Aztec theology, and any dramatic event that happened at the beginning of the cycle must have some supernatural relationship with events occurring at the end. Since the founding of the Aztec Empire in the fourteenth century, the Indians measured their very existence in terms of such fifty-two year cycles. At each cyclic beginning, the sun was implored to remain in the sky for the duration. The emperor would perform a crucial ceremony in which a fire was lit in the heart cavity of a sacrificed victim. If the fire failed to burn, it would mean that the sun would cease to rise, and the Aztec nation would then be doomed to destruction and oblivion. Just as they had co-opted so many of the traditional Indian – even heathen – customs for Christian purposes, the friars proclaimed Cortes’s fateful arrival in the year One Reed as the birth of new Christian sunrise. The friars even called Cortes the second Moses, providentially chosen to bring the Christian religion – Jesus the true Sun of Justice (‘Sol Justitiae’) – back again to Mexico, once more to lead the Indians into an enlightened Christian utopia. For the converted Indian neophytes, the fifty-two years following Cortes’s arrival was then a kind of test. The righteousness of the new religion should somehow be divinely reaffirmed on the next One Reed year; that is in 1571. The reason why there are no human figures depicted among all the flora and fauna of the Malinalco cloister garden murals should now be apparent. People were not painted into this fictive Aztec Paradise Lost because they were intended to be impersonated by living actors performing a theatrical event in front of the murals, between the years Thirteen Rabbit and One Reed in remembrance of ‘Eve Who Sinned’ and the advent of the Annunciation to the ‘New Eve’ Virgin Mary right here in the cloister garden. It is even possible that there was a gala performance presented on Palm Sunday in the year 1571/One Reed, which by another remarkable coincidence fell on the Aztec day One Flower.

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Fig. 27: Seventeenth century woodcut showing the ‘Anatomical Theatre’ of the University of Padua, with a cadavre on the dissection table in the middle.

In sum, the syncretic success of the Malinalco theatrical murals can perhaps be attributed to the fact that in both religious systems, Roman Catholic and pagan native, sacred space was defined by the same geometrical forms; either as a square or a circle with umbilicus-like holy centers (note in figure 23, that Jerusalem occupies the sacred center of the T-and-O mappa mundi, the schematic chart of the mediaeval Christian world showing the three then-known continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa, contained within a single ‘O’-shaped surrounding ocean, and separated by the Mediterranean Sea and the River Don schematized in the form of a ‘T’).

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One must also be aware that the Latin word theatrum and all its linguistic derivatives did not just designate a place for entertainment, but also a specialized space for didactic instruction, like the circular Teatro anatomico of the medical college at Padua (fig. 27), where the anatomized corpse, usually of an executed criminal, was laid out Christ-like in a similarly sacralized center. Here the criminal should literally be resurrected, since his dead body was being offered up for the scientific good of the very humanity he had morally aggrieved during his evil lifetime. Indeed, the architecture of many public theaters even for entertainment, such as the famous ‘Globe’ of Shakespeare’s London, were actually built in the same symbolic form. ‘Theater’ was also a popular book genre in the sixteenth century, like Abraham Ortelius’s spectacular Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, and published in 1571 (again coincidentally Aztec year One Reed) which for the first time centered the American continents in a separate circular western hemisphere, at last in proper geographical proportion upon the whole world stage.

WORKS CITED Edgerton, Samuel Y. Theaters of Conversion. Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. Favrot Peterson, Jeanette. The Paradise Garden Murals of Malinalco. Utopia and Empire in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. Las Casas, Bartolomé de. “Apologetica historia de las Indias” Historiadores de Indias. Vol. 1. Ed. M. Serrano y Sanz. Madrid: Bailly/Baillié y hijos, 1909. Motolinia, Fray Toribio. Motolinia’s History of the Indians of New Spain. Trans. and com. Francis Borgia Steck. Washington: Academy of American Franciscan History, 1951. Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting. Its Origins and Character. Vol. 1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. García Zambrana, Angel. “Early Colonial Evidence of Pre-Columbian Rituals of Foundation.” Seventh Palenque Round Table, 1989. Ed. Merle Greene Robertson and Virginia M. Fields. San Francisco: Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, 1994. 217-27.

TIMOTHY LENOIR/HENRY LOWOOD

Theaters of War: The Military-Entertainment Complex War games are simulations combining game, experiment and performance. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been the primary proponent of war game design since the 1950s. Yet, commercial game designers produced many of the ideas shaping the design of military simulations, both before and after the advent of computer-based games. By the 1980s, the seeds of a deeper collaboration among military, commercial designers, the entertainment industry, and academic researchers in the development of high-end computer simulations for military training had been planted. They built distributed interactive simulations (DIS) such as SIMNET that created virtual theaters of war by linking participants interacting with distributed software or hardware simulators in real time. The simulators themselves presented synthetic environments – virtual worlds – by utilizing advances in computer graphics and virtual reality research. With the rapid development of DIS technology during the 1990s, content and compelling story development became increasingly important. The necessity of realistic scenarios and backstory in military simulations led designers to build databases of historical, geographic and physical data, reconsider the role of synthetic agents in their simulations and consult with game design and entertainment talents for the latest word on narrative and performance. Even when this has not been the intention of their designers and sponsors, military simulations have been deeply embedded in commercial forms of entertainment, for example, by providing content and technology deployed in computer and video games. Building on a brief overview of the history of war games, we will sketch the history of military simulations leading to SIMNET in the late 1980s and projects building on this work through the mid-1990s. Changes in government procurement policies, we argue, led the military to spin off many of its key technologies for simulation and training. Their adoption and further development by the game entertainment

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industry has resulted in the improvement of tools for designing war games. It has also fueled the growth of the video game industry, which by several measures has reached the level of film and television in its importance as an entertainment medium.1 During the Cold War it was customary to criticize the military-industrial complex as an economic parasite separated from, but living off the free enterprise system. We conclude that the new military-entertainment complex of the 1990s has become a partner of the entertainment industry while transforming itself into the training ground for what we might consider the post-human warfare of the future. Strategy & Tactics: Traditions of War Gaming The U.S. Department of Defense defines a war game as “a simulation, by whatever means, of a military operation involving two or more opposing forces, using rules, data, and procedures designed to depict an actual or assumed real life situation.”2 This notion of the war game as a simulation, as an imitation of combat by other means, preceded the use of computer-based models for encoding rules, data, and procedures. War games have taken many forms ranging from large-scale field exercises to abstract strategy games played with maps, counters or minia1

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Sales of computer and video games in the United States alone, including hardware and accessories, exceeded $10 billion in 2001; box-office receipts in the U.S. movie industry, by comparison were about $8.35 billion, itself a record total. Global sales of hardware and software are expected to exceed $30 billion in 2002. The publishers of Half-Life: Counterstrike, the most popular multiplayer game, reported some 3.4 billion player-minutes per month in mid-2002, exceeding estimates based on viewership ratings for time devoted to even the highest-rated U.S. television shows. Another measure: Less than 15% of the U.S. population attends movies every week (down from 46% after World War II); by comparison, statistics gathered by Peter D. Hart Research and cited by the Interactive Digital Software Association suggest that 60 percent of the American population played “interactive games on a regular basis” in the year 2000. Khanh T. L. Tran. “US Videogame Industry Posts Record Sales.” Wall Street Journal Feb. 7, 2002. L. L. C Valve. “Valve Unveils Steam at 2002 Game Developer’s Conference.” Press Release 21 March 2002. Sharon Waxman. “Hollywood’s Greatest Escapism. 2001 Box Office Receipts Set a Record.” The Washington Post Jan. 4, 2002. Anne Valdespino. “The Big Screen Keeps Pulling Us In.” Los Angeles Times Jul. 1, 2002. Idem. “Interactice Digital Software Association.” Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry. Washington D. C., 2000. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Publication 1. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. Washington, D. C., 1987. 393.

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tures. Because they can be set in reconstructed historical events or imagined scenarios, strategists and military planners use them to rehearse or test strategy, operations and tactics. They accomplish this goal by staging a performance involving people, systems, and technology. The war college tradition of modern war games began with von Reisswitz’s Kriegsspiel in the early 19th century.3 As it developed through many variants over the course of the 19th century, the Kriegsspiel established conventions of war gaming, such as identifying the opponents as red and blue, the use of maps and umpires, and fundamental rules for movement and combat resolution. Used as early as the 1820s for officer training in the Prussian military, it was imported to the United States in the early 1880s for training purposes by Major W. R. Livermore of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, author of The American Kriegsspiel.4 The founding of the Naval War College in 1884 stimulated naval war gaming, which emphasized tactical elements such as fleet maneuvers and ship-to-ship engagements. The circulation and revision of the Kriegsspiel among the war colleges of Europe and North America encouraged debates about the game’s design. For example, authors of various versions disagreed about whether rigidly applied rules and tables or the less restricted judgment of referees relying on their own martial experience should govern the game. The so-called Kriegsspiel libre introduced by Jakob Meckel and Julius von Verdy du Vernois in the 1870s emphasized the latter. Vernois argued that when the Kriegsspiel fell short of its potential value in training officers, the reason was usually “purely on the technical side of leading the game,” specifically the difficulty officers experienced with “the rules, the application of dice, and the loss tables.” He insisted that the value of such an exercise depended on the capacities of the umpire and the “degree of his military training,” rather than rules.5 Further refinements were added to the several national variants of the Kriegsspiel; William Roscoe Livermore, for example, added “fog of war” rules to the American version that reduced each side’s 3

4 5

Heinrich Leopold Georg von Reisswitz, Freiherr v. Kaderzin und Grabowska. Anleitung zur Darstellung militärischer Manöver mit dem Apparat des KriegsSpiels. Berlin, 1824. The Anleitung has been translated into English by Bill Leeson. Kriegsspiel. Instructions for the Representation of Military Manoeuvres with the Kriegsspiel Apparatus. 2nd ed. Hemel Hempstead, 1989. William Roscoe Livermore. The American Kriegsspiel. A Game for Practicing the Art of War upon a Topographical Map. Boston: Houghton & Co., 1882. Julius von Verdy du Vernois. Beitrag zum Kriegsspiel. Berlin, 1876.

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knowledge of the other’s activities. Yet, the authors of these changes continued to wrestle fundamentally with oppositions such as codified rules versus subjective experience, rigidity versus flexibility, and realism versus playability. This war college tradition focused on strategic and operational levels of battle, meaning that these simulations explored the decisions that officers would need to make. The best-known tactical and even individual combat (or skirmish) games were created outside the military establishment as the work of hobbyists. Board games and miniatures were particularly popular. Fred Jane’s Naval War Game (1912) and H.G. Wells’ Little Wars (1913) established these modes of playing war games as entertainment.6 By the 1970s, however, sophisticated war game designs had been created in the commercial sector, beginning with the founding of The Avalon Hill Game Company by Charles S. Roberts in 1958. Roberts’ Tactics (1952), Tactics II (1958) and subsequent Avalon Hill titles established conventions of the modern war game: the Combat Results Table (CRT), the map grid divided into hexagons to regulate movement, the use of printed cardboard counters to represent military units and display their capabilities in numerical form, etc. Just as important, these games shifted the mechanics of game design from abstract strategy or, alternatively, chance to an emphasis on historical realism defined by systems of rules and data, that is, to simulation. While Avalon Hill introduced the modern conception of historical war games as simulations, further refinement and popularization of this genre was the work of Simulations Publications Inc. (SPI), led by James F. Dunnigan, and a group of game designers that included Redmond Simonsen, Al Nofi, and others. While a student at Columbia University, Dunnigan designed his first game, Jutland, for Avalon Hill in 1966. In 1969, he became the publisher of Strategy & Tactics magazine, which had been founded two years earlier. The early issues were analysis of data and rules in existing games, but before long S&T published game modules, add-on modules and eventually complete, original games in every issue. Just before taking over the magazine, Dunnigan had founded SPI, which took over publication of Strategy & Tac6

Herbert George Wells. Little Wars. A Game for Boys from Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girls Who Like Boys’ Games and Books. London: Frank Palmer, 1913. Fred T. Jane. How to Play the “Naval War Game”: With a Complete Set of the Latest Rules, Full Instructions, and Some Examples of “Wars” That Have Actually Been Played. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1912.

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tics. SPI became the leading publisher of commercial war games, usually called historical simulations, and disseminated information on military systems and history in the magazine. In 1976, SPI published Firefight, a game that simulated Soviet and U.S. small unit tactics and the first important title in a series of games that examined the ‘future history’ of potential NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict. Strategy & Tactics offered an analysis of the military situations simulated in Firefight, together with an additional game of contemporary warfare, Revolt in the East: Warsaw Pact Rebellion in the 1970, designed by Dunnigan and Simonsen.7 The Firefight game system had been conceived and designed for the U.S. Army Infantry School before its release as a commercial game; it probably represented the first collaboration between Dunnigan and then Lt. Col. Ray Macedonia of the U.S. Army. Macedonia was determined to invigorate military war gaming by injecting the design advances, research standards, and modeling of SPI’s historical simulations into a revived War College system. The rise of seminar-like political-military gaming since the 1950s in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an “increased civilianization of military affairs” appears to have “cast a long shadow over all gaming techniques” and led to the “virtual castration of wargaming” in the 1960s and early 1970s.8 Macedonia re-introduced war gaming for staff officer training at the Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania and had asked Dunnigan to consult with him in 1976 as part of the work that led to Firefight. Dunnigan and Macedonia forged the military’s first concerted efforts to tap the potential of computer-based war gaming.9 In 1977, the Office of Naval Research sponsored TheaterLevel Gaming and Analysis Workshop for Force Planning, a meeting of game designers and defense analysts that included Dunnigan and Andrew W. Marshall, director of Net Assessment for the Department of Defense. Dunnigan recalls the meeting as kicking off a new breed of war games in the U.S. military:

7

8 9

Stephen B. Patrick. “Firefight: U.S. and Soviet Small Unit Tactics.” Strategy & Tactics 56 (1976). James F. Dunnigan and Redmond Simonsen. “Simulation. Revolt in the East: Warsaw Pact Rebellion in the 1970’s.” Strategy & Tactics 56 (1976). Peter P. Perla. The Art of Wargaming. A Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990. 108-14. Ibid. 147-50. Thomas B. Allen. War Games. The Secret World of the Creators, Players, and Policy Maker Rehearsing World War III Today. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.

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The rumblings within the professional wargaming community [were] one of the causes of the 1977 Leesburg conference. This was the first gathering of all the major forces in military wargaming. It was obvious that the winds of change were blowing strong when Andrew Marshall, a senior official of OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) and one of the key sources of funding for professional wargames, got up in front of the assembled multitude and stated bluntly: ‘You people have never given me anything I can use.’ When my turn came to speak, I pointed out that what was needed was a wargame the commander could sit down with and operate himself. Having the ultimate user of wargame results actually operate the wargame would save a lot of time, get much better results and eliminate a lot of confusion. It would also enable the commander to experiment with options that he might be reluctant to try through his staff (because the idea, or the results, might prove embarrassing). This last point is important, as the sociology of senior command makes it difficult for a commander to appear ignorant of anything or capable of doing something stupid, especially in front of subordinates.10

Marshall was clearly looking for new impulses in war gaming, and after meeting again with Dunnigan, he let a contract to SPI for the development of a new global strategy game, which when completed under Mark Herman in 1980 became the Strategic Analysis Simulation (SAS), a computer-assisted simulation that allowed officers to explore the consequences of their decisions along the lines Dunnigan had outlined at the 1977 conference. Herman had participated in R&D sessions at SPI since the mid-1970s, led Victory Games, a game publisher, and later became a professional military analyst. When appropriate data made available from the Falklands War in 1982, results from SAS’ Tactical Analysis Module could be validated as being consistent with the outcome.11 By the late 1970s, the Army was pushing for more use of computer technology in war games generally, and it turned outside its ranks for fresh ideas. At the behest of the Army Chief of Staff, Edward C. Meyer, Macedonia took on the task of producing a new architecture for computer-based games. He assigned the project to Fred McClintic, who had previously programmed conversions of several SPI boardgames for use in the War College. The resulting McClintic Theater Model (MTM), another conversion of one of Dunnigan’s older manual designs, was applied to simulation games sponsored by Army Chief of Staff by November 10

11

James F. Dunningham. “Wargames at War. Wargaming and the Professional Warriors.” The Complete Wargames Handbook. Updated web edition of 3rd edition published in 2001. Online at: http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/9-3-wpw.htm. Perla. Art of Wargaming. 241.

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Fig. 1: Frontispiece from Christoph Weickhmann New-erfundenes grosses KönigsSpiel (Ulm, 1664). Ethymologically ‘Kriegsspiel’ (literally ‘war game’) refers to a number of 17th century treatises that are principally concerned with the ‘king’s game’ of chess, like our example above. Beginning with Reisswitz’ ‘Kriegsspiel’ a tradition of modern war games developed in European military academies in the early 19th century.

1980 and became the basis for a series of computer-based theater and operational simulations during the 1980s. Further refinement of MTM by a group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Rolands & Associates Corporation led to the Joint Theater Level Simulation (JTLS) developed in the mid 1980s and in use through the 1990s, thus linking some two decades of commercial and military-sponsored war game design.12 12

James F. Dunningham. “Genealogy of Computer Wargame Technology.” The Complete Wargames Handbook. Online at: http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/6-3-gene.htm.

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The Army led in pushing for more detailed simulations in the early 1980s, but other services joined in over the course of the decade. These efforts included the National Training Center (founded in 1980) and its training facilities, as well as the upgrading of Navy war gaming with the development after 1979 of the Naval War Game System (NWGS), written by Computer Sciences Corporation for the Naval War College and replaced by the Enhanced Naval Wargame System (ENWGS) in 1985. In 1982, the National Defense University also created a war gaming center. During the 1980s, the increasing expense of traditional (live) exercises focused attention on the resource efficiency of simulations.13 The potential savings was one factor that expanded the scope of game designs in this period, particularly in the linking together of different levels of simulation, such as individual tanks and higher-level unit commands or operational and theater levels of command. This trend was an important factor in the construction of SIMNET and the sophisticated theater-level simulations of the 1990s based in part on MTM. The value of using computer-based war games as predictive models for combat was demonstrated convincingly before the Gulf War in the summer of 1990. General Norman Schwarzkopf and his staff prepared at the U.S. Central Military Command in Florida for a potential conflict in this region by playing scenarios of the war game Operation Internal Look designed by Gary Ware. Ware had compiled enormous amounts of data – cartographic and military – on Kuwait and Iraq, and immediately after the invasion of Kuwait, the war gamers shifted Internal Look to running variations of the now ‘real’ scenario. They focused on a group of possibilities revolving around the variant: “What if Saddam keeps on coming right away?” It took computers about 15 minutes to run each iteration of the forecasted thirty-day war. As a prediction, Operation Internal Look got good marks. Despite some shifts in the initial balance of forces, the 30-day simulated air and ground campaign

13

On the link from MTM to JTLS, see Ellen F. Roland et al. “The History of Joint Theater Level Simulation.” Online at: http://rolands.com/Pdf/JTLS_History.pdf. Also: Ronald J. Roland, Ellen F. Roland, and Edward P. Kelleher Jr. “Approaches and Aspects of Implementing a Computer Wargame Simulation: A Historical Perspective.” January 1989. Online at: http://www.rolands.com/Pdf.treatise.pdf. Cost effectiveness of simulation had also been the foundation for hardware flight simulators. The argument was based on data from the 1930s and later experiments, summarized in: R. E. Flexman et al. Studies in Pilot Training. The Anatomy of Transfer. Urbana: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1972. See also: Office of Technology Assessment, ed. Virtual Reality and Technologies for Combat Simulation. Washington D. C., 1994. 7-9.

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was pretty close to the real sequence, although the percentage of air and ground action was slightly different. The ground battle pretty much unfolded as forecasted. Lessons learned from Internal Look shaped the defensive plan for Desert Shield, and drove home the power of computer simulation in preparing for war. The impact of the simulation on future planning and training exercises was discussed by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf in his memoirs, It Doesn’t Take a Hero. Recalling the uncanny similarities between Internal Look and the real thing, Schwarzkopf wrote: We played Internal Look in late July 1990, setting up a mock headquarter complete with computers and communication gear at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle. As the exercise got under way, the movements of Iraq’s real-world ground and air forces eerily paralleled the imaginary scenario of the game....As the war game began, the message center also passed along routine intelligence bulletins about the real Middle East. Those concerning Iraq were so similar to the game dispatches that the message center ended up having to stamp the fictional reports with a prominent disclaimer: ‘Exercise Only.’14

Distributed Networks: SIMNET The biggest boost to military war gaming came from the construction of the DARPA-funded SIMNET, the military’s distributed SIMulator NETworking project. Simulators developed prior to the 1980s were stand-alone systems designed for specific task-training purposes, such as docking a space capsule or landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Such systems were quite expensive, for example, more than $30-$35 million for an advanced pilot simulator system in the late 1970s, and $18 million for a tank simulator at a time when an advanced individual aircraft was priced around $18 million and a tank considerably less. High-end simulators cost twice as much as the systems they were intended to simulate. Jack A. Thorpe was brought into DARPA to address this situation based on a proposal he had floated in September 1978. Thorpe’s idea was that aircraft simulators should be used to augment aircraft. They should be used to teach air-combat skills that pilots could not learn in peacetime flying, but that could be practiced with simulators. Thorpe proposed the construction of large-scale, battle-engagement simulation technology as a 25-year development goal.15 Con14 15

Norman Schwarzkopf. It Doesn’t Take a Hero. New York: Bantam, 1992. J. A. Thorpe. “Future Views: Aircrew Training 1980-2000.” Unpublished con-

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cerned about costs for such a system he actively pursued technology developed outside the DoD, including computer and video games.16 In 1982 Thorpe hired a team to develop a network of tank simulators for collective training. The SIMNET project was approved by DARPA in late 1982 and began early in the spring of 1983. Several of the most innovative aspects of SIMNET derived from Thorpe’s insistence on affordability during the development of its components. Prior to the late 1980s simulators were typically designed to emulate the vehicles they represented as closely as engineering technology and the available funds permitted. The usual design goal was to reach the highest possible level of physical fidelity – to design ‘an airplane on a stick.’ The SIMNET design goal was different and was reminiscent of the design for effect approach that had been adopted by board wargame designers earlier. It called for learning first what functions were needed to meet the training objectives, and only then specifying the needs for simulator hardware. Selective functional fidelity, rather than full physical fidelity, was SIMNET’s design goal, and as a result, many hardware items not regarded as relevant to combat operations were not included or were designated only by drawings or photographs in the simulator. Furthermore, the design did not concentrate on the armored vehicle per se. Rather, the vehicle simulator was viewed as a tool for the training of crews as a military unit. The major interest was in collective, not individual, training. The design goal was to make the crews and units, not the devices, the center of the simulations.17 This approach made possible the design of a relatively low-cost device.18 An early crisis threatened to undo the project, however. The visualdisplay and networking architecture being developed by BBN would not support the SIMNET system concept within the limits of the lowcost constraints. Analyses and expert judgments, from both within and

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cept-paper at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Sept. 15, 1978. Discussed in: Richard H. van Atta, Sidney Reed, and Seymour J. Deitchman. DARPA Technical Accomplishments. An Historical Overview of Selected DARPA Projects. 3 vols. “Institute for Defense Analysis” (IDA). P-2429, 1991. Vol. 2, chapter 16, 10. See also: M. Harris. “Entertainment Driven Collaboration.” Computer Graphics 28.2 (1994): 93-96. Atta, Reed, Deitchman. DARPA. Chapter 16, 10. When individuals and crews reacted, they would provide additional cues to which others would react. Thus, the technology was to play a subservient role in the battle-engagement simulations, making no decisions for the crews, but rather simply and faithfully reproducing battlefield cues. Atta, Reed, Deitchman. DARPA. Chapter 16, 13.

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outside of DARPA, indicated that the planned use of available off-theshelf visual-display technology would not support the required scene complexity within the cost, computer, and communications constraints set by the SIMNET goals. However a proposal from Boeing allowed Thorpe to take advantage of the new generation of DARPA-funded microprocessor advances for development of a new low-cost microprocessor-based computer image generating technology for visual displays. The technology proposed by Mike Cyrus of Boeing met the scene complexity (moving models) requirements at acceptably low costs. Also, it permitted use of a simpler, less costly networking architecture. The proposed technology would use microprocessors in each tank simulator to compute the visual scene for that tank’s own virtual world, including the needed representations of other armored vehicles, both ‘friendly’ and ‘enemy.’ The network would not have to carry all the information in the visual scenes (or potential visual scenes) of all simulators. Rather, the network transmission could be limited to a relatively small package of calibration and status change information. With these architecture and design elements in place SIMNET was constructed of local and long-haul nets of interactive simulators for maneuvering armored vehicle combat elements (M1 tanks and M2/3 fighting vehicles), combat-support elements (including artillery effects and close air support with both rotary and fixed-wing aircraft), and all the necessary command-and-control, administrative and logistics elements for both ‘friendly’ and ‘enemy’ forces. A distributed-net architecture was used, with no central computer exercising executive control or major computations, but rather with essentially similar (and all necessary) computation power resident in each vehicle simulator or centernodal representation.19 The terrains for the battle engagements were simulations of actual places, 50 kilometers by 50 kilometers initially, but eventually expandable by an order of magnitude in depth and width. Battles were to be fought in real time, with each simulated element – vehicle, command post, administrative and logistics center, etc. – being operated by its assigned crew members. Scoring would be recorded on combat events such as movements, firings, hits and outcomes, but actions during the simulated battle engagements would be completely under the control of 19

Cf. J. A. Thorpe. “The New Technology of Large Scale Simulator Networking: Implications for Mastering the Art of Warfighting.” Proceedings of the 9th Interservice Industry Training Systems Conference 30.11.-2.12.1987. Ed. American Defense Preparedness Association. 1987. 492-501.

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the personnel who were fighting the battle. Training would occur as a function of the intrinsic feedback and lessons learned from the relevant battle-engagement experiences. Development would proceed in steps, first to demonstrate platoon-level networking, then on to company and battalion levels, and later perhaps on to even higher levels. Each simulator was developed as a self-contained stand-alone unit, with its own graphics and sound systems, host microprocessor, terrain data base, cockpit with task-training-justified controls and displays only, and network plug-in capability. Thus, each simulator generated the complete battle-engagement environment necessary for the combat mission training of its crew. For example, each tank crew member could see a part of the virtual world created by the graphics generator using the terrain data base and information arriving via the net regarding the movements and status of other simulated vehicles and battle effects. The precise part of the virtual world was defined by the crew member’s line of sight – forward for the tank driver, or from any of three viewing ports in a rotatable turret for the tank commander. The visual display depended primarily on the graphics generator resident in each simulator. This computer image generation (CIG) system differed in several important characteristics from earlier CIG systems. First, it was microprocessor-based (vs. large mainframe or multiple minicomputer based), and therefore relatively low in cost (less than $100,000 per simulator visual-display subsystem, vs. more than $1 million per visual channel; typical flight simulators have at least five visual channels). Secondly, it was high in environmental complexity with many moving models and special effects, but low in display complexity with relatively few pixels, small viewing ports, and a relatively slow update rate of 15 frames per second (vs. the opposite with earlier CIG systems and the technology being developed to improve and replace them). The development of the essentially unique graphics generator for SIMNET was a principal factor in permitting the system to meet the low-cost-per-unit constraint of the plan. The architecture of the microprocessor-based graphics generator permitted anyone or any simulator so equipped to connect to the net. This, combined with the distributed computing architecture of the net, provided an extremely powerful and robust system. New or additional elements can be included simply by ‘plugging into’ the network. Once connected to the net, simulators transmit and receive data ‘packets’ from other simulators or nodes (such as stations for combat-support or logistics elements), and compute their visual scenes and other cues (such as special effects produced by the sound system). Because the

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data packets need to convey only a relatively small amount of information (position coordinates, orientation, and unique events or changes in status), the communications load on the net and the increase in load with the addition of another simulator are both quite modest. When a new update is received, the actual-state data are used in the next frame, and any serious discontinuity is masked by the receiving simulator’s automatic activation of a transition-smoothing algorithm. Should a simulator fail, the rest of the network continues without its contribution. Thus, network degradations were soft and graceful. The prototypes and early experiments with SIMNET elements were carried out between 1987-89, and the system was made operational in January 1990. The Army bought the first several hundred units for the Close Combat Tactical Trainer (CCTT) system, an application of the SIMNET concept, the first purchase of a system that would eventually contain several thousand units at a total cost of $850 million.20 The Battle of 73 Easting The value of the SIMNET as a training system for preparing units for battle became apparent almost immediately during the Gulf War. Hailed as the most significant victory of the war, the Battle of 73 Easting took place on February 26, 1991, just three days into the ground war, between the U.S. 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and a much larger Iraqi armed force (armed elements of the 50th Brigade of the Iraqi 12th Armored Division). The battle was named for the location at which it occurred: 73 Easting is the north-south grid line on military maps of the Iraqi Desert. The battle lasted from about 3:30 PM until dusk fell at 5:15 PM, and took place in a swirling sandstorm. The U.S. 2d Calvary consisted of M1A1Abrams battle tanks and M3 Bradley fighting vehicles. During the action the cavalry troops destroyed 50 T-72/T-62 battle tanks, more than 35 other armored fighting vehicles, and 45 trucks. More than 600 Iraqi soldiers of the 12th Armored Division and Tawakalna Republican Guard Armored Division were killed or wounded and at least that many more were captured. Immediately after the battle, General Franks, the VII Corps commander, claimed the action of the 2d Cavalry a classic of the cavalry mission to find, fix, and fight the enemy. 20

R. J. Lunsford Jr. US Army Training Systems Forecast, FY 1990-1994. Orlando, 1989. 14. Quot. from: Atta, Reed, Deitchman. DARPA. Chapter 16, 31.

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It was immediately appreciated that 73 Easting had potential as a simulation for network training on the military SIMNET.21 The 2d Armored Cavalry had trained intensely before the battle in places ranging from gunnery shoots at Fort Knox, Kentucky, to unit engagements at the National Training Center in California and at Grafenwöhr, Germany. In addition to this field training, the crews of the mechanized vehicles had spent hundreds of hours in training on the SIMNET in the period preceding the battle. A few days after the battle it was decided to capitalize on the SIMNET experience and technologies to record the Battle of 73 Easting for use as a vehicle for networked training in the future. Most of the same team that had built the SIMNET was assembled once again for the 73 Easting simulation. Early military simulations incorporated very rote behaviors. They did not capture ‘soft’ characteristics well. An effort to go beyond this was taken by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in their effort to construct a computer-generated magic carpet simulation-recreation of the Battle of 73 Easting, based on in-depth debriefings of 150 survivors of the battle.22 The goal of the project was to get timeline-based experiences of how individuals felt, thought and reacted to the dynamic unfolding of the events – their fears and emotions as well as actions – and render the events as a fully three-dimensional simulated reality which any future cadet could enter and relive. Going a step beyond the traditional staff ride – a face-to-face post-battle tutorial at the site itself in which a commander leads his staff in a verbal recreation of the skirmish – this tour of a battle site was a simulacrum of the war itself. Work on data gathering for the simulation began one month after the battle had taken place. The data assembled by the team included battle site surveys and interviews with participants. Documentation included action logs, oral and written interviews, recordings from radio nets, and soldiers’ own tape recordings made during the battle. In addition, overhead photography made before and after the battle was obtained. On the battle site itself, trained observers marked friendly and enemy positions including tank and other vehicle hulks that littered the terrain. Troopers from the 2nd Cavalry accompanied the DARPA team members to reconstruct the action moment-by-moment, vehicle-by-vehicle. The IDA 21 22

F. Clifton Berry Jr. “Re-creating History: The Battle of 73 Easting.” National Defense 76.11 (1991): 6-9. Ibid. Also see: Bruce Sterling. “War is Virtual Hell.” Wired Magazine 1.1 (1993). May 1, 1993. See especially pp. 6-7 of the online article. Online at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/virthell.html?topic=&topic_set=.

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brought the soldiers who had actually taken part and had them sketch out the battle. They walked over the battlefield amidst the twisted wreckage of Iraqi tanks, recalling the action as best they could. A few soldiers supplied diaries to reconstruct their actions. Some were even able to consult personal tape recordings taken during the chaos. Tracks in the sand gave the simulators precise traces of movement. A black box in each tank, programmed to track three satellites, confirmed its exact position on the ground to eight digits. Every missile shot left a thin wire trail which lay undisturbed in the sand. Headquarters had a tape recording of radio-voice communications from the field. Sequenced overhead photos from satellite cameras gave the big view. A digital map of the terrain was captured by lasers and radar.23 With this data a team at the IDA Simulation Center spent nine months constructing a simulation of the battle. A few months into the project, they had the actual desert troops, then stationed in Germany, review a preliminary version of the recreation. The simulacra were sufficiently fleshed out that the soldiers could sit in tank simulators and enter the virtual battle. They reported corrections of the simulated event to the technicians, who modified the model. Nine months after the confrontation the recreated Battle of 73 Easting was demo-ed for highranking military in a facility with panoramic views on three 50-inch TV screens at the resolution of a very good video game. The Battle of 73 Easting was viewed as confirmation of Jack Thorpe’s original vision for the SIMNET of using networked simulation technology to use history to prepare for the future. It set the standard of a future genre of training simulations. The simulation provided a link with history, but at the same time a dynamic interactive training vehicle for the future. As a computer simulation with programmable variables, the scenario could be replayed with different endings. Indeed the next step after creating this detailed, accurate historical simulation was to couple it with a war game simulation engine, called Project Odin that had been developed in preparation for Desert Storm by Neale Cosby and the staff of the IDA. The idea behind Project Odin was to create a simulated electronic environment housed in moving-van sized truck with generator-trailer. Odin was intended for use in the field. It would allow the intelligence officer, the operations officer and the commander to see the battlefield in three dimensions and enable them interactively 23

Cf. Berry „Re-creating History.“ Also discussed in Kevin Kelly. “God Games: Memorex Warfare.” Out of Control. New York, 1994. Online at: http://panushka.absolutvodka.com/kelly/ ch13-e.html.

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to zoom to any location to see the arrangement of forces. The knowledgebase for the system was provided by up-to-date intelligence information arriving from the field. By being able to zoom to the different perspectives of the opponent it would be possible to infer the counterpart’s intent, and more easily gain mastery of the battlefield. As Neale Cosby explained, the idea was to create a mobile electronic battlefield with semi-automated forces, whose behavior closely emulates that of the enemy.24 Odin was not designed to destroy targets, but to assist in visualizing the battle about to be entered, or ideally, even going on. As described above for SIMNET simulation units, Odin combined a digital terrain database of any part of the world; intelligence feeds of friendly and enemy orders of battle (through another DARPA program called Fulcrum); an order of battle generator; a map display with a two dimensional as well as an out-the-window three dimensional display called the flying carpet; and a war gaming engine with semiautomated forces using Artificial Intelligence (AI) components. The flying carpet was the most innovative aspect of the SIMNET machine. It allowed zooming to any part of the battlefield as well as forward or backward jumping in time, from any perspective. Commanders could cruise a computer-generated battlefield that showed the deployment and operations of both allied and enemy orders of battle in two-dimensional and three-dimensional views. The simulated battlefield could be visually displayed from any viewpoint, air or ground, or the overall situation at any moment could be seen on a digitized map. Another important feature of the system was that in 3D mode a popup billboard display feature was present which permitted a commander to click on an aggregate of battalions of armor, for instance, and get a selective representation of different classes of weapons, a useful feature for rapidly inspecting the force layout on the battlefield without all the clutter. Once the 73 Easting project was completed the IDA project Odin provided a perfect platform for an interactive, predictive simulation. With the simulation database plugged into Odin, it was possible not only to rerun the historical simulation, but change the equipment used by the enemy to test out tactics for other scenarios. For example, it was hypothesized that a major factor that favored the 2d Cavalry in the battle was they had use infrared vision systems to navigate in the sandstorm whereas the Iraqis had only optical sights on their equipment. By adding that feature to the Iraqi equipment it was possible to see how the 24

Personal communication.

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outcome of the battle would have been affected. In addition multiple Odin simulators could be hooked up to the network all running the 73 Easting database. Soldiers in the simulators and commanders at workstations could break into the simulation and add new tactics. With improvements in processors and graphics cards became available it was imagined that the size of the simulation units could be reduced and actually embedded into M1 tank units, attack helicopters, or F-16s themselves as real soldiers train for an impending mission right up to the hour of the engagement. From DARPA to Your Local Area Network: Fashioning the MilitaryEntertainment Complex Contrary to initial expectations, the military-industrial complex did not fade away with the end of the Cold War. It has simply reorganized itself. The major defense contractors receive more funding today than they ever have. According to William Hartung, as a result of a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and subsidized by the Clinton administration, the ‘Big Three’ weapons makers – Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon – now receive among themselves over $30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. This represents more than one out of every four dollars that the Defense Department expends on everything from rifles to rockets.25 While defense spending has not diminished, and seems destined not to in the foreseeable future, a radical shift has occurred in the relationship between defense contracting and the commercial sector. In the early years of the Cold War, when Eisenhower first called attention to the phenomenon of the military-industrial complex, attempts were made to keep relations between defense contractors and commercial firms either rigidly separate or delicately balanced in a complicated dance. During the late 1980s and early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the debates surrounding large government research projects such as the Superconducting Super Collider, policy discussions focused on reorienting defense research spending so that research not only served national defense but also that it ultimately benefited the commercial sector. The new military-entertainment complex is one of the effects of this shift. With the end of the Cold War, a stronger emphasis was placed during the 1990s on running a fiscally efficient military built on the prac25

William D. Hartung. “Military Monopoly.” The Nation 20. Jan. 13, 1997.

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tices of sound business and of making military procurement practices interface seamlessly with commercial industrial manufacturing processes. With pressure to reduce military spending applied by the Federal Acquisitions Streamlining Act of 1994, the Department of Defense remodeled policies and procedures on procurement (through DoD Directives 5000.1 and 5000.2) that had been in place for over 25 years. Among the policies the new directives established was a move away from the historically based DoD reliance on contracting with segments of the US technology and industrial base dedicated to DoD requirements, moving instead by statutory preference toward the acquisition of commercial items, components, processes and practices. In the new mandated hierarchy of procurement acquisition, commercially available alternatives are to be considered first, while choice of a service-unique development program has the lowest priority in the hierarchy. DoD components were directed to acquire systems, subsystems, equipment, supplies and services in accordance with the statutory requirements for competition set out in directive 10 USC 2304. Organizational changes were required to implement these changes. Adapting technology development and acquisition to the fast-paced high technology sector of the US economy meant adopting simplified flexible management processes found in commercial industry, including the institutionalization of Integrated Product Teams, treating cost as an independent variable, and implementing a paperless procurement system of electronic commerce by the year 2000. Program managers were informed that this mandated change meant that military planners would work more closely with industrial partners in team fashion sharing information on designs and specifications. In effect these changes, introduced by Secretary of Defense William Perry, have transformed military contracting units into business organizations. The military SIMNET and the entire field of computer simulation and training was an immediate beneficiary of these economic trends and shift in policy. Given the enormous expense of military aircraft and other armed systems, and given both the cost and political difficulties in arranging large scale training maneuvers, an effective campaign could be mounted in the name of cost-effectiveness in support of military investment in simulation technology. The DoD has been the major source of long-term funding for high-end computer graphics, visualization technologies, and network infrastructure throughout their now more than 30-year history. The perceived importance of simulation to the outcome in the Gulf War provided stimulus for increasing DARPAsupported research and development efforts around SIMNET. STRI-

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COM, the Army’s Simulation Training and Instrumentation Command was founded in order to manage and direct the simulation effort. Directive 5000.1 on defense procurement acquisition mandated that models and simulations be required of all proposed systems, and that “representations of proposed systems (virtual prototypes) shall be embedded in realistic, synthetic environments to support the various phases of the acquisition process, from requirements determination and initial concept exploration to the manufacturing and testing of new systems, and related training.”26 The total 1998 budget for programs for modeling and simulation exceeded $2.5 billion.27 These were not large sums compared to expenditures in other domains of research and by no means matched the computer industry’s own R&D investment in graphics at the time, but channeled through the new DoD procurement system intent upon seamless integration into the civilian high-tech industrial sector, these funding programs played an important role in accelerating the development and dissemination of modeling and simulation technologies. The emergence of the military-entertainment complex has been a direct outgrowth of the new emphasis on simulation and the reorganization of procurement. STRICOM typifies the new-styled military organization resulting from the mandate to leverage non-military industry resources for the development of military programs. This phase of the story points to the impact of the procurement reforms in creating a mutually beneficial synergy between the military and the entertainment industries. In the newly streamlined, flexibly managed military of the 90s, STRICOM is the DoD’s executive agent in charge of developing the Advanced Distributed Simulation Technology Program behind much of the military’s simulator training efforts. In its capacity as manager of the military simulation training effort STRICOM arranged a partnership of the San Diego-based Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Lockheed Martin to develop hardware, software, and simulation systems for, among other 26 27

DoD Directive 5000.1, March 15, 1996, Section D: Policy, Para. 2: Acquiring Quality Products, item (f): Modeling and Simulation. U.S. Department of Defense. Office of the Inspector General. Requirements Planning for Development, Test, Evaluation, and Impact on Readiness of Training Simulators and Devices, 1997. Quot. from: Committee on Modeling and Simulation. Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense. Washington, D. C., 1997. Table 1.1, 17. Online at: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/modeling/ table1.1.html, and http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/modeling/ (main url).

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things, networking simulations in live simulation environments such as SIMNET. Given the new imperative to build on products supplied by commercial industry, one key to success in this program of integrated product development is the development of standards for distributed interactive simulations (DIS standards) and the high-level software architecture (HLA) that sets specifications, interfaces and standards for a wide range of simulations.28 The adoption of these standards across the board by industry and by the American National Standards Institute prepares the ground for assimilating networked videogaming and more robust military simulations. As we have seen, SIMNET has been an incubator for the ideas and technology behind many current-generation video games. WizBang! Software Productions, Inc., which created the 3D environments for Hyperblade and Microsoft Baseball, is a 3D computer games company founded in 1994. The founders and staff have accumulated years of experience in military simulation, artificial intelligence, traditional gaming, music composition and theater production, as well as game development.29 Welcome to America’s Army: Computer War Games and the Game Industry Ideas, technologies, and personnel have flowed from military simulation efforts to the entertainment industries. DOOM II and FALCON 4.0, produced by Id Software and one of Spectrum Holobyte, respectively, demonstrate that the impact of commercial games on military war gaming did not end with SPI. If anything, these games provide glimpses into how the exchange has intensified, with increasing impact of the game industry on military simulation leading to the release in July 2002 of the Army’s own commercial war game, America’s Army. As we shall see, the commercial sector has more than held its share in the flow of technology within the military-entertainment complex. The shift in culture of the military with regard to simulation design and the new procurement policies led from SIMNET to DOOM. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak’s directive 1500.55 issued in 1996 aimed at implementing improvements in what he termed 28 29

For the program description see online at: http://www.stricom.army.mil/ STRICOM/PM-ADS/ADSTII/. See Company online at: http://www.wizbang.com/.

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‘Military Thinking and Decision Making Exercises.’ In his comments on the planning guidance Gen. Krulak wrote: “It is my intent that we reach the stage where Marines come to work and spend part of each day talking about warfighting: learning to think, making decisions, and being exposed to tactical and operational issues.” He identified an important way to exercise these skills: The use of technological innovations, such as personal computer (PC)-based wargames, provide great potential for Marines to develop decision making skills, particularly when live training time and opportunities are limited. Policy contained herein authorizes Marines to use Government computers for approved PC-based wargames.30

General Krulak directed the Marine Combat Development Command to assume responsibility for the development, exploitation, and approval of PC-based wargames. In addition, they were to maintain the PCbased Wargames Catalog on the Internet.31 With this incentive a group of Marine simulation experts from the Marine Corps Modeling and Simulation Management Office in the training and education division at Quantico, Virginia tracked down a shareware copy of the commercial game DOOM produced by Id Software, Inc. and began experimenting with it. This led to the adaptation of the game as a fire team simulation, with some of the input for the Marine version coming from Internet DOOM gamers employing shareware software tools. Using the shareware tools, the Marines then rewrote the code for the commercial game DOOM II. Instead of employing fantasy weapons to face down monster-like characters in a labyrinthine castle, real-world images were scanned into the game’s graphics engine along with images of weapons such as the M16(a1) rifle, M-249 squad automatic weapon, and M-67 fragmentation grenades. In place of the monster characters, 3D scans were done of GI-Joe action characters. The game was also modified from its original version to include fighting holes, bunkers, tactical wire, the fog of war and friendly fire. MARINE DOOM trainees used Marine-issue assault rifles to shoot it out with enemy combat troops in a variety of terrain and building configurations. In addition to training fire teams in various combat scenarios, the simulation can also be configured for a specific mission immediately prior to engagement. For example, Marines tasked with rescuing a group of Americans held 30 31

General Charles C. Krulak. “Military Thinking and Decision Making Exercises.” Online at: http://www.tediv.usmc.mil/dlb/milthink/. For the PC-Wargames Catalog, see online at: http://www.tediv.usmc.mil/dlb/ milthink/catalog/title.html

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hostage in an overseas embassy could rehearse in a virtual building constructed from the actual floor plans of the structure. Users needed only to purchase version 1.9 of the commercial game and add the Marine rewrite code to run the new tactical simulation. The Quanticobased software could not run without the original commercial package, so no licensing violations occurred. Indeed, any personal computer owner with DOOM II can download the code for MARINE DOOM from the Modeling and Simulation Management Office’s web page. The success of the DOOM II simulation rewrite led the Marines to look ahead to the next step in commercial war gaming. Discussions with MÄK (pronounced ‘mock’) Technologies (Cambridge, MA), a commercial game manufacturer specializing in network simulation tools for distributed interactive simulations, led to the design of a tactical operations game built to Marine specifications. According to the contract the Marine Corps would help develop the software code and in turn would receive a site license to train on this game, while MÄK would sell it commercially as an official Marine Corps tactical training game. This from-the-ground-up development would eliminate all of the nuances of the other adapted games that are not particular to Marine combat. In addition to its work in the defense community, the company’s software has been licensed for use by several entertainment firms, such as Total Entertainment Network and Zombie Virtual Reality Entertainment, to serve as the launching pad for real-time, 3D, multi-user video games. One such game, Spearhead, a multi-user tank simulation game released in mid-1998, was written by MÄK and published by Interactive Magic. Spearhead can be played over the Internet and incorporates networking technology similar to that used in military simulations. MÄK’s products use technologies called Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) and High Level Architecture (HLA). Both technologies efficiently connect thousands of 3D simulations together on a computer network. Replacing the DIS standard for net-based simulations, HLA has been designated as the new standard technical architecture for all DoD simulations. All simulations were required to be HLAcompatible by the end of 1999. The transition to HLA was part of a DoD-wide effort to establish a common technical framework to facilitate the interoperability of all types of models and simulations, as well as to facilitate the reuse of modeling and simulation components. The contract awarded by the US Marine Corps to MÄK in 1997 served this vision of a vastly shared virtual reality, what might be termed ‘massively multiplayer’ games for the military; it closed the gap

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between military simulation technology and the technology available to players of games like Ultima Online (1997) and Everquest (1998). The special operations unit commander in this multiplayer game will see a battle engagement from a 3-D tactical view, enabling him to select units, issue orders, and monitor the progress of his forces. Each player will be able to assume a position in the command hierarchy of either US or opposing forces. Additionally, players of platform-level simulations will be able to assume their appropriate positions in the command hierarchy. While a number of military simulations and commercial airline flight simulators have been adapted to the commercial game market, FALCON 4.0 was the first commercial flight simulation video game to be adapted to military training. FALCON 4.0 is a network-based game which supports either single player or multiplayer modes. Multiplayer mode supports dogfights with up to four squadrons of four F-16s each. The extreme realism in this video game led Peter Bonanni, graduate of the F-16 Fighter Weapons School and pilot instructor of the Virginia Air National Guard, to work with Spectrum HoloByte Inc. to modify the FALCON 4.0 flight simulator game for military training. According to Bonanni, FALCON 4.0 mimics the look and feel of real military aircraft and allows users to play against computer-generated forces or, in a networked fashion, against other pilots, which facilitates team-training opportunities. Another reason for Bonanni’s enthusiasm is the virtual world around the player. Although the product features scripted Tactical Engagement missions as well as an Instant Action mode for newcomers, the heart and soul of the product is the dynamic campaign mode, where the player assumes the role of a pilot in an F-16 squadron during a conflict on the Korean peninsula. The campaign engine runs an entire war, assigning missions to units throughout the theater. A list (displayed either by priority to the war effort or by launch time) shows the missions available to the player’s squadron. The player can fly any of these missions, with the freedom to choose air-to-air or air-to-ground sorties. Unlike games with pre-scripted outcomes the campaign engine allows story lines, missions, and outcomes to be dynamically generated. Each play of the game influences the next. If a player is first assigned a mission to destroy a bridge but fails, the next mission may be to provide support to friendly tanks engaged by an enemy that just crossed the bridge. Networked video games such as FALCON 4.0 are emblematic of the calculated emergence of a military-entertainment complex but also of the fusion of the digital and the real happening around us. The two-way

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flow of people and technology we have described provides mutual benefit to the military simulation effort and the video game industry. But following the initial spurt of innovation contributed by the new companies spun off from former defense contractors, the subsequent development has been heavily weighted in terms of contributions from the game industry. The Institute for Creative Technology Until the last two or three years these crossovers from military simulations and the entertainment industries have been unplanned and opportunistic. In December of 1996 the National Academy of Sciences, acting on the initiative of Professor Michael Zyda, a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, hosted a workshop on modeling and simulation aimed at exploring mutual ground for organized cooperation between the entertainment industries and defense.32 The report and follow-up proposal by Michael Zyda stimulated the Army in August 1999 to give $45 million to the University of Southern California over the next five years to create a research center to develop advanced military simulations. The research center has enlisted film studios and video game designers in the effort, with the promise that any technological advances can also be applied to make more compelling video games and theme park rides. The idea for the new center, called the Institute for Creative Technologies, reflects the fact that although Hollywood and the Pentagon may differ markedly in culture, they now overlap in technology. In opening the new Institute for Creative Technology Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera said, “We could never hope to get the expertise of a Steven Spielberg or some of the other film industry people working just on Army projects.” But the new institute, Caldera said, will be “a win-win for everyone.” While putting more polygons on the screen for less cost is certainly one of the military’s objectives at the Institute for Creative Technologies and in similar alliances, other dimensions of simulated worlds are equally important for their agenda. Military simulations have been extremely good at modeling hardware components of military systems. Flight and tank simulators are excellent tools for learning and practicing the use of complex, expensive equipment. However, movies, theme 32

U.S. Department of Defense. Requirements Planning.

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park rides, and increasingly even video games are driven by stories with plot, feeling, tension, and emotion. To train for real world military engagements is not just to train on how to use the equipment but how to cope with the implementation of strategy in an environment with uncertainties, surprises, and participants with actual fears. As Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak’s directive on ‘Military Thinking and Decision Making Exercises’ emphasized, decisions made in war must frequently be made under physical and emotional duress. The directive stated that the PC-based wargame exercises in peacetime should replicate some of the same conditions: “Imaginative combinations of physical and mental activities provide Marines the opportunity to make decisions under conditions of physical stress and fatigue, thereby more closely approximating combat.”33 How might the interest in pursuing this line of development in new settings like the Institute for Creative Technology (ICT) proceed? The directions of research previously pursued by the Institute’s principal staff give us an indication. Prior to the launch the focus of work by several key members of the ICT was on constructing semi-automated forces and multiple distributed agents for virtual environments, such as training programs. Others in the ICT work on building models of emotion for use in synthetic training environments. The work of the professors Jonathan Gratch and Jeff Rickel are prototypical. Prior to the formation of the ICT these researchers had been working on the construction of intelligent agent technology for incorporation into state-ofthe-art military simulation systems. More interested in modeling training behaviors, they have not been particularly interested in developing believable agents for video games or film. The goal of one of their projects is to develop command and control agents that can model the capabilities of a human military commander, where commander agents must plan, monitor their execution, and replan when necessary. At the opening ceremonies of the ICT, Richard Lindheim, the executive director, outlined several projects the institute would be pursuing. Among those he described was a construction of what he referred to as ‘the holodeck.’ The idea, Lindheim explained, is to leverage new media technologies of virtual reality to link immersive virtual environments with interactive synthetic agents, so-called synthesbians, that are elements of simulation- and game-based learning exercises. Some examples of the programs that have been underway at the ICT are the Mis-

33

Ibid.

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sion Rehearsal Exercise, the Advanced Leadership Training Simulation, and the ICT Games Project. One of the scenarios completed in the Mission Rehearsal Exercise creates a training situation to help train soldiers heading for combat, peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. In the interactive scene you are an American soldier in Boznia-Herzegovnia whose Humvee has accidentally struck a civilian vehicle and injured a young child. A soldier stands, awaiting orders on whether to continue with the mission or call for Medivac assistance. “Sir, we should secure the assembly area,” he says – a platoon already in position is expecting your arrival as backup. Along the cobbled streets, a crowd has gathered. A TV crew is now on the scene. A helicopter circles overhead. Tension mounts. The five-minute scenario is projected onto a 150-degree movie screen, complete with 10.2-channel audio that creates floor-shaking sound effects. To enhance the sense of reality, smells including burned charcoal can be pumped into the room. Participants can gesture and touch objects and elicit responses in the simulator. The machine also uses voice recognition technology and different languages to allow participants to converse with the characters they encounter. The designers of this simulation, led by Jonathan Gratch, have spent considerable time trying to make this artificial intelligence respond in unpredictable ways so the experience is slightly different each time the system is used. Other simulations are being constructed to train soldiers for circumstances too dangerous for real-life training – for example, a chemical spill. The goal of constructing ‘the holodeck’ is to create the type of technology that allows teams of soldiers to be embedded in any environment. By 2008, ICT hopes to take the experience off the movie screen and compress it into a helmet, which users can wear to experience virtual reality anytime, anywhere. Conclusion On Independence Day, 2002, the traditional summer blockbuster date in the entertainment industry, the US military released its new videogame, America’s Army: Operations. Designed by the Modeling, Simulation, and Virtual Environments Institute (MOVES) of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, the game, intended as a recruiting device, is distributed free on the internet. Produced with brilliant graphics and the most advanced commercial game engine available (the Unreal game engine) at a cost of around $8 million, the game

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is a first-person multiplayer combat simulation that requires players to complete several preliminary stages of combat training in an environment mirroring one of the military’s own main training grounds – Cyber Bootcamp. On the first day of its release the military added additional servers to handle the traffic, a reported whopping 500,000 downloads of the game. The site continued to average 1.2 million hits per second through late August 2002. Gamespot, a leading review, not only gave the game a 9.8 rating out of a possible 10, but also regarded the business model behind the new game as itself deserving an award. As the military’s new blockbuster videogame illustrates, the military-industrial complex, contrary to initial expectations, did not fade away with the end of the Cold War. It has simply reorganized itself. In fact, it is more efficiently organized than ever before. Indeed, a cynic might argue that whereas the military-industrial complex was more or less visible and identifiable during the Cold War, today it is invisibly everywhere, permeating our daily lives. The military-industrial complex has become the military-entertainment complex. The entertainment industry is both a major source of innovative ideas and technology, and the training ground for what might be called post-human warfare. The rise of the military-entertainment complex is not without a certain irony. Military-supported games, it turns out, are considerably less violent than their competitors. America’s Army: Operations, for instance, renders only a puff of blood when a player is hit. Real War, another game commissioned by the military from Rival Interactive and simultaneously released as a commercial product, is rated ‘Teen’ because of its lack of gore. Although Rival Interactive’s president James Omer defends the game as a strategy challenge, not an actual simulator, several online game reviews have criticized this game and other military-funded game projects for not being realistic enough. Calling the movements in Real War jerky and cartoonish, Gamespot gave the game a ‘3’ out of ‘10.’ What scores a ‘10’ in the game community? Games like Rock Star Games’ Grand Theft Auto, a role-playing game in which the player, betrayed and left for dead, curries favor with mob bosses and crooked cops while avoiding a lethal street gang, or Max Payne, where a fugitive undercover cop framed for murder is hunted by the mob. To date, the ICT has not followed the game industry strategy of opening its game editor and level design software to the mod developer community, but if their intent is truly to leverage the commercial market for military interests in the new era of cyberwarfare, that step cannot be far

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Fig. 2: Operation Flashpoint (Cover, 2000).

behind. Indeed, it may not even be necessary: the Unreal game engine used by the MOVES Institute for America’s Army has spawned a very large mod community of its own, visible, for instance, on the PlanetUnreal.com website. One group currently recruiting there is developing a mod based on the Unreal engine called Terrorism: Fight for Freedom, expected to be completed in early 2003. The architects of this multi-player web-based game – a distributed multi-national group – describe their project in an update from August 11, 2002, as “a modernday, small-scale warfare. The mod is based upon wars that are currently occurring in the world.” The military is using newly-minted best practices of game design and business models to compete in the arena for young highly-trained cyberwarriors. In a post 9-11 world where distributed collaboration in a military context has come to signify ‘terrorist cells,’ the potential mods based on the Unreal engine conjure up an all too frightening potential reality. No doubt somewhere, either in the game industry itself or a-

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mong the worldwide community of mod builders, a group is currently developing a cyberterrorist game based on attacking the computer infrastructure of a country, disabling its power grid, infiltrating its financial networks, and hacking into mainstream news media such as the New York Times to confuse the public about what’s going on. Will this be a market (fig. 2) in which the U.S. military can choose (or afford) not to compete?

WORKS CITED Allen, Thomas B. War Games. The Secret World of the Creators, Players, and Policy Maker Rehearsing World War III Today. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987. Atta, Richard H. van, Sidney Reed, and Seymour J. Deitchman. DARPA Technical Accomplishments. An Historical Overview of Selected DARPA Projects. 3 vols. “Institute for Defense Analysis” (IDA). P-2429, 1991. Berry, F. Clifton Jr. “Re-creating History: The Battle of 73 Easting.” National Defense 76.11 (1991): 6-9. DoD Directive 5000.1, March 15, 1996, Section D: Policy, Para. 2: Acquiring Quality Products, item (f): Modeling and Simulation. Dunnigan, James F. “Wargames at War. Wargaming and the Professional Warriors.” The Complete Wargames Handbook. 3rd ed. Online at: http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/9-3-wpw.htm. Dunnigan, James F. “Genealogy of Computer Wargame Technology.” The Complete Wargames Handbook. Online at: http://www.hyw.com/Books/WargamesHandbook/6-3-gene.htm. Dunnigan, James F. and Redmond Simonsen. “Simulation. Revolt in the East: Warsaw Pact Rebellion in the 1970’s.” Strategy & Tactics 56 (1976). Flexman, R. E. et al. Studies in Pilot Training. The Anatomy of Transfer. Urbana: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1972. Harris, M. “Entertainment Driven Collaboration.” Computer Graphics 28.2 (1994): 93-96. Hartung, William D. “Military Monopoly.” The Nation 20. Jan. 13, 1997. Jane, Fred T. How to Play the ‘Naval War Game’: With a Complete Set of the Latest Rules, Full Instructions, and Some Examples of ‘Wars’ That Have Actually Been Played. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1912. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). Publication 1. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. Washington, D. C. 1987. Kelly, Kevin. “God Games: Memorex Warfare.” Out of Control. New York, 1994. Online at: http://panushka.absolutvodka.com/kelly/ch13-e.html. Krulak, Charles C. “Military Thinking and Decision Making Exercises.” Online at: http://www.tediv.usmc.mil/dlb/milthink/. Livermore, William Roscoe. The American Kriegsspiel. A Game for Practicing the Art of War upon a Topographical Map. Boston: Houghton & Co., 1882.

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Committee on Modeling and Simulation. Modeling and Simulation: Linking Entertainment and Defense. Washington, D.C. 1997. Online at: http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/modeling/table1.1html, and http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/modeling/. Office of Technology Assessment, ed. Virtual Reality and Technologies for Combat Simulation. Washington D. C., 1994. Patrick, Stephen B. “Firefight: US and Soviet Small Unit Tactics.” Strategy & Tactics 56 (1976). Perla, Peter P. The Art of Wargaming. A Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990. Reisswitz, Georg Heinrich Leopold von, Freiherr v. Kaderzin und Grabowska. Anleitung zur Darstellung militärischer Manöver mit dem Apparat des Kriegs-Spiels. Berlin, 1824. Reisswitz, Georg Heinrich Leopold von, Freiherr v. Kaderzin und Grabowska. Kriegsspiel. Instructions for the Representation of Military Manoeuvres with the Kriegsspiel Apparatus. Trans. Bill Leeson. 2nd ed. Hemel Hempstead: B. Leeson, 1989. Roland, Ellen F. et al. “The History of Joint Theater Level Simulation.” Online at: http://rolands.com/Pdf/JTLS_History.pdf. Roland, Ronald J., Ellen F. Roland, and Edward P. Kelleher Jr. “Approaches and Aspects of Implementing a Computer Wargame Simulation: A Historical Perspective.” January 1989. Online at: http://www.rolands.com/Pdf.treatise.pdf. Schwarzkopf, Norman. It Doesn’t Take a Hero. New York: Bantam, 1992. Sterling, Bruce. “War is Virtual Hell.” Wired Magazine 1.1 (1993). May 1, 1993. Online at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/virthell.html?topic=&topic_set=. Thorpe, J. A. “Future Views: Aircrew Training 1980-2000.” Unpublished conceptpaper at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Sept. 15, 1978. Thorpe, J. A. “The New Technology of Large Scale Simulator Networking: Implications for Mastering the Art of Warfighting.” Proceedings of the 9th Interservice Industry Training Systems Conference 30.11.-2.12.1987. Ed. American Defense Preparedness Association. 1987. 492-501. Tran, Khanh T. L. “US Videogame Industry Posts Record Sales.” Wall Street Journal 7 Feb. 2002. Valdespino, Anne. “Interactice Digital Software Association.” Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry. Washington D. C., 2000. Valdespino, Anne. “The Big Screen Keeps Pulling Us In.” Los Angeles Times 1 Jul. 2002. Valve, L. L. C. “Valve Unveils Steam At 2002 Game Developer’s Conference.” Press Release 21. March 2002. Verdy du Vernois, Julius von. Beitrag zum Kriegsspiel. Berlin, 1876. Waxman, Sharon. “Hollywood’s Greatest Escapism; Box Office Receipts Set a Record.” The Washington Post 4. Jan 2002. Wells, Herbert George. Little Wars. A Game for Boys from Twelve Years of Age to One Hundred and Fifty and for That More Intelligent Sort of Girls Who Like Boys’ Games and Books. London: Frank Palmer, 1913.

HARRY COLLINS

Science in its Social Space

A core-set is made up of those scientists deeply involved in experimentation or theorization which is directly relevant to a scientific controversy.1 A core-set is often quite small – perhaps a dozen scientists or a half-dozen groups. They are a ‘set’ rather than a ‘group’ because the members may disagree so violently that there are few social ties between them. When a scientific controversy reaches closure there are winners and losers. If the new claims are rejected outright by the majority, the winners write their ‘told-you-so’ books and papers and go back to their previous scientific lives; for them, there is a resumption of business as usual. As for the losers, they may disappear too, or they may form a ‘rejected science’ – a determined rearguard action which the mainstream cannot accept or will not understand. Another possibility is that a new post-closure science develops which is a modification of the science at the center of the core-set controversy. When this happens the mavericks are expelled and a ‘core-group’ takes over; a core-group can be expected to be much more socially solidaristic than a core-set for they have a more unified aim. A core-set, we might say, is like an explosive chemical reaction: after the explosion has subsided, everything may have evaporated and there may be nothing left behind, or there may be a core-group doing a new kind of orthodox science, or there may be the hard, dense, cinder of a rejected science – a group of scientists obstinately refusing to give up their ideas in spite of the crushing consensus that surrounds them. 1

Cf. H. M. Collins. “The Role of the Core-Set in Modern Science: Social Contingency with Methodological Propriety in Science.” History of Science 19 (1981): 6-19. H. M. Collins. Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 [First edition, Beverley Hills & London: Sage, 1985].

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Fig. 1: Diagram of the ‘Core-set’ and its surroundings.

The core-set or core-group is small, and is surrounded and observed by others. One can divide these others into concentric rings with the core at the centre. Representing this on a diagram one obtains a ‘target.’ Depending on the purpose in mind the rings of the target can be taken to represent various groups. For example, one convenient representation makes the first ring the scientific community beyond the core, the second ring funders and policy-makers, and the third ring the general public. (fig. 1) Each ring could be further sub-divided or the rings might be arranged in different ways. The point is that the target diagram draws one’s attention to relationships between the rings. Elements of this relationship can be quite unexpected. Distance Lends Enchantment Perhaps the most unexpected relationship between elements in the target diagram turns on certainty. Those outside the core tend to be more certain about the core’s conclusions than those inside it! Thus, quite contrary to the commonsensical, and philosophically orthodox, idea that the closer you observe a phenomenon the more you will know about it, it turns out that you know more if you observe less carefully. How can this be? Consider a core-set – that is, a core-group riven by controversy. Scientists in a core-set are continually doing experiments to try to confirm

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or refute other scientists’ findings. The problem is that core-set scientists are never quite sure whether they have performed their experiments well enough to justify a decisive confirmation or refutation. Experiment is a skillful activity and there is no direct way to measure skill except by what you can do with it. You can look for ‘proxies’ for skill, such as qualifications, experience, or reputation, but you can never be certain that these carry over to the new sets of skills or domains of tacit knowledge that need to be applied in a brand new area. The only way to know for sure whether you have done an experiment right is to look at the outcome. This is what we do when we are learning experimental skills at school. We try an experiment and usually it fails, but we know it has failed because we get the wrong result. So we try again and again until we get the right result or some result that can be said to be the right result. This is how an apprenticeship in science works. Our need to check results in order to know if we have accomplished a satisfactory carrying out of experiment applies to even the simplest of experiments. Consider a classroom test of the boiling point of water. The children put their thermometers into a beaker and take a reading when the water boils. Unless the circumstances are remarkable, none of them will get 100°C. Yet this causes no problem. Because the answer is already known the teacher can provide ready explanations for all the small discrepancies, such as ‘the water was not quite boiling;’ ‘there were impurities in the water;’ ‘the thermometer was on a hot spot on the bottom of the beaker;’ ‘there are superheated bubbles of steam that disturb the readings;’ ‘the atmospheric pressure is wrong;’ and so forth. All the near 100° results can thus be rendered as 100° and count as confirmations. On the other hand, if there are readings a long way from 100°, these are cases where the novice scientist had not yet mastered the technique: for example, they may not know how to read the scale on the thermometer, or they put something other than water in the beaker, or they did not leave the thermometer in the water for long enough, or they boiled the beaker dry. Some more complex modification of this process is used to calibrate one’s skill even in the most complex experiments. But notice that a confirmation of the result, ‘water boils at 100°,’ has taken place only if one does not look too closely; if one looked very closely at the readings actually obtained by the students one would not be certain that anything had been proved. In the case of a brand-new phenomenon, involving new experimental skills and bodies of tacit knowledge, this kind of apprenticeship does not work because we do not know what the ‘right’ result is. To find the

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right result is the very purpose of the experiments. In these circumstances we get an ‘Experimenter’s Regress.’2 To know whether some phenomenon is real one must do an experiment to test for it; but to know whether one’s experiment is adequately performed, one must check to see if it gives the right outcome; but to know the right outcome one must do an experiment to find out what the right outcome is; and so forth. That is why scientists in brand new areas suffer agonies about when and how to publish their results. If they publish too soon, with either a negative or a positive result, they risk making fools of themselves because it might turn out that they had not yet mastered the technique. This problem is not a philosophical nicety, it is a real world dilemma experienced over and over again by scientists who work on the frontiers of research. And even when some consensus is extracted from the argument by one means or another. Even when that set of experiments which are to count as adequately carried out is defined by overwhelming consensus and contrasted with that set which were not carried out adequately, the scientists on the ‘wrong’ side have many ways of defending their positions. They may lose the social battle for acceptance of their ideas but there is no reason why they should ever lose the logical or experimental battle because of the Experimenter’s Regress. And scientists within the core-set, even after they have turned themselves into a core-group, are aware of this. They know that in the last resort they had to make a judgement about who to believe and who not to believe: in the end, to reach a scientific conclusion, they had to make a judgement, not a ‘proof-like calculation.’ All this subtlety is lost as soon as we move away from the coregroup or core-set. It is lost because, as we might say, the ‘bandwidth’ of the information channels which those outside the core use to inform themselves of what is within the core is too narrow to carry all the information that the core-scientists have at their disposal. As long ago as 1935 Ludwik Fleck pointed this out: Characteristic of the popular presentation [of science] is the omission both of detail and especially of controversial opinions; this produces an artificial simplification. [and] >…@ the apodictic valuation simply to accept or reject a certain point of view. Simplified, lucid, and apodictic science – these are the most important characteristics of exoteric knowledge. In place of the specific constraint of thought by any proof, which can be found only with great effort, a vivid picture is created through simplification and valuation.3 2 3

Collins. Changing Order. Ludwik Fleck. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Trans. Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J. Trenn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. 112-13.

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Fleck was writing of popularisation – the deliberate simplification of findings. But the same applies to what one would normally think of as non-popular channels, such as the scientific journal article. Most journals are written to sum up in a few words the conclusions of an experiment with only a schematic description of the method. But there are other journals, such as the Review of Scientific Instruments, where much more detail is given. But even in these journals it is impossible to include ‘all’ the details of an experiment because there is no such thing as ‘all’ the details. The list of potential significant details in a new area of science is indefinitely long. In one of my early case studies it turned out that the length of a wire was a crucial variable in making an experimental laser work but no-one wrote this detail down. Nor, for a long period, did the scientists know that the length of the wire was crucial; those who made their lasers work were just lucky enough to have built their apparatus with the wire inside the tolerable limit. Talk to practising scientists and they will continually talk of these little ‘tricks of the experimental trade.’ There are tricks of the trade that they know, but they are also aware that there are tricks of the trade which they do not yet know; were it not the case their experiments would work much more reliably than they do. In my early interviews with scientists one physicist told me, only partly tongue-in-cheek, “it may be that when he glues on his transducers he weighs them down with a copy of Physical Review and it is that which is important.” A couple of weeks ago I was looking over a passage of a draft manuscript I had written with a physicist. The draft included the following paragraph: Every experiment is different to every other. Let us consider the resonant bar design of gravitational wave detector. If we expect to disconfirm the original findings, should we use the same material for the bars, bought from the same manufacturer? Should the bar be cast from the same batch of metal? Should we buy the same piezo-electric crystals from the same place? Should we use the same glue, bought from the same batch, to glue them on? Should the amplifiers be identical in every visible respect or is an amplifier built to certain input and output specifications ‘the same’ as another amplifier built to ‘the same’ specifications? Should we be making sure that the length and diameter of every wire is the same? Should we be making sure that the colour of the insulation on the wires is the same? Somewhere one has to stop asking such questions and use a common-sense notion of ‘the same.’ The trouble is that in frontier science tomorrow’s common-sense is still being formed.

I included the colours of the wires as an example that it was as absurdly unlikely to be important as use of the Physical Review as a weight to aid in gluing transducers. But to my astonishment, the physicist told me that in 1988 or 1989 the questions of the colour of insulation had turned

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out to be important. He and a Russian colleague had been examining an experimental set-up near Tokyo designed to measure Tritium Beta-decay. The colleague declared their results to be invalid because they had used a wire with red insulation! Apparently the red dye contains traces of radioactive uranium which can influence an experiment at the level of Tritium Beta-decay measurements. ‘Distance lends enchantment’ is the phrase that has been used to sum up the invisibility of the complexity of real life experiment to those outside the core.4 The more distant in social space or time is the locus of creation of knowledge the more certain it appears. Indeed, that is what creating certainty is – it is removing the appearance of uncertainty and that means hiding the skill and fallible effort that goes into making an experiment work. When the human activity that is experimentation is seen clearly, then one can also clearly see what could be going wrong.5 The important thing to notice is that distance and literary transformation account for certainty but not for the content of that certainty.6 For those distant from the seat of creation of the science what they see is either certain truth or certain untruth. I was once exposed to a startling demonstration of the negative side of the phenomenon. I was giving a talk which included reference to cold-fusion. At the time the existence of cold-fusion – that brief but widely publicised heresy – had been largely discredited as far as the scientific community and the literate public were concerned. A couple of ‘debunking’ books had been written and these had been widely publicised. In my talk I was using cold-fusion to illustrate the very ‘distance lends enchantment’ point that I am writing about here. I explained that though it might seem to most of us that cold-fusion was ‘dead and buried,’ I had just come back from a cold-fusion laboratory in the South of France where the research was still flourishing, funded by major Japanese and Italian industries; from close up cold-fusion seemed far from over. A furious member of the audience attacked my scientific competence. He told me that if I understood any science I would know that cold-fusion was simply nonsense 4 5

6

Collins. Changing Order. As Latour and Woolgar (1979) point out, the literary transformation which takes place as we move from laboratory talk to the scientific journal involves a removal of all qualifications, or ‘modalities,’ from the text. Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. London & Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979. In the accounts based on transformations of the literature it seems to have been missed.

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and that in mentioning it I had discredited my whole position. Taken aback, and wondering if the audience member knew some recent developments of which I was not aware, I asked him about his professional qualifications and his sources. He replied that he was a psychologist and, with great authority, he cited one of the popular debunking books as his source. Why does any of this matter? It matters because the invisibility of the lived doubts and uncertainties within the core of science set up false and dangerous expectations for science. Once upon a time the biggest danger was that the concealment of the core enabled scientists to make outrageous claims about what they could achieve and these could not be gainsaid because no one knew what really went on in science. Hence the explosion in the prestige of science after the Second World War and the acceptance by politicians of the promise of ‘power too cheap to meter’ if only scientists were given their heads in the matter of the development of nuclear power, and the like. But it could be that the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Once core science was hidden and even where it was controversial, a false picture of the ease with which a controversy could be resolved and closed was given to the public. The public’s distance from the research front was allowed to enchant them. But now the public is exposed to a different kind of science where the trick no longer works. The public debates that confront us these days include that over vaccination, over the environment, over the safety of modified foodstuffs and in these cases the continuing disagreements between scientists are all too evident. These sciences are not of the same kind as the debate over coldfusion; there is no hope that scientists will bring about even an incomplete closure to the controversies in the near or medium term. To a public brought up on the distance lends enchantment trick, the result is sudden and complete disenchantment. The scientists appear impotent. The result is disillusion with our experts and a call for radical democratisation of technological decision-making. Each should contribute to technological decisions according to their ‘stake’ in the decision, not their expertise; the very notion of expertise has turned out to be illusory. But that is why it is important to show that expertise has never been able to deliver what irresponsible scientists promised. It is important to show that it has never been the case that seriously controversial science can deliver certainty. At best it can deliver only partial certainty and usually much more slowly than people believe. And this is true even in the very heartland of physics, the paradigm of science. Thus, there was

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once a debate over the constancy of the velocity of light upon which a famous series of experiments were brought to bear.7 The textbooks tell us, misleadingly, that this debate never took place: it is said, or implied, that the famous Michelson-Morley experiment settled it all in the ‘twinkling of an eye’ in 1887. Careful historical analysis shows, however, that it took 40 years or more to come to conclusion within the core. But what does not follow from this is that during those 40 years the question of the constancy of the speed of light should have been settled by democratising the decision according to the interests of the stakeholders! In the cases of controversial science and technology to which the citizen is exposed the matter is much more complex. The debate over, say, global warming, is different to the debate over the speed of light because there were no political decisions to be made in the case of the speed of light. In the case of global warming someone has to decide to do something today, before the scientists can be allowed to reach their own closure. The speed of politics is faster than the speed of science, and in the case of this kind of science, it is much faster. That is why the citizens and the stakeholders must have a much greater say in the case of this kind of decision. Nevertheless, the speed of light example reminds us that the there is still a special role for the expert. We move then from an understanding of the difference in perception between the core of science and those who watch it from a distance to what appears to be a somewhat confounded conclusion but which is not confounded at all: once one understands this difference one understands that science, especially science that touches on everyday concerns, should never again be ceded the authority it was once ceded. But one also understands that scientific expertise still has a special role in public decision-making. To go to either extreme: that science deserves supreme authority or that it deserves no more authority than the view of any other citizen, is to make a mistake about the way science exists in its social space.

7

H. M. Collins and Trevor Pinch. The Golem: What You Should Know About Science. Cambridge and New York: Canto, 1998 [First edition, Cambridge University Press, 1993].

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Science, ‘Art’ and the Chain of Meaning Perhaps we can make this point still more clear by resurrecting what used to be called ‘demarcation criteria’ between science and other kinds of activity. Demarcation criteria have fallen into disrepute as science has come to be seen as not much different to other kinds of activity. It is true that it is very hard to support any of the old philosophical demarcation criteria, such as Popper’s falsifiability, because so many studies of scientific practice have shown that these things do not appear in the way scientists make choices in what they are going to count as right and wrong. Nevertheless, what we have said above can lead us toward new kinds of demarcation criteria located in social activity. For example, consider the relationship between writer and reader in, on the one hand, science and, on the other, certain kinds of fine art or literature. Forget about whether science can actually achieve its aims, the fact remains that the whole point of science is to reach toward a transcendental realm of truth. It has to be believed that the scientist writing, say, a scientific paper, knows something true that those reading the paper do not know. Were it not so then the scientists would not be doing science. It follows that it is the job of the scientist to write in such as a way as to attempt to transfer a clear and unambiguous message to the reader. It does not matter whether this can be achieved, as it assuredly cannot except in special circumstances, the scientist must write as if there is a one way flow of information from writer to reader. The scientist cannot accept that ‘the author is dead.’ Compare this with certain types of poetry or art, especially emerging from relatively contemporary movements. Artists or poets are satisfied if their works provoke new and unanticipated interpretations in their viewers and readers. Indeed, in these cases, viewers and readers are given a role in establishing the meaning of a work of art or a poem. The artist/poet might react on hearing of a new interpretation ‘I didn’t think of that – maybe that is what my work means.’ Sometimes, the more and varied the interpretations the better is the work construed to be. In science, on the other hand, a reader putting a different interpretation on a paper than the scientist intended is usually either making a mistake, or giving cause to the scientist to think he or she made a mistake. The same line of reasoning leads one to be unsurprised by the different role of the critic in the case of ‘the arts’ and the sciences. In the case of the arts, critics have a legitimate role in establishing the meaning of a work even if they are themselves not artists or writers. In the case of

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science, only other scientific specialists have the right to determine scientific validity. Without becoming a hostage to fortune by saying anything too exactly we can still erect a new demarcation criterion. Let us call the relationship between author, reader, critic, and general public, the ‘chain of meaning.’ Then, it is generally thought proper that on this chain, the locus of meaning lies nearer to the author in the case of science than in the case of art.8 Of course, there are those who believe that even in this respect science should cease to be special and that those with the right to make purely scientific judgements should include a substantial body without technical qualifications or experience. This, it seems to me, is to invite the dissolution of the very idea of science.

WORKS CITED Collins, Harry M. “The Role of the Core-Set in Modern Science. Social Contingency with Methodological Propriety in Science.” History of Science 19 (1981): 6-19. Collins, Harry M. Changing Order. Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. 1985. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Collins, Harry M. and Trevor J. Pinch. The Golem. What You Should Know About Science. 1993. 2nd ed. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Collins, Harry M. and Robert Evans. “The Third Wave of Science Studies. Studies of Expertise and Experience.” Social Studies of Science 32 (2002): 235-96. Fleck, Ludwik. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Trans. Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J. Trenn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Latour, Bruno and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life. The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. London and Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979.

8

For the beginnings of this theory see H. M. Collins and Robert Evans. “The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience.” Social Studies of Science 32 (2002): 235-96.

RAINER GRUBER

The Adventurous Relationship between Physics and Geometry: Newton’s Space Viewed by Present-Day Physics

1. Introduction Space has two opposing and yet corresponding meanings. On the one hand, space means a room: a cabinet, a chamber, a loft. And my first association is a loft from my childhood. I grew up in Lenzkirch, a small village in the black forrest. Under the roof of our house there was a loft filled with artefacts of my mother’s and our small decapitated family’s everyday life, in a way the cabinet of wonder of my childhood. As an adolescent I constantly climbed the steep wooden stairs in order to masturbate up there. Old magazines had been piled up there, such as Quick and Stern, exhibiting the kind of intimation of bosom which a young man was so interested in. Everything smelled of wood and during the summer it was muggy, not necessarily a disadvantage for the intentions of the young man. It was a loft enclosed by the wood of the roof beams and shielded by the tiles, in short: it was the experience of a space with walls protecting the secret, a place of security, which allowed the young boy to throw a glance out into the world. Such a chamber must be assigned to the category of sensual space; a space filled up with things, and it is the differentness of these things that allows a perception of space. Space with a front and a behind, an underneath and an above. Space filled up with delicious pleasures and austere disappointments. With the Renaissance we may track the emergence of another notion of space, the notion of a kind of abstract space. We achieve this by removing all things: space viewed as the debordered and vacated chamber.

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Contrary to our sensual perception, this kind of abstract space impresses by uniformity. If we attempt to visualise it, we readily use the uniformity of some flagstone pattern, whereby we have to rely on perspective, to be able to imagine its particular nature. Its invariance against translational displacements catches our eyes. This space is the container, in which all motion takes place. It is the stage on which the actors of physics play, the immobile background resting in itself. Amazingly enough: even though the Renaissance attempted to replace God by the human being, all properties that were nevertheless originally attributed to God may be discovered again in this notion of space, as developed by the Renaissance and still prevalent in our brain. This space is ubiquitous like God, it is invisible like God, infinite like God and it is unchangeable, i.e. invariant against all that happens. It owns something of a silent immobility. We should keep in mind: Newton’s space is generated by abstraction. Rather than being left behind it emerges when we imagine all things being put away. It is an image made by us. Even though our view suggests that this image is appropriate, physics with its experimental method asserts its claims to correct the image, if necessary. But what might actually appear to be a correction of the image, might in fact be better described as a correction of the view, by which we approach the world.

2. Correcting the View Such a correction of view was a pivotal challenge already in the Renaissance.1 The circular orbits of the planets of the Ptolemaeian – and incidentally also still of the Copernican – system had always been understood as ‘natural motion’ in the sense of Aristotle. Due to their elementary nature, the aetheric spheres moved in ideal circles, whereas the heavy elements, earth and water, moved rectilinearly downwards and the light elements, air and fire, were moving rectilinearly upwards.

1

For a study of original papers, see the excellent compilation by Shmuel Sambursky, ed. Der Weg der Physik. Munich: dtv, 1978.

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Kepler’s ellipses, in contrast, were neither circular nor immutable, but entangled the planets at every point of their orbit into changes of velocity and of direction. The transition from an Aristotelian circle, representing divine-natural perfection, to a Keplerian ellipse thus does not simply mean that one geometrical form had been replaced by some other, improved one. The elliptical motion in a heliocentric universe did ask for a new explanation, extending far beyond ‘natural motion.’2 The epoch making of this development is the replacement of a static, geometrical representation of divinity by the construct of antagonistic physical forces, whose result gives rise to an elliptical orbit trajectory accessible to analytical treatment. Newton’s theory of gravitation allowed for a new conceptual scheme for a coherent and compelling new cosmology. The Neoplatonic dream of a mathematically structured universe had considerably approached completion. At that same time the concept of gravitation signified the compulsory termination of the division of heavenly and terrestrial spheres. Due to its mathematical form, it provided evidence that the force that made the celestial planets orbit around the sun was the same force that dictated the trajectory to a terrestrial cannonball. The static, divinely representative geometry thus vanished from the heaven’s sphere, but only to relocate into the concept of Newtonian space where it easily may be recovered. This space henceforth became the apparently firm foundation of every mathematical representation of physical courses of motion. The geometrical element, which overwintered in this space concept, celebrated in the twentieth century its lucent resurrection. Starting with the intriguing invariance of Newton’s space against rotations and translations, physicists jumped at the theory of what remained identical with itself through all motion. The divine invariant, put into it’s plural, became the fillet steak of present-day physics. The concept of abstract space, with its contents of symmetries and invariants, spread with quantum theory over the whole microcosm of elementary particles. Far from the replacement of mathematical geometry by physical forces, today, conversely, it is geometrical symmetry that determines the existence and form of all known forces. 2

This as well as several other remarks concerning the Renaissance are taken from the brilliant depiction in Richard Tarnas. The Passion of Western Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1991.

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The starting point of the triumph of geometry was the stormy development of the Theory of General Relativity at the beginning of the last century. Space, which in the Theory of Special Relativity could still be understood as a stage, became curved and exploded. Gravitation – at that time the epitome of a physical force – again became a question of pure geometry. Newton’s space and time melted with gravitation. The metric tensor, describing the curvature of space, emerged as the gravitational field. This development would have been unthinkable without the mathematical apparatus of differential geometry, which itself had its roots in the mathematical term of the infinitely small, a distillate, so to speak, from the exercises about infinity performed by scholasticism. This apparatus accentuates the aspect of the local. But only when this thinking of the local retroacted on the symmetries themselves, when their transition from global to local symmetries condensed into a conceptual frame, the base was accomplished for a unified representation of all elementary forces under the primacy of geometrical symmetries. The primacy of local considerations over global considerations finally became a fundamental principle with far reaching power. Together with the symmetries this principle compels the creation of particles, thus causing their existence in the world, resembling a divine principle. The particles thus coming into the world are the bosons. They are the particles which, by their exchange, give rise to forces between matter. The analytical form of all interactions presently known is determined by this principle. At the time of its birth the first force of that kind, the gravitational force, could unfold its power only by radically liberating itself from the straitjacket of the geometry of heavenly defined circular motion. This liberation towards a concept that envisaged physical forces instead of geometry as the cause of motion, provided the broad basis for building up physics up to and beyond the nineteenth century. In contrast, the ascription of forces to geometrical reasoning which started in the twentieth century in the meantime proved to be the essential foundation of the present-day physicist’s view of the world. Theodor W. Adorno pointed out the effort necessary for using adequate analytical terms in the course of every philosophy. As my little outline already shows, this applies to physics as well. I cannot and I do not want to spare you this effort. But I would like to give you some encouragement: if in the following you hear something about the Met-

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rical Tensor or about Quantum Field Theory, then simply remember, that even in fairy tales you don’t understand everything either. And you know you do not need to understand. 3. Uniformity as a Programme Let’s go back to Newton’s space, to the stage, the immobile background. It exhibits a characteristic property: in some strange manner it is uniform, if not even monotonous. In our normal life, we turn away from such uniformity. It is monotonous. Physics, however, is highly interested in and addresses itself to this uniformity. Uniformity means: I may translationally displace space in itself and nothing changes. I may rotate it and it always remains the same. Physicists define uniformity by operations. Something remains invariant, unchanged against specific operations, say translational displacement or rotation. Physicists denote this as symmetry. The space’s indifference against translational displacements is called translational invariance, its inviolacy against rotations is called rotation invariance. In doing so, physics has, almost imperceptibly, made an important modification of perspective. Instead of addressing the indifference of space, physics now speaks about translational invariance of the equations, that describe physical events in space, speaking thus about an invariance in physics. The invariance of space which appears after having removed all matter from space lays itself like a reverberation on all events as if it would belong to those things, after they have been deposited again in space. The significance of symmetries shows up in a curious and utmost important connection: symmetries in space are the origin of the conservation laws in physics. Invariance of space against rotation induces the conservation of the angular momentum. From translational invariance of space follows the conservation of momentum. And from translational invariance of the time, i.e. from the perception that physical events may not depend on whether I relate to the time of the birth of Jesus Christ or Mohammed, immediately follows the law of energy conservation. You all know the pivotal role these laws of conservation play in physics and particularly in engineering. The conservation of angular momentum not only determines the masterful arts of a pirouette dancer in figure skating. It also determines the pure feasibility of a stable el-

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lipse of the Earth orbiting around the sun. It is a precondition of our existence. Thus an intimate connection appears between physical facts and properties of symmetry, i.e. invariance features of space. Physicists are fascinated by invariance. One of the most prominent supporting pillars of modern physics is the search for invariants. The search for what remains identical with itself in all motion. Invariance is in a way the secularized form – a sort of Bonsai edition – of the divine. The heart of twentieth century physics is denoted by two questions: what are the basic symmetries? And what are the respective invariants? It is length that turns out to be the most important invariant of twentieth century.

4. The Cartography of Differential Geometry We all know the notion of length. The sentence ‘My daughter’s current height is 1,70 m’ is readily understood in Australia as well, even though the Earth is a rotating system moving very fast through outer space. It was solely due to the fact that length may be taken as an invariant against rotation and translation that it was possible to deal with lengths which became familiar in our everyday life. The whole secret of Special as well as General Relativity is captured in the development of this invariant. One could say: the history of 20th century physics is essentially the history of these invariants. Two issues are significantly involved in this development. On the one hand, it would not have been possible without the ability to successfully conceptualize the universe as a mathematical one. And secondly, it would not have been possible without the use of the differential method developed by Newton and Leibniz, which genuinely starts from measures found in the infinitely small, the strictly local. In the following, I will perform the formulae in which the invariant length dressed during its development. Why do I consider this important? On the one hand, these formulae underline the exceptional relevance acquired in present-day physics by the Neoplatonist concept of simple and elegant mathematical formulation, which constituted style during the Renaissance. On the other hand, only the mathematic formula gives access to the parallel universe opened by Newton.

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Mathematization seems to make physics hardly comprehensible. Yet let me ask you not to be too impressed by the mathematical strangeness of the formulae. Just take them as aesthetical objects. But, aesthetical objects with a specific surplus: you might read cognition out of them, if you like. Take it as some kind of aesthetical magic to realize in what simple mathematical formula the secret of Special and General Relativity may be enclosed and revealed. So let’s make a little excursion into the cartography of differential geometry. Our starting point is length in Euclidean space: ds2 = dx2 + dy2 + dz2

(1)

where we suppose rectangular coordinates x, y, z. The prefix ‘d’ therein denotes a ‘differential’ as devised by Newton, i.e. an infinitely small distance. This formula is only a version of the Pythagorean Theorem, a2+ b2= 2 c , which some of you might recognize from school. It says that my expectation will not be betrayed: whether I go in the x, y or z-direction, each of these directions in principle contributes in the same way to the total distance ds2 which I covered. This has its reason in the fact that each of the quadratic partial distances enters the total distance with the same weight 1. Now imagine this formula in spherical instead of rectangular coordinates, where an angle I counts the longitude and an angle T counts latitude: ds2 = dr2 + r2 (dT2 + sin2T dI)

(2)

dT and dI now denote the motion on the surface of a sphere with radius r, dT denotes a small progression to north or south, and dI a small progression to east or west, and dr means, that we inflate or shrink our surface to some other radius. What is important for us: the quadratic terms by now are no longer preceded by a 1. Instead we find some factors (henceforth always bold typed) commonly denoted as the metric tensor. The surface of a sphere is a curved area and the metric tensor defines the type of curvature. Some peculiarities might be read from the above formula. If I want to cover a distance in I by e.g. 360 degrees, on the equator this means that I have to travel about 40,000 km. But on the north pole for the same angular distance I effectively have to go about say a few metres only. This discrepancy is caused by the factor sin2T which goes to zero at the north pole and thus ruins all efforts in I.

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Suppose you lived in the Sahara and you erroneously believed that I and T would be your natural rectangular coordinates, only because near the equator both would have a weight of 1. What a mistake! On the north pole you then easily might feel like the country doctor in Kafka’s Landarzt, whose maidservant Rosa gets raped by some farm labourer and whose practise gets taken over by his successor, whilst his sledge goes on and on but doesn’t progress. The Sahara people indeed may cover 360 degrees, but the closer one is located to the pole, the less one will actually gain ground in this exercise. It is the metric tensor, represented in our example by the factor sin2T, which decides what distance will finally have been covered. The metric tensor is the key term of the twentieth century’s relativistic physics. For later use let’s introduce an abbreviation. If we are not interested in angles, we write: ds2 = dr2 + r2 d: 2

(3)

5. The Remarkable Metamorphoses of the Metric Tensor 5.1 The Theory of Special Relativity Till now we moved in our little world, with velocities much smaller than the velocity of light. Till now, space was the immutable container. But physics wanders with its experimental glance more carefully along things. And it detects facts that contradict our common sense. It detected that the velocity of light c in all moving systems is the same. Before Special Relativity two invariants existed: the spatial length, that we just talked about – it was taken to be the same in every moving system – and the length of the time dt2, which likewise seemed to be the same in every moving system. But Special Relativity claims that another formula must be used for the invariant length: ds2 = c2 dt2 – (dx2 + dy2 + dz2)

(4)

And it claims that the transition to a moving system will not be described any more by Galilei’s transformation, but by the so-called Lorentz transformation. At first glance this looks like a length in 4-dimensional space, with time being the fourth coordinate. However, the leading signs are different for space and time.

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This new geometry is called Minkowski’s geometry. All secrets of special relativity theory are included in the little marvel of this invariant. Let me demonstrate this in short: 1. The old length ds2 = dx2 + dy + dz2, which was dedicated to space alone, is no longer an invariant in itself, and neither is time dt2. Space and time are set in motion and they amalgamate towards an irresolvable unity, the 4-dimensional space time. And from now on, when you hear ‘space time,’ it means this amalgamated unity. 2. In a coordinate system, where I am at rest, dx = dy = dz =0, it immediately follows, that the invariant ds2 equals the value of the time dt02 in the rest system, the so-called eigen time, multiplied with c2. Putting this into the last equation, we may conclude, that for every moving system, the lapsed time span dt2 is greater than in the rest system, because something is subtracted: c2 dt02 = c 2 dt2 – (dx2 + dy2 + dz2)

(5)

3. Dividing now the whole equation by c2dt2, I get the relation of the eigen time dt 02 to the time in the moving system dt2, where v is the velocity of the moving system relative to the rest system:

§ v2 dt 02 ¨¨1  2 = dt 2 © c

· ¸¸ ¹

(6)

This is the basis of the famous twin paradox. A twin in a fast rocket ages more slowly than the one left behind. Clocks slow down for moving bodies. For systems near the velocity of light the time scarcely proceeds. For light rays time stands still. And at the same time we realize: in the theory of Special Relativity there doesn’t exist any velocity greater than c, the velocity of light. I want to leave it at this mathematical interpretation. In a similar way we easily may find that the spatial measures shrink in a moving system and that mass gives up its static role and increases with increasing velocity. Time and space amalgamate into one, into 4-dimensional space time. But it is remarkable that space and time merge in the new metric with a different signature. Henceforth the only possibility to differentiate between space and time will be the opposite sign in the metric. Special Relativity space is still the stage, on which we move. But the planks become mobile in a strange way. The stage begins to waver.

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In Special Relativity there is no longer one consistent space for everyone. Everybody drags their own space time with him or her according to his/her velocity. It is only because our world is determined by relatively low velocities, that we are unaware of this fact. As with Newton, Heaven and Earth were forced to give up their detached existence, so now, with Einstein, space and time lose their mutual autonomy. Like with Newton’s gravitational force, the terrestrial top and bottom of the element’s motion and the celestial circle of planets were stripped of their elementary denotation, so now spatial length and the duration of time lose the status of invariants. Simultaneity forfeits its elementary importance. The one, all-embracing, eternity-promising time decays into eigen times. If, at this point, you possibly might think that physics is incomprehensible, I must remind you: it is not physics that is incomprehensible, but it is reality. However, it is only incomprehensible for us, whose perception is adapted to our non relativistic Newtonian-Galileian world. The development of the mathematics of differential geometry as pushed by Newton and Leibniz made it possible to sharpen our perception of the world considerably. And the Neoplatonists amongst us might feel assured: it is amazing, in what lucid and elegant formulae these tumbling statements about the world may be casted.

5.2 The Theory of General Relativity Imagine it was winter and you had to push your car through the snow. Then one of Newton’s laws tells you that the force you have to apply would be proportional to the inertial mass of the car. If instead you would like to elevate your car, then Newton tells you that your effort would be proportional to the heavy mass of the car. Inertial mass represents an ability to persist. The heavy mass results from the gravitational attractive force of the Earth. Viewed from a systematic point of view, inertial and heavy mass have nothing to do with each other. That is what makes the experimental fact so intriguing, that inertial mass and heavy mass are found to be equal in value. Again an experimental finding marks the beginning of a new theory, the theory of General Relativity. According to Newton’s Law stating that Actio = Reactio, it follows from this equality, that for all bodies, independent of their mass or their

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Fig. 1: Even Newton’s apple bends space a little.

physical composition, the acceleration in the gravitational field must be the same. All bodies fall equally rapidly. But this fact then makes it possible to represent the trajectory of every falling body by geometry. Imagine a landscape with a serpentine valley and let a ball roll down the valley. The geometry of the walls causes every ball to take the same path independent of its physical composition. Every ball will follow the serpentines as if a force were agitating it. And now replace the walls of the valley by an appropriate distribution of masses, which by means of gravitation pull the body in one or the other direction so that the result of the motion remains the same. Mass and curvature of space thus correlate. In fact, the heavier the correlated mass, the more space must be curved, geometry being determined by the distribution of masses, which is the pivotal assertion of General Relativity (fig. 1). More precisely: the equations of General Relativity specify how the metric tensor which defines the curvature of space is determined by a given mass distribution. Let me show you the amazing result quite plainly by means of two examples:

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Assume that all matter is distributed in the world uniformly, like a fine dust. Then the metric tensor gets calculated so that (in co-moving coordinates) we get the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric named after its discoverers: ds2 = c2dt2 – R2(t)[1/(1 – kr2)dr2 + r2dȍ2]

(7)

We may recognise the length element of Special Relativity, but with two factors in addition: 1. The factor 1/(1-kr2) expresses that the universe is curved in specified ways. It may be elliptically closed (k = +1) or hyperbolically open (k= –1) and with k = 0 also a flat universe would be a solution. 2. The time dependent factor R(t) denotes the radius of curvature of the universe. It expresses that the universe may explode or even implode. This is what we call the Big Bang Theory, a universe that inflates out of a singularity which is not yet specifiable (fig. 2). The world, debordered by Copernicus and Newton from the spatial finiteness of the Ptolemaian crystal spheres to become infinite, now gets its finiteness back with the Big Bang Theory, although now the finiteness is temporal. 5.4 Case 2. The Infinite Collapse into the Finite In Newton’s time, two pivotal questions existed, one heavenly, the other mundane. Why – in spite of their inertia – did the Earth and the planets persistently fall in the sun’s direction? And why did terrestrial objects – in spite of a moving Earth, which was not at the centre – insistently fall back to the Earth’s surface? Newton’s gravitational law provided the answer, but now posing in turn the question: if gravitational force always increases with the reciprocal square of the diminishing distance, two bodies thus attracting each other the stronger the nearer they are: why doesn’t everything fall? One indeed could be inclined to paraphrase the whole programme of astrophysics by the question: What are the critical points of the col-

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Fig. 2: The explosion of the universe.

lapse? Likewise we could grasp even our life as an inexorable collapse towards death and could ask: what are the critical points?3 We might imagine a star as a big nuclear kiln. The pressure caused by the high temperature of fusion and the radiation pressure counterbal3

I mourn Ute Stammberger, my beloved, this blazing woman, stage director of Comedia Opera Instabile, remembering her sentence: “The contrary is false as well.” She died the week after I gave this talk.

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ance the gravitational pressure. But as soon as the fuel is exhausted, the collapse starts. Interestingly enough, it is the smallest players in the game, the electrons, which put an end to the collapse of a star as big as our sun. According to the laws of quantum mechanics they are not arbitrarily compressible. Thus the star ends up as a white dwarf. Now, if the collapsing core of the sun had a mass of more than 1.4 solar masses, the electrons would no longer be able to stop the collapse. They would get pushed inside the protons, so to speak. The star in this case would end up as a densely packed neutron star with a radius of about 13 km. Finally, for a remaining mass greater than 3.2 solar masses, even the dense package of the neutrons no longer stops the collapse. The infinite fall into the finite begins. A black hole evolves. The description of a black hole as a solution of the equations of General Relativity was found by a physicist named Karl Schwarzschild, shortly before he died in World War I. He considered the case of a single isolated star, in some outer space, which should behave like a flat space sufficiently far from the star. In his solution

§ · 1 (1 – 2GM/r) c 2 dt 2  ¨¨ dr 2  r 2 d: 2 ¸¸ (8) © (1  2GM/r) ¹ M is the mass of the star, G is the gravitational constant and the star is located at the centre of spherical coordinates. The only difference to the metric of Special Relativity is the appearance of the factor (1 – 2 GM/r). This factor weighs the time as well as, in a reciprocal way, the radius. This factor conceals the secret of the black holes. The so-called Schwarzschild-radius, r = 2GM, at which this factor gets zero, divides the black hole by a sharp border into an outer and an inner region. A test person would reach this point in finite eigen time and would traverse it. To the external observer however, it appears as if time would slowly come to a stand still. He observes that in approaching this point, which therefore has been called the event horizon, he needs an infinite amount of time. We remember the desert dweller near the north pole and the situation of Kafka’s country doctor. It took more than 40 years until it could be proven that space and time do not end at the Schwarzschild radius. They interchange their roles there. In crossing the event horizon the factor changes its sign. Since the leading sign provides the only possibility to differentiate between space and time, space becomes time and time becomes space at ds 2

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this point. And as there is no turning back in time, there likewise is no escape from the inside of a black hole. 5.5 Black Holes Black holes are macroscopic objects whose mass scale reaches from a few solar masses up to billions of solar masses. As far as we may assume them to be stationary and isolated, each of them is exactly described by the Kerr solution of the field equations of General Relativity. This is the only case in physics, where we possess an exact description of a macroscopic body. Macroscopic bodies, as we see them around us, are determined by a multiplicity of forces, which we derive by a multiplicity of approximations to a multiplicity of physical theories. In contrast, the only element that makes up for the construction of a black hole, is our basic concept of space and time. As seen in the view of physics, black holes are the most perfect macroscopic objects existing in this universe. And because the description of General Relativity provides a sole, uniquely determined solution only dependent on their mass, angular momentum and charge, they are the most simple objects existing. For the fact that the black hole itself does not admit any topography – it is described by only mass, angular momentum and charge – we abundantly get reimbursed by a multiplication of the world in the near exterior region of the black hole. Due to the strong gravitation, light on the photosphere, i.e. near the distance of one and a half of the Schwarzschild radius, is forced to revolve the black hole ever and ever again. Dependent on the number of orbits the light took along its way around the black hole, the complete sky presents itself to the observer in an infinite series of Einstein rings again and again, including the area behind the observer as well as behind the black hole. The observational evidence for potential candidates of black holes in the last years have become overwhelming. In the centre of our Milky Way, a black hole containing 2.6 millions of solar masses has become peremptory.4 The observational data gained by the Hubble telescope suggest that black holes reside in the centre of nearly every galaxy. Black holes, once the weird exotics of theory, meanwhile have become neighbours (fig. 3). 4

Online at: http://www.mpe.mpg.de/www_ir/GC/gc.html.

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Fig. 3: Black holes, as little as they reveal of themselves, are voracious monsters, which offer a wild festival of destruction to the matter which comes into their field of influence. (For further details see description on the following page.)

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Description of fig. 3: The active galaxy Centaurus A, about 10-13 millions of light years away from us, hides in its centre a supermassive black hole with a mass of possibly 200 solar masses. The bright ball seen in the optical wavelength spectrum (upper left) consists of some billions of mostly old stars. In the radio telescope the impact of enormous jets of high energetic particles shows up (upper left, superposed to the optical image), which are also seen on the X-ray image, which focuses on the same location (upper right). Only in the infrared it may be discerned that the elliptical galaxy in its centre harbors another, spiral galaxy (middle left, the dark disc in the centre; the optical image and the radio contour lines have been superposed). Presumably the collision of both galaxies is responsible for the vast quantity of extended dust clouds, which in the optical make up a romantic panorama, but allow for no glance at the centre (middle right). An infrared exposure however, which permeates the dust, clearly shows, that the active nucleus of the galaxy that ejects the jet, has an extension of only about 10 light days (lower left, small image). At the lower right an artist’s model delineates the most likely scenario of this turbulent bacchanal.

6. The Fundamental Connection between Force and Geometry 6.1 The Relevance of Local Connection The connection between force and geometry, as first developed by considering gravitation, emerged as the fundamental basis of the theory covering the microworld, now known as the standard model of elementary particles and thus reaching far beyond gravitational interaction. The principle, that each law of conservation gets attached to a symmetry, i.e. an invariance against the transformations of this symmetry, in a breathtaking manner, allows for a unified description of all, not only gravitational, interactions. This is true only when it is coupled with a requirement of Special Relativity Theory. Let me exemplify this statement by means of the electrical charge: Quantum mechanics describes particles as states in new, abstract spaces, the so-called Hilbert spaces. Processes with electrical particles conserve charge. This is an experimental fact. This conservation law corresponds to a symmetry, called U(1). In consequence, the physical equations of the electrically charged particles must be invariant against rotations with an arbitrary angle, say I, in this Hilbert space. But now something strange happens. Special Relativity says: this does not work. No global rotation about some angle I may be per-

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formed, because at the same time one space point may know nothing about another space point. In particular, it cannot be known, by which angle I the other point is rotated. This then requires that the I has to be left arbitrary for every space point. But this arbitrariness destroys the invariance on which charge conservation is based. The dilemma is perfect. Physicists have set their hearts on Special Relativity. But they also hold on to charge conservation. The only way out of this dilemma is the introduction of an additional term into the equations. Under the transformation in question, the rotation, this additional term must behave in such a way that the invariance gets restored. Now, in Quantum Field Theory every additional term inevitably denotes an additional particle. Thereby the nature of this particle, as well as its type of interaction with other matter, will automatically be determined by the structure of this additional term. In our case it turns out, that the additional particle is the photon, and that the equations governing this particle must be Maxwell’s equations. Thus the basis of electrodynamics, on whose formulation legions of physicists have worked during half a century, appears as the result of the simple requirement to consider the symmetry U(1) as a strictly local one, as required by Special Relativity. What has been demonstrated here for the electromagnetic interaction, is of general relevance. All forces that we know in the microworld are effected by the exchange of particles. All these particles owe their existence to some symmetry, coupled with the requirement to consider this symmetry as local instead of global (fig. 4). That these particles indeed could be verified experimentally in the last third of the twentieth century has become one of the great triumphs of Theoretical Physics. Symmetries, standing for uniformity, turn out to be the deepest reason for the existence of this type of particles, which we call bosons. Without these particles, no atomic nucleus could ever exist, no atom or molecule could form, no light, radio or television would exist. The symmetries, however, develop their power only when transferred from a global symmetry to a local one. Like what the magic wand does for the fairy in the fairy tale, for the physicist, it is the requirement to transfer global into local structures. It turns out that this principle also enables the deduction of the theory of General Relativity, as conceived by Einstein. Taking Lorentz’ symmetry, extended for translations in space and time, i.e. the so-called Poincaré-symmetry, as a local symmetry, does establish in a natural

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Fig. 4: The exchange-particles of the interaction as local symmetries.

way the interaction with which the gravitational field couples to matter. It is the gravitons that are mediators of the gravitational force.5 We thus may summarize: every interaction is completely comprehended and described by one dedicated symmetry. This symmetry, taken as a strictly local one, inevitably brings into the world the particle that mediates the respective interaction. The biblical ‘Let there be light’ gets re-exercized mysteriously. The role of the divine creator is now acted by the geometrical symmetry U(1), which provides for the existence of the photons, the particles of light. With the extension of knowledge to submicroscopic worlds, physicists are in need of more than one creator. The symmetry SU(2) is required to turn on the light of the weak interaction, called vector bosons, and also SU(3) is required, to turn on the light of strong interactions, the gluons. The geometry of Aristotle, representing the divine at its time, and being painfully deformed by Kepler and Newton from circles to el5

Actually things are slightly more complicated and there are hints that it might be more appropriate to take a symmetry called SL(2,C) to generate the correct gravitational interaction when taken as a local symmetry. Cf. e.g. M. Carmeli. Group Theory and General Relativity. New York: McGraw-Hill IBC, 1977.

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Fig. 5: The long path to the triumph of geometry.

lipses, thereby getting unmasked to be a formation of physical forces, today has been repatriated, though in a multiplexed way, rather wrapped up in a polytheistic vestment (fig. 5). 6.2 The Deeper Geometrical Meaning of the Fairy Wand To fetch the deeper significance of these findings, let me depict an example. Let us visualize the Earth. And let us then envision the coordinate systems made up from the Ups and Downs on this sphere (fig. 6). On each location on the surface of the sphere, this kind of coordinate system is defined in another way. If we try to connect all these various Ups and Downs, we necessarily end up with the gravitational field, since the respective Up/Down is determined by the respective direction of the gravitational force.

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Fig. 6: Gravitation as a connection between different local reference systems.

From a mathematical point of view, curved spaces suggest the introduction of local coordinate systems – the respective ‘Up’ and ‘Down.’ Physics knows a lot of directional variables like forces. For the description of the direction and magnitude of these so-called vectors, coordinate systems are indispensable. If one intends to displace such a vector along an infinitesimal path to a neighbouring location, the description also has to take into account the transition to the locally adjacent coordinate system, which is different from the original one. Mathematically this transition results in an additional term, which mathematicians call an affine connection. It turns out that the gravitational field in the version of Einstein represents just such a connection. It was long before the Theory of General Relativity that the mathematical construct of affine connection already existed as an instrument developed in differential geometry. But only with the full evolvement

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of the theory of so-called Local Gauge Invariance to the standard model of elementary particle physics this construct revealed its eminent importance. All interactions known in physics are mediated by socalled exchange particles. The precious insight is that each of these particles represents a geometrical connection, which now makes possible and compels to reconstruct the global relations out of the strictly local ones.

7. How Do I Know Where I Am Einstein’s deep insight was that the metrical tensor and the gravitational field are identical. That’s why Newton’s space/time became one field among others. What originally was stage, by now became an actor. Newton postulated that the acceleration of dynamical objects is not relative to some object, but that it is absolute. Absolute means: related to some background space. Faraday, Maxwell, and Einstein expanded the notion of the ‘dynamical object’: the world also consists of fields, not only bodies. And the theory of General Relativity says: background space with its metrics is just one of these fields. Thus, if Newton describes motion and acceleration as relative to some background space, he describes it as relative to the gravitational field, viz. relative to one of the dynamical objects present in space. The determination, which seemed to be an absolute determination, by now has explicitly become a relative one. The seemingly contrarian philosophical positions of Newton on the one hand and philosophers like Aristotle and Descartes on the other hand, concerning the question whether absolute determinations are possible or only relative ones, merge into one. The intimate connection of gravitation with the requirement of invariance against local Poincaré-transformations, whose parameters might vary arbitrarily from one location to the other, requires all physical statements to be independent of any underlying manifold space. General Relativity thus not only disposes of the metric by making it the gravitational field. Even space itself must not play any role. The theory becomes a pure relational one. In General Relativity, the objects the world is made of do neither exist on a stage nor do they live in a space time. They effectively exist; one on the shoulders of the other.

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There is no point of absolute reference in General Relativity. We have lost firm ground under our feet. This reminds me of the famous question of the late Wittgenstein: How do I know what I mean? Wittgenstein’s reaction was to pull the rug out from under this question by conducting a fulminant attack against philosophy of subject by means of an extended criticism of language. Also the question How do I know where I am? has been pulled the rug out from under it. And in various respects, the strict relationalism of the theory of General Relativity is reminiscent to the relationalism at the base of the inter-subjective linguistic games of the late Wittgenstein. In both cases the world has become a great deal more exciting. Translation by the Author.

WORKS CITED Carmeli, M. Group Theory and General Relativity. New York: McGraw-Hill IBC, 1977. Sambursky, Shmuel, ed. Der Weg der Physik. Munich: dtv, 1978. Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of Western Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1991.

PETER GALISON

Material Culture, Theoretical Culture, and Delocalization

Collection, laboratory, and theater – all face the unavoidable problem of moving the specific, tangible reality of a highly refined local circumstance into a wider domain, if not of the universal, at least out of the here and now. In the study of science, simply recognizing the inevitably local origins of science has been an enormous accomplishment, perhaps the signal achievement of science studies over the past twenty years. But we then need to understand, again in specific terms, how this locally-produced knowledge moves, how – without invoking an otherwise unexplained process of ‘generalization’ – scientific work is delocalized. My work over the last years (e.g. Image and Logic)1 has aimed at this goal, folding the local back on the local, so to speak, by asking how the local cultures of science link up through the piecewise coordination of bits of languages, objects, procedures. I have in mind much more austere and less grand ideas than the ‘translation,’ ‘transmission,’ or ‘diffusion’ of pre-existing meanings. Instead, my focus is on the way bare-bone trading may occur between different subcultures of science, or between subcultures of science and bits of the wider world in which they are fundamentally embedded. In this picture, neither language nor the world of things changes all of a piece, and talk of world-changing Gestalt shifts give way to the particular building-up of scientific jargons, pidgins, and creoles. These trading languages become important as do shared bits of apparatus or fragments of theoretical manipulation. Building on this picture, this piece is an exploration of how the conditions of theorizing, making, and experimenting generate new structures at their boundaries. It aims to get at what one might call local de-localization. 1

Peter Galison. Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Micropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

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It was 1993, and superstrings, the ‘theory of everything,’ was the rage. Arthur Jaffe, a senior member of the physics department at Harvard and for several years chair of the mathematics department, along with Frank Quinn, a mathematician at Virginia Tech, penned the following in the pages of the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society: Theoretical physics and mathematical physics have rather different cultures, and there is often a tension between them. Theoretical work in physics does not need to contain verification or proof, as contact with reality can be left to experiment. Thus the sociology of physics tends to denigrate proof as an unnecessary part of the theoretical process. Richard Feynman used to delight in teasing mathematicians about their reluctance to use methods that “worked” but that could not be rigorously justified.2

Jaffe and Quinn quickly added that mathematicians, unsurprisingly, retaliated: as far as they were concerned, physicists’ proofs carried about as much weight as the person who claimed descent from William the Conqueror with only two gaps. Nor has tension between cultures been restricted to the axis of theory/mathematics. Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac famously derided putative experimental refutations of major theories, and experimentalists have never hesitated to mock what they considered to be the aimless speculation of theorists. One cartoon, widely circulated in the physics community during the 1970s, portrayed a balance scale with thousands of offprints labeled ‘theory’ heaped on one side, outweighed by a single paper marked ‘experiment’ on the other. Beneath these cross-currents of jibes and jests lie substantive disagreement about what constitutes an adequate demonstration, and, ultimately, a clash over whose pilings sink sufficiently deep to stabilize further construction. What vouchsafes knowledge, and for whom? Like Jaffe, I find it useful to talk about the difference in cultures between the interacting groups that participate in physics. In fact, as we look around the national and international laboratories – now and throughout the last two centuries – the diversity of such cultures is striking: there are electronic engineers, cryogenic engineers, experimenters, computer programmers, field theorists, phenomenologists, just to name a few.

2

Arthur Jaffe and Frank Quinn. “Theoretical Mathematics. Toward a Cultural Synthesis of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 29. 1-3 (1993): 5.

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What motivates talk of ‘cultures’ or perhaps better, the subcultures of physics? Part of the appeal of the distinction between cultures is driven by historical concerns. To address the question ‘Why does this happen there and then?’ we want to identify affiliations between certain activities inside the walls of the laboratory and others outside, all the while being careful not to exaggerate the distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside.’ The world of the electrical engineer fashioning circuitry for the central tracking detector at a major colliding beam detector is a world apart from that of the theorist who may eventually be a consumer of its data. By contrast, the electrical engineer may well share a world with other electrical engineers also concerned with shielding their delicate printed circuits from massive pulses of X-rays – engineers, for example, preparing electronic devices to survive a nuclear battlefield. A condensed matter theorist may have more to say to a quantum field theorist than to his or her own condensed matter experimentalist colleagues as they struggle to lay atom-thin films of metal, or build new ceramics. Anthropologists generally understand the cultural to embrace not only social structures per se, but crucially the values, meanings, and symbols associated with them. Now it is true that the term ‘culture’ has always and continues to reside in disputed anthropological territory. Clifford Geertz, Marshall Sahlins, Gananath Obeyesekere, for example, sharply disagree on how constraining, how overarching a ‘culture’ is. But the important point for the historico-philosophical characterization of the production of science is that we cannot pretend that meanings, values, and symbols are mere window dressing. When a mathematician derides a computer-based demonstration as a horrendous violation of the very idea of mathematics, when a theoretical physicist recoils from renormalization, pronouncing it a ‘trick’: when an experimenter asks, in shocked tones, if future generations of experimentalists will get their data from ‘archives’ rather than through the concerted application of screwdrivers, soldering irons, and oscilloscopes – at these and other moments like them, values, always present, have surfaced. Meanings too can differ: when theorists speak about a particle, say an electron, they may, through usage, deploy a concept quite distinct from the usage of ‘electron’ spoken of by an experimenter. It is useful to separate subcultures of physics on more philosophical, specifically epistemic grounds. We can ask: what is it, at a given time that is required for a new particle or effect to be accepted among theorists (in contrast to the requirements that must be satisfied among experimentalists)? This can be stated more precisely: what, at a given

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time and place, are the conditions of theoreticity? What is it that a theory must exhibit for it to count as reasonable even before it faces new experiments? From time to time these requirements change, and we can specify the circumstances of these alterations. A theory in many branches of physics is not out of the starting gate if it is not relativistically invariant, if it does not conserve charge. Such constraints may not be forever. For generations, conservation of parity was such a rigid requirement. (Conservation of parity is the demand that any process allowed by physical law ought also to allow a mirror-reflected image of the same process.) Parity, along with time reversibility, fell as absolute demands, leaving behind only approximate conservation laws. Renormalizability (the demand that a theory be constructed with a fixed and finite set of parameters that can then be used to predict to arbitrary precision) was another such broken constraint. Thought to be a rigid and exact stricture on theory in the early 1970s, by the 1980s renormalizability too reappeared as an approximate constraint. In a similar way, we can speak of conditions of experimentality, focusing on the constraints that allow (or disallow) forms of laboratory argumentation. How are probabilistic arguments to be treated? Would a single instance of an event be considered a persuasive demonstration? Are witnesses necessary to secure experimental closure? Do experimental results without error bars count? Or, if results do include errors, how much statistical power is demanded? How much and what kind of knowledge can be deferred to other fields, literally or figuratively ‘blackboxing’ component parts of the experiment? Conditions of instrumentality can also be distinguished as those constraints that delimit the allowable form and function of laboratory machines themselves. These conditions governing the material culture of physics may be of different temporal structures: there are broad, longlasting classes of instruments (picture-producing instruments or statistic-producing instruments). Such classes provide constraints of the longue durée, as they set out the conditions under which (for example) picture-producing apparatus will be judged distortion free, or by which statistics-producing instruments will be assessed as having a certain loss rate. Then there are middle-term conditions on ‘species’ of instruments that may achieve legitimacy as knowledge facilitating objects (bubble chambers or optical telescopes or spark chambers). And at the short range of temporality there are the individual tests and conditions that certify individual instruments, this particular bubble chamber, or even more specifically this particular bubble and its production of this particular bubble chamber photograph. All such conditions of possible

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theorizing, experimentation, and instrumentation are temporal: they change with time; the dynamics of those changes constitute some of the most interesting and difficult questions facing the study of science. Taken together, the historical, anthropological, and philosophical concerns suggest that periodization is a far more complicated business than might be suspected from older models of the philosophy of science. We ought at least look to see if the rhythms of change in one domain (experiment, for example) are the same as that of another (theory, for example). That is, instead of assuming that theory, instruments, and experiments change of a piece in one great rupture of ‘conceptual scheme,’ ‘program,’ or ‘paradigm,’ we would do better to see how the various practice domains change, piece by piece. Dates of conceptual breaks such as 1905 (special relativity), 1915 (general relativity), 1926 (non-relativistic quantum mechanics), and 1948 (quantum electrodynamics) may have been points of discontinuity in theory; they were not so in the development of the material culture that surrounded instrumentation and experimentation. And while there may be good reasons not to jettison widely accepted experimental practices at precisely the same moment the community is entertaining the radical reformation of theoretical practice, none of this is to say that co-periodization cannot occur. But it is to say that co-periodization ought be shown, not assumed to follow from the dictates of antipositivist philosophy of science in any of its forms. An objection springs to mind. The separation of theory and experiment holds good in many branches of twentieth-century physics. Certainly this sociological division is so in atomic, cosmic-ray, nuclear, and particle physics, but also astrophysics, planetary physics, plasma physics, condensed matter physics. In each of these domains separate societies, meetings, and reprint exchange networks have long existed. But what of areas of inquiry where the separation is incomplete or nonexistent? What of the physics of the broad middle of the nineteenth century where a James Clark Maxwell, a Heinrich Hertz, or a Lord Kelvin could hardly be classified as a pure theorist or a pure experimentalist? And what of whole domains of other kinds of science, biology, to take perhaps the most powerful example? Does it make sense to speak of separate cultures of experimentation and instrumentation in such instances? The question could be rephrased: are these clusters of practices in experimental work tied to practices outside the laboratory differently from the way theory is situated? An example might be found in the introduction of nuclear magnetic resonance just after World War II. At least for Robert Pound and Edward Purcell, though they worked

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conditions of instrumentality conditions of theoricity conditions of experiment time Æ Fig. 1: ‘Intercalated’ Periodization.

theory 1 observation time Æ

theory 2

theory 3

Fig. 2: ‘Positivist’ Periodization.

both theory and experiment, their theoretical efforts drew on classical electrodynamics and basic quantum mechanics – both long since established – while their instruments and procedures drew heavily on thenrecent wartime radar developments. I would argue this: there is no universal answer to the question of whether it pays to speak of distinct cultures of theory and experiment in the absence of sharp sociological lines between the groups. Everything rides on how bundled together certain practices are – and that cannot be settled in advance, but only in the thick of historical inquiry. The periodization picture sketched here might be represented in Figure 1, designating intercalated practice clusters. Looked at more finely, even ‘theory’ ought to be broken up in a similar arrangement, with some forms of theoretical practice lasting for the long term, while others are of shorter duration. These same considerations hold good for instruments and experiments. Such a scheme contrasts directly with two others. In one (fig. 2), denoted in a too-rough designation as ‘positivist,’ the view is that observations build aggregatively and continuously, while the level of theory breaks seriatim. Because observation builds cumulatively and intertheoretically, many followers of logical positivism and logical empiricism held it in special esteem.3 Theory in a sense builds on the foundation of observation, and numerous metaphorical systems have designed to capture this primacy of the neutral observation language. In the other metaphorical scheme – designated (also crudely) as ‘antipositivist’ – the scheme of Figure 2 is stood on its head: now instead of viewing a neutral observation language as primary and theory as secondary, the reverse is true (fig. 3). ‘Theory’ is every3

Peter Galison. “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism.” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 709-52.

Peter Galison

496 observation 1 theory 1 time Æ

observation 2 theory 2

observation 3 theory 3

Fig. 3: ‘Antipositivist’ Periodization.

where, as Benjamin Whorf, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, N.R. Hanson and so many others taught us. To enforce the notion of a conceptual scheme, antipositivists assumed the equivalent of the co-periodized picture of Figure 2. When theory changed, it precipitated a break in meaning that extended ‘all the way down.’ Suppose we stay with the argument presented so far, conservatively focusing on that sector of twentieth-century physics in which the separation of cultures of theory, experimentation, and instrumentation are reasonably well defined. Still, a new and more serious objection arises: if the culture of theory, for example, is really all that distinct in its contextualization, meaning, values, and argumentative structure from that of experiment, how do the domains relate at all? Reformulating the problem we could say this: to escape from the problems of noncommunication that arise from the confrontation of various block-periodized ‘conceptual schemes’ we moved to specify more local, intercalated subcultures of physics. Doesn’t this just multiply the original problem, leaving us with hundreds of incommensurabilities, ruptures, revolutions, or epistemic breaks where before we had a few? Behind this objection is a picture of language that is fundamentally holistic. ‘Mass,’ ‘time,’ and ‘space,’ are thought of as fixed terms, fully specified along with their connotations in one conceptual scheme (the ‘paradigm of classical or Newtonia physics’) and carrying with them a particular set of instruments and experimental procedures that are only understandable in terms of that conceptual scheme. Equally fully specified, or so goes the argument, is another, incompatible conceptual scheme (the ‘paradigm of Einsteinian physics’) in which ‘mass,’ ‘time,’ and ‘space’ have utterly different meanings. Because Einstein and Newton and their respective followers ‘speak different languages’ any putative communication between them amounts to little more than puns, a homophonic happenstance. Out of this picture come some of the most famous metaphorical structures used to capture the radical untranslatability of languages: Gestalt shifts and systematic visual-perceptual misconstruals on the basis of prior conceptions. If Gestalt shifts or total shifts of conceptual scheme are the model for what happens at the boundary between languages then indeed, the repartition of schemes

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like the positivist periodization of Figure 2 into the antipositivist periodization of Figure 3 may be of use historically, but analytically we advance not one inch. What does happen at the boundary between cultures, where people face one another? Do people, in fact, translate with the sudden, Gestaltlike character of the duck-rabbit switch? Here we can learn from the burgeoning field of anthropological linguistics, a field that at least in one of its forms has dealt extensively with the historical and structural development of trading languages, highly specific linguistic structures that themselves fit between two or more extant full-blown languages. Very roughly a ‘trading jargon’ or ‘foreigner talk’ designates a few isolated terms used to facilitate inter-linguistic communication, ‘pidgin’ refers to a more developed language, with sufficient structure to allow more complex modes of exchange between speakers. Generally, pidgins are characterized by more regularized phonetic, syntactic, and lexical structure than the ‘parent’ languages that the pidgin links. For example while one of the parent languages may carry multiple consonant clusters (CCC), pidgins tend to be routinized into consonant-vowelconsonant (CVCV) form. Pidgins may – but do not necessarily – develop into full-fledged creoles, where ‘creole’ designates a language with sufficient structure to allow people to ‘grow up’ within it. Creoles, unlike pidgins, can be a first language. Intriguingly, it seems to be the case that among our linguistic capacities is the ability to shift the register of the language we speak: we are able to restrict vocabulary, regularize syntactic as well as phonetic form. On this view, linguistic borders are not the thin-line mathematical idealizations that they appear to be in the Gestalt-switching picture of the antipositivists. Instead, linguistic borders appear as thick and irregular, more like the creoles one in fact finds in border regions in many areas of the world. So it is, I argue, in the trading zones between theories or between experiment and theory, or between a physics subculture and an engineering subculture grounded in the industrial or military traditions in contact with physics. Here I would suggest that we drop the attempt to gloss the interaction among the electron theorists Lorentz, Abraham, and Poincaré with Einstein in the early twentieth century as ‘Classical’ physicists ‘talking past’ ‘Relativistic’ physicists, a forced Gestalt switch between old and new notions of ‘mass,’ ‘space,’ and ‘time,’ with language shifting as a whole. Instead, we ought to examine the ways in which each of these physicists actually went about coordinating their theories with the results of experimenters like Kaufmann and Bucherer. For despite these philosophical protestations about

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incommensurability, these laboratory ventures were precisely aimed at comparing the various electro-dynamic theories. How, they asked, did the deflection of fast electrons as a function of velocity come into contact with (for example) Abraham’s and Einstein’s specific theoretical proposals? Or consider the interaction of experimenters and theorists around track images in bubble chambers. While each may have very different ideas about adequate demonstration, or even about the nature of particles, it is nonetheless often possible for both groups to come to common ground of ‘interpretation’ – e.g. ‘this particle decays here to two lighter particles, one of which escapes and the other is absorbed.’ The point is that some meaning gets stripped away in the trading zone where theory meets experiment, where engineering meets theory, where, in general, the scientific subcultures encounter one another. What thrives in the interstitial zones is neither trivial nor purely instrumental, it is a form of scientific exchange language. In the interstitial zone I have not distinguished sharply between locally shared terms and mathematical-syntactic relations on one side, and the material objects on another. This is deliberate: we ascribe meaning to machines as surely as we do to mathematical symbols. And in new material and functional contexts, the meaning of machines can alter as well – we need only look around the laboratory to see a myriad of technologies now performing functions (and carrying meaning) a long way from their site of origin. For this reason, it may be helpful to think of the process by which a computer logic circuit, vacuum tube, or clock mechanism becomes modularized as a form of pidginization. But because this process is not, at least in the first instance, purely linguistic, it is helpful to think of the production and elaboration of such common objects as ‘wordless pidgins’ and ‘wordless creoles.’ Wordless grammar corresponds to the rules of combination allowed for these objects – circuit design rules, for example. Similarly, an element in such a wordless interlanguage (should we call it the analogue of a noun?) corresponds to the useful notion advanced by Leigh Star and James Griesemer of the ‘boundary object,’ an entity participating simultaneously in two or more fields of Inquiry.4 Here a cautionary note is worth 4

Peter Galison. “The Trading Zone: The Coordination of Action and Belief.” Paper presented at TECH-KNOW Workshops on Places of Knowledge, their Technologies and Economies. UCLA Center for Cultural History of Science and Technology. 1989. Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Verterbrate Zoology. 1907-39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387-420.

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sounding. To speak of wordless creoles is not to commit oneself to a position in which concepts can be extricated from language altogether; I mean to emphasize that pieces of scientific objects are often transferred without words. Throughout this discussion, I intend the pidginization and creolization of scientific language to be treated seriously just the way one would address such issues for language more generally (that is, not as a ‘model’ or ‘metaphor’). First, physicists themselves regularly refer to problems of language in terms of idioms, meaning compatibility, and translation. There are books such as Computers as a Language of Physics and physicists characteristically speak about ‘putting this current algebra argument into the language of field theory’ or ask ‘can you express that relation in the language of effective field theory?’ Second, the standard account of science in terms of ‘conceptual schemes,’ ‘epistemic breaks,’ and ‘paradigm shifts’ presupposes and relies on talk of meaning change between terms; the argument presented here simply says that the account of linguistic work at the boundary is oversimplified and unhelpful. For example, ‘translation’ as used by Kuhn to describe scientific change explicitly borrows from notions of translation from ordinary language: “in time,” says Kuhn’s expositor Paul Hoyningen-Huene, “the members of one group will be able to translate (in the everyday sense of ‘translate’) portions of their counterparts’ theory.”5 Finally, ‘model’ and ‘metaphor’ talk presupposes a radical break between scientific and ordinary use of language, and philosophical attempts to enforce such a dichotomy have notoriously foundered. The point I want to make is this: the characterization of different registers (such as jargons, pidgins, and creoles) is helpful in distinguishing between different modes of scientific and non-scientific uses of language. My intention is to expand the notions of interlanguages to include both the discourse of scientific and non scientific utterances, and both material and abstract systems. It is not to ‘apply’ the results of one field to another. How literal is the notion of a ‘trading zone’? At one level, I have in mind the most literal sorts of spatialized scientific practice. Laboratories, scientific campuses, often reflect architects’ and scientists’ expectations of intellectual proximity and meeting points in the walls, hallways, and stairwell landings. Conferences, informal meetings, visits, present other transient sites for face-to-face interactions. If one is trying 5

Paul Hoyningen-Huene. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. 257.

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to understand the development of the bubble chamber one would do well to register the circumstances that in the 1950s cryogenic engineers from the Air Force were meeting with staff from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. If one is trying to understand the development of computer simulations, it is essential to track the direct encounter of mathematicians, physicists, weapons designers, and statisticians with one another in a series of conferences from UCLA to Endicott, New York. In the end, however, the issue is one of coordination and regularization of different systems of values and practices; if that takes place outside of any spatial configuration, this too is of interest. In a typical colliding beam experiment, the full set of 500 or so experimenters may never be in the same place at the same time. Many will never meet at all. Webs and computer links bind interlocking laboratories and subgroups together and conventions, standards, and procedures are often established with no single point of authority or geographical center. Exchange zones are written into architectures, but the architectures may not be physical and spatial. As such considerations suggest, there are many avenues opened up by the less restrictive image of substantive as opposed to mathematically thin boundaries between the subcultures of physics. And in the conceptual sphere, the stripped-down view of shared, specific meanings as opposed to total translation between full languages may offer a better vision of how knowledge moves in and across boundaries. Other questions arise as well. One could follow the development of a highly restrictive inter-field into a full-fledged ‘creole’ as in the gradual articulation of physical chemistry or biochemistry out of highly localized shared techniques.6 Or one could examine instances in which the interlanguage more or less died off, as did the eighteenth century boundary field of iatromechanics – or, in more recent times, many of the myriad of unification schemes such as those that would (à la Millikan) join cosmic ray physics to the genesis of higher elements in deep space; or Einstein and Weyl’s notion that they would be able to unify directly electrodynamics with general relativity. As in linguistic boundaries, there is nothing to block the attempt to put languages together, but at the same time there is no guarantee that either social or intellectual coherence will follow. Some pidgins get resorbed back into

6

John W. Servos. Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Robert E. Kohler. From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

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one of the ‘parent’ languages, some stabilize as pidgins, and some grow into full-fledged creoles, and then ultimately into a language, full stop. Here I would like to explore a different point: delocalization. The problem is this. Over the past years, we have again and again seen how tied specific laboratory practices are to their conditions of origin. An instrument made in one spot is often difficult to replicate in another without the bodily transport of things and people. Paper instructions are often not enough. We have learned from scholars like Harry Collins how necessary it is to attend to the site-specificity of particular materials, skills, and resources available at a given time and place: the little tricks of the trade that made one group of people able to build a certain kind of laser where others could not. Eventually, though, these objects do travel, the lasers, prisms, accelerators, detectors, tubes, and films – hence the problem. If the original production of scientific knowledge is so reflective of local conditions – whether they are craft techniques or religious views, material objects or forms of teamwork, how does delocalization take place? One solution, referred to by Simon Schaffer as the ‘multiplication of contexts,’ accounts for delocalization by a process is which the original context is imposed elsewhere. Methods are devised which “distribute instruments and values which make the world fit for science.”7 One pictures maps of imperial expansion, the dark black arrows of distributed context radiating outward like the footsteps of a conquering army from Oxford, Cambridge, London, or Paris to newly-acquired sites elsewhere. To be replicated, air-pumps required a particular set of machines, facticity, and witnessing to be in place. To be enforced values and methods of standardization stamped their mark on distant sites. Multiplying these contexts was a precondition for replication, and the lines of power that designate the creation of those conditions extend from center to periphery. Similarly, Bruno Latour focuses on ways in which the world is modified to make it possible for an instrument, even one as simple as a clock, to “travel very far without ever leaving home.”8 A different solution, building on the notions of discursive and wordless pidginization within trading zones of limited exchange, would 7

8

Simon Schaffer. “A Manufactory of Ohms.” Invisible Connections. Instruments, Institutions, and Science. Ed. Robert Bud and Susan E. Cossens. Bellingham, Washington: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1991. 23. Bruno Latour. Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. 251.

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put greater emphasis on two features of the ‘transfer.’ First, it would stress the activity of interpretation that takes place on the receiving end of the objects, techniques or texts. Varying Latour’s apt phrase, scientific practices can also travel to very different homes. However imposed the more powerful set of techniques might be, the site of their application fundamentally alters the way those technologies manifest themselves. Many creolists insist, for example, that French creoles can only be understood if one abandons the attempt to view them as merely simplified French, and instead considers the combination of the lexical French structure with a variety of syntactic elements from African languages. Just such a nuanced view is needed in the domains of material and theoretical cultures – pieces of apparatus can circulate without the whole, devices can move without their scientific contexts, functional specifications can move without a trace of their original material form. An abbreviated example: working against low-flying attack fighters, radar engineers during World War II designed a ‘memory tube’ that would store radar returns and cancel out the signal of any stationary object – leaving only the plane. In travelling to a different context not long afterward, the tube became a recirculating memory to store information for the early computers. Again, cut loose from its ‘meaning’ the device is then appropriated by particle physicists who want to use it to locate the position of a passing particle (by measuring the time it takes for a particle-induced pulse to reach the end of the tube). We have, in a sense, a hermeneutics of material culture. At every stage of such multiple transfers we need to ask both: How does the stripping-down process occur by which local circumstance is removed? And then how does the re-integration into a new context take place? If the first feature pointed to is activity, the second is locality. Elements of the meaning of a scientific practice are pared away. Theoretical physicists drop many properties that they ascribe to an electron or quark before they bring those notions to the bubble chamber scanning table at which they meet the experimentalist. The embedding of ‘electron’ in a quantum field theoretical description, or a particular unified theory might be deleted altogether. Conversely, before encountering the theorists, the experimentalists bracket many of the concerns about the nature of the film, the optics and compression pattern of the liquid hydrogen. The tracks being discussed carry, in this interaction, a shared local meaning. Experimentalist and theorist can pore over the scanning table, gesturing at the tracks and arguing interpretations: ‘this kaon here splits into two unseen gammas, which then produce these two electronpositron pairs over here.’ But such exchanges, though widely shared,

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are not pieces of a universal protocol language interpretable in any epoch of physics. Against the positivists: there is no ‘neutral observation language’ in the activity of track interpretation – what goes on in the process of sorting out the particle decay scheme does not in any way, shape or form constitute a ‘pure’ observation to be positions against ‘hypothesis.’ Against the conceptual-schemers: we do not find a homogenized amalgam in which experimentation and theory become a single, undifferentiated whole in which every experimental statement is utterly fixed by the theory to which it is inseparably attached. The pidginized hybrid of the language of track interpretation has both elements of theory and of experiment, while recognizing the self-maintained distinct identity of each. A pidgin is neither a linguistic passepartout nor a subset ‘baby-talk’ of a ‘full’ language; it facilitates complex border interactions. Coordination around specific problems and sites is possible even where globally shared meanings are not. The history of physics can be profitably seen as a myriad of such productive, heterogeneous confrontations. Field theorists met radio engineers in the American radar laboratories of World War II. British cosmic ray experimentalists encountered colloidal chemists in the production of nuclear emulsions sensitive enough to ‘photograph’ all known elementary particles. Such heterogeneity continues. One collaboration joining mathematics and physics expertise began a 1980 Physics Report by recalling the halcyon days in which Newtonian mathematics and Newtonian physics could develop together, only to separate under the pressures of specialization: a formidable language barrier has grown up between the two. It is thus remarkable that several recent developments in theoretical physics have made use of the ideas and results of modern mathematics … The time therefore seems ripe to attempt to break down the language barriers between physics and certain branches of mathematics and to re-establish interdisciplinary communication.9

This exchange was bilateral: physical techniques from field theory were solving problems in algebraic geometry, and mathematical tools were at the root of the ‘string revolutions’ that, for many late-twentieth century physicists, promised a final unification of gravity and the short-range forces that held matter together. When algebraic geometry ‘travelled’ to the physicists, it was often precisely by shedding many of the values with which it was practiced in mathematics departments. To the horror 9

Tohru Eguchi, Peter B. Gilken, and Andrew J. Hanson. “Gravitation, Gauge Theories, and Differential Geometry.” Physics Reports 66 (1980): 215.

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of many mathematicians, ‘speculative,’ ‘intuitive,’ and ‘physical’ argumentation were supplanting the hard-won rigor of mathematics proper. When these practices travelled, some of the mathematically constitutive values associated with them stayed behind. This observation – that meanings, values and symbols often stay home or switch identities when scientific theories and instruments travel – lies at the heart of the alternative (exchange language) picture of delocalization I have in mind. Donald Glaser, inventor of the bubble chamber, desperately hoped the device would ‘save’ small-scale physics (and the life that went with it) from the onslaught of Luis Alvarez’s factory-laboratory. But substantial portions of Glaser’s original device – stripped of those material components that were tied to the small-scale – were reappropriated into the massive chambers that became the very symbol of Big Physics. Alvarez’s sector of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. This is not to say that values played an inessential role in the constitution of particle physics at any stage, it is, instead, to say that the particular guiding values altered radically as they shifted from a defence of individual craft-style work to a form of scientific life that emerged from the massive nuclear weapons and radar projects of World War II. What then is the relation between these two accounts of delocalization – ‘multiplication of contexts’ and ‘exchange language’? Let us return briefly to the relation of algebraic geometry to quantum field theory in string theory. For there the practitioners of both sides were roughly equal stature – such an exchange did not resemble (for example) the relation between technicians in Alvarez’s laboratory to the Nobel Prize winning physicists who ran various groups. And perhaps here lies a clue. In examining situations in which the balance of power was maximally unequal – it might well be the case that one group could impose a fuller set of contextualized values along with specific practices on the other. In other words, we might keep in mind that in terms of power relations, there are two interesting limits to the confrontations of languages. At one extreme, the two languages enter into contact in states of roughly equal power. Linguistically, such situations typically result in pidgins in which the lexical admixture of the two languages is markedly heterogeneous. This is of great interest from the scientific standpoint, because we are often faced with situations of this type. String theory, for example puts quantum field theorists on one side and algebraic geometers on the other: a situation in which the balance of power is roughly equal. At the other extreme, in which one group is far more powerful than the other, very different linguistic structures might

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be expected. For example, in very unequal balance of power, it is common to find that the lexicon emerges overwhelmingly from the superordinate language and a regularized, restricted syntactic structure from the less powerful language. It is also well documented that in very unequal situations, pidgin languages can be reabsorbed back into the superordinate language. Such instances occur in the domain of science and technology. In large-scale collaborative ventures, such as the Manhattan Project, one sees sectors of almost every possible power relation, from the Du Pont (engineer run) effort in Chicago to the Los Almos (scientist run) laboratory. We are now in a position to understand the relation between the interlanguage and context-multiplying accounts of delocalization. Context multiplication is the limit case of interlanguage coordination just when the power imbalance is so pronounced that the recipients’ constitutive values and technical practices were thoroughly subordinated, or where relevant local values did not enter. Let me end with one final thought. In a sense, the last fifteen years of studies in the history and sociology of science have left us with a powerful set of tools for understanding the local origins of scientific ideas, practices, and methodological precepts. But awkwardly we have grafted to this local description, a picture of language (broadly conceived) that remained global, rigid, and holistic. No wonder we often end with a peculiarly bad set of choices. At one extreme we anchor our notion of science in a global picture of language imagining that moving machines and ideas is automatic, completely ignoring the contextualized circumstances in which scientific work originates. At the other, we imagine that practices are so tied to local circumstances that we either descend into a radical nominalism in which no one is ‘really’ talking to anyone else, or we wrongly conclude that the full context of origin is packed off, kit and caboodle, to every distant site of application. If, as the anthropological linguists are trying to teach us, meanings don’t travel all at once in great conceptual schemes, but rather hesitantly, partially, and nonetheless efficaciously, perhaps, for those studying the development of science, there is an exit from this impasse.

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WORKS CITED Eguchi, Tohru, Peter B. Gilkev, and Andrew J. Hanson. “Gravitation, Gauge Theories, and Differential Geometry.” Physics Reports 66 (1980): 218-393. Galison, Peter. “The Trading Zone: The Coordination of Action and Belief.” Paper held at TECH-KNOW Workshops on Places of Knowledge, their Technologies and Economies. UCLA Center for Cultural History of Science and Technology, 1989. Galison, Peter. “Aufbau/Bauhaus: Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism.” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 709-52. Galison, Peter. Image and Logic. A Material Culture of Micropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Hoyningen-Huene, Paul. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Jaffe, Arthur and Frank Quinn. “‘Theoretical Mathematics’: Toward a Cultural Synthesis of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 29. 1-3 (1993): 1-13. Kohler, Robert E. From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Latour, Bruno. Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Leigh Star, Susan and James R. Griesemer. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 387-420. Servos, John W. Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Schaffer, Simon. “A Manufactory of Ohms.” Invisible Connections. Instruments, Institutions, and Science. Ed. Robert Bud and Susan E. Cossens. Bellingham, Washington: SPIE Optical Engineering Press, 1991.

KARSTEN HARRIES

World-Picture and World-Theater: Wonder, Vision, Knowledge 1. Our conference bears the title ‘Collection, Laboratory, Theater – Scenes of Knowledge in the 17th Century,’ where the English translation is somewhat less specific and therefore less suggestive than the German: ‘Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne – Schauplätze des Wissens im 17. Jahrhundert.’ I would rather hear this title in a different order: collection, or, to be more specific, concerning the German title: cabinet, theater, laboratory. The theater would then have its place between cabinet and laboratory. First comes collecting, then the exhibition of what has been collected. Such exhibition requires a suitable space, something like a stage. But scientific work demands that we leave the theater behind. History, too, invites such a reordering. The word Kunstkammer leads us first of all into the world of the late Renaissance, of Mannerism, while the metaphor of the ‘theater’ determined the Baroque worldpicture of the 17th century. The ‘laboratory,’ on the other hand, belongs in our modern world, a world determined by science and technology. Understood in this way, Kunstkammer and Baroque theater precede our modern world-picture; in our modern world they would seem to have only a peripheral importance. No longer can they lay claim to serious consideration as scenes of knowledge. But the central position of the word ‘laboratory,’ framed by ‘cabinet’ (Kunstkammer) and ‘theater’ (Bühne) calls into question such an understanding; calls into question also the separation of science and art that determines the modern world-picture. And such questioning is very much in keeping with today’s intellectual culture: is the Enlightenment not supposed to have come to an end? Should the rift it has opened up between art and science, nature and technology not be healed? And is it not precisely the careful consideration of what preceded that rift, espe-

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cially including the Kunstkammer, a collection that included products of human artifice and of nature, thus integrating what we today tend to separate, that may help us find a way beyond the present divorce of art and science? In promising a bridge by integrating what is artificial and what is natural, the Kunstkammer may help free us and open up deeper dimensions of reality – whereas now the threat of mistaking the sparkling superficiality of some ‘glass bead game’ for depth shadows that promise. Our title, to be sure, does not speak of a game, and certainly not of Hermann Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, but of cabinet and theater. ‘Theatrum naturae et artis – Wunderkammern des Wissens’ was the title of an exhibition in the Martin-Gropius Bau, which offered at least a glimpse of the Humboldt-University’s rich collections in natural and cultural history. The intimate connection between art, nature, and science in the origin of these collections was once again made visible. This exhibition, too, understood itself as a scene of vision, a spectacle, but also as a scene of knowledge. And can the same not be said of the anatomical theater? Eye and scientific understanding here come together – without a problem, it would seem. But just the word ‘theater’ – this, too, a word with many different connotations, which here promises to heal the rift separating art and science – demands thoughtful consideration. What is the significance of the fact that among the precursors of our anatomical theaters we find that edifying Theatrum Anatomicum in which already before 1600 the good burghers of Leiden could marvel at skeletons of animals and human beings, especially criminals, the whole spectacle crowned and interpreted by the skeleton of a woman offering the male skeleton the death-bringing apple, the edification provided presumably excusing the sinful lust of seeing. And even in the exhibition of the collections of the great anatomist Frederic Ruysch, which later were to become the foundation of the Kunstkamera of Peter the Great, it was still the vanitas mundi theme that ruled this anatomical theater and excused the not only, but yet also already scientific curiositas.1 This edifying function is inseparable from the Baroque theater.

1

Cf. Lawrence Weschler. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. New York: Pantheon, 1995. 84-88.

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2. But before turning to the Baroque theater, the Kunstkammer demands further consideration. The word already poses the question: was it or is it still a scene of knowledge? Many a historical Kunstkammer demands a positive answer: we only have to think of the just mentioned Kunstkamera of Peter the Great, which also, like its predecessors, served that curiositas or lust of seeing condemned by St. Augustine, including more than its share of amazing monstrosities, even living giants and dwarves. Nevertheless it deserves its place in the history of modern natural science. Here the Russian Academy of Sciences had its origin and to it belonged library and laboratory. The history of this Kunstkammer shows in exemplary fashion how in the late 17th and early 18th century the Mannerist and Baroque Kunstkammer succumbed to the pull of the Enlightenment, changed, and transformed itself into an encyclopedic museum serving investigations into the world in its entirety, with different collections ordered according to increasingly scientific interests and principles, where products of nature ever more decisively took precedence over works of art. Resembling Diderot’s Encyclopédie in attempting to present a picture of the world, such a museum is not the kind of Kunstkammer I imagine when I first hear that word. Nor does that word make me think at first of the once famous Kunstkammer of Johann Jacob Spener, who first occupied the chair for mathematics and physics at the newly founded university in Halle, which Christian Wolff, one of the leaders of the German Enlightenment, was to occupy just a bit later. In 1693 the description of this Kunstkammer was published in Leipzig under the revealing title: ‘Das Spenerische Cabinet oder kurtze Beschreibung aller so wohl künstlich – als natürlicher, alter als neuer, fremder als einheimischer courieusen Sachen,’ (‘The Spenerian Cabinet or Brief Description of all Sorts of Artificial as well as Natural, Old as Well as New, Foreign as well as Native Curious Objects.’) The word ‘curious’ here marks the threshold science had to cross to really become science. We meet with the same threshold in the article “Sciences curieuses” in Furetière Dictionnaire universel (1690): These curious sciences, we read here, are those sciences, which, known to only a few, have to do with quite special mysteries. They include chemistry, a part of optics, which with its mirrors and lenses allows us to see marvelous things, but also a number of vain sciences, that promise to let us see into the future, such as for example

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astrology, chiromantics, geomantics, but also cabala and magic.2 All these sciences promise to amaze us by letting us gaze at what is extraordinary and wonderful. Like the different things in Spener’s Cabinet, they promise to satisfy our curiosity, that lust, condemned by Augustine, to gape at what is wondrous, not in order to understand it, but just in order to see. But Furetière’s Dictionnaire also points out that these curious sciences make it important to distinguish between those that are true and those that are vain. It is just this distinction Descartes had to draw in order to find, as he writes in the Regulae, the Ariadne thread that was to lead him out of the labyrinth of the world into the open land of truth. Thus we read in the Discourse on Method how the young Descartes, dissatisfied by the sciences of the day, “read through all the books that fell into his hands, treating of what is most curious and rare,”3 but could not find there the knowledge he sought. Nor could he find it in the book of the world. To find such knowledge he first had to decide to turn within and to seek there “the true method of arriving at a knowledge of all the things of which my mind was capable.”4 The young Descartes did not seek out the mysterious so that he might gaze at it in uncomprehending wonder. The scene of amazed gazing was to be transformed into a scene of knowledge, the Kunstkammer into a laboratory or perhaps a workshop. A letter of September 1629 helps mark that change: Descartes here speaks of a science of miracles based on mathematics. That science would allow us to perform the miracles the magicians were supposed to perform with the aid of demons. Descartes here places himself in the tradition of such magicians as Agrippa, Porta, and Campanella. But even as he does so, he takes leave from that tradition, robs it of the aura of the secretive and magical. No more than our own understanding is needed to create such miracles. Descartes admitted that the science he envisioned did not yet exist, although he did name an optician, a certain Ferrier, whom he considered able to furnish what was demanded.5 A scene of amazing spectacles is transformed into a scene of knowledge. Just this transformation is at issue in an example Descartes gives us in the 13th Rule: 2 3 4 5

Quot. from: René Descartes. “Discourse on Method.” The Philosophical Works. Trans. Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. New York: Dover, 1955. Vol. I, 83. Ibid. Ibid. 91. See Descartes’ letters to Ferrier of June 18, 1629 and to *** of September 1629. René Descartes. Oeuvres complètes. Ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: Vrin, 1964. Vol. I, 13-21.

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So again we must be on our guard when inquiring into the construction of a vessel, such as we once saw, in the midst of which stood a column and upon that a figure of Tantalus in the attitude of a man who wants to drink. Water, when poured into the vessel, remained without leaking as long as it was not high enough to enter the mouth of Tantalus; but as soon as it touched the unhappy man’s lips the whole of it at once flowed out and escaped. Now at first blush it seems as if the whole of the ingenuity consisted in the construction of this figure of Tantalus, whereas in reality this is a mere accompaniment of the fact requiring explanation, and in no ways conditions it. For the whole difficulty consists solely in the problem of how the vessel was constructed so as to let out the whole of the water when that arrives at a certain height, whereas before none had escaped. Finally, likewise, if we seek to extract from the recorded observations of the stars an answer to the question as to what we can assert about their motions, it is not to be gratuitously assumed that the earth is immovable and established in the midst of the universe, as the Ancients would have it, because from our earliest years it appears to be so. We ought to regard it as dubious, in order afterwards to examine what certainty there is in this matter to which we are able to attain. So in other cases.6

What matters here is the question: how does what we are investigating function? It is easy to imagine that Descartes saw such a Tantalus figure in some Kunstkammer, although in all probability he is describing a garden sculpture he saw somewhere. Important is that he did not allow himself to be captured by its spirit. What protected him was his decision to seek only what his spirit could comprehend. Just such self-limitation mattered to Descartes, as it mattered to his friend Marin Mersenne, who fought tirelessly to protect both the Church and true science from the pseudo-science of the magicians and their quasi-religious claims. For the sake of the true religion, science had to learn to limit itself to what we humans were capable of understanding. Nowhere does the threshold that separates the magical thinking of Mannerism from modern scientific thinking become so literally visible as in the art of anamorphosis, founded in the science of perspective. Here the transformation of a scene of amazed gazing into a scene of knowledge becomes image. Like no other art, the art of anamorphosis can be understood as a staging of the passage to the modern world-picture. Holbein’s stupendous double portrait of the French ambassadors at the court of Henry VIII is an early and the best known example. The two shelves with their objects can be understood as a small Kunstkammer. In them the culture of the friends and also of the age becomes visible. But into this at first glance so coherent picture enters disturb6

René Descartes. “Rules for the Direction of the Mind.” The Philosophical Works. Vol. I, 52-53.

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ingly and seemingly out of place the strangely elongated object in the foreground. Only a point of view to the left and below the picture allows us to see the enigmatic form as a skull, i.e., a hollow bone: it is thus also an ingenious monogram. But more important is something else: only by surrendering the normal point of view do we recognize the skull; i.e., only an oblique seeing uncovers the deeper meaning behind this worldly scene and its splendor and culture. All this is only a performance, is only theater. In the theater of the world the skull opens a window that allows us to glimpse what is essential: death is waiting for us. Holbein places the ambassadors before a green curtain, presents them as actors on the stage of the world. But the secular space of this staging only conceals another, more real reality. The ornamental pavement, representing the pavement of the choir of Westminster Abbey, provides a pointer: Holbein places his worldly stage into a sacred interior. The half-hidden ivory crucifix, hardly visible in the upper left corner, gives a further hint. The painter plays off one perspective against another. The illusory character, not only of every perspectival representation, but also of our mortal life is made visible. Such disquieting play with different perspectives defines the art of anamorphosis. But what is the point? And how are we to understand that just that convent to which Mersenne belonged and in which Descartes, before his departure for Holland, was so often a guest, should have been a leading center, not just of optics and the theory of perspective, but also of the art of anamorphosis? The large anamorphic frescos that Jean François Niçeron (he too, like Mersenne, a minim) painted then in that convent have been lost. But in the convent SS Trinita in Rome such a fresco, a work by the minim Emmanuel Maignan, who here repeated a fresco by Niçeron, has survived. But do such ingenious games belong in a monastery? How are we to understand this interest in anamorphosis by a religious community? When we stand before such a fresco we see very little at first, arabesques, representing a landscape, in this landscape streets and rivers, ships and human beings. But once again an oblique seeing reveals the true meaning of the work. The art of anamorphosis offers us metaphors of a world that presents itself to us as disorderly and labyrinthine. Only a change of the point of view reveals the deeper significance. But something else is important here. By making us aware of the power of perspective, such compositions also call into question the second point of view. Does it offer more than a perspective-bound and therefore unreliable theatrical appearance? Playing with perspectives, the art of ana-

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morphosis thematizes the insufficiency of all perspectival seeing, that is to say, the inability of the eye, and thus of art, to seize the truth. It invites us to think of a theatrical performance, where one of the actors breaks the magical illusion into which the theater transported us by addressing us, preventing us from forgetting that all that we are seeing is just theater – but this, too, is part of the performance, is only theater. The art of anamorphosis should not be taken too seriously. But just this ingenious play with perspective does justice to an age that had learned not to trust the eye. Anamorphosis thus places us on just that threshold Descartes had to cross in order to step out of the labyrinth of the world from which the occult sciences offered no escape into the open land of truth. 3. ‘Land of truth’: that expression was used, not by Descartes, but by Kant, who thought that his Critique of Pure Reason had not only helped us take possession of that land, but also demonstrated that we had to be content with such possession. We have now not merely explored the territory of pure understanding, and carefully surveyed every part of it, but have also measured its extent and assigned to everything in it its rightful place. This domain is an island, enclosed by nature itself within unalterable limits. It is the land of truth – enchanting name! – surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the native home of illusion, where many a fog bank and many a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearance of farther shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer ever anew with empty hopes, and engaging him in enterprises which he can never abandon and yet is unable to carry to completion. Before we venture on this sea, to explore it in all directions and to obtain assurance whether there be any ground for such hopes, it will be well to begin by casting a glance upon the map of the island which we are about to leave, and to enquire, first, whether we cannot in any case be satisfied with what it contains – are not, indeed, under compulsion to be satisfied, inasmuch as there may be no other territory on which we can settle.7

As Kant knows, something in us refuses to be content with this well surveyed land and its truth, seeks some wondrous reality that transcends what we are able to comprehend, wants to sail on uncharted seas and gladly trades the scene of knowledge for a scene of fantastic imag7

Immanuel Kant. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965. A 236/B 296.

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ining. It is to such seafarers that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra tells his riddle of the eternal recurrence. To you, the bold searchers, researchers, and whoever embarks with cunning sails on terrible seas – to you, drunk with riddles, glad of the twilight, whose soul flutes lure astray to every whirlpool, because you do not want to grope along a thread with cowardly hand; and where you can guess, you hate to deduce – to you alone I tell the riddle that I saw, the vision of the loneliest.8

The present of the Ariadne thread, so gratefully accepted by Descartes, is here rejected. Nietzsche’s seafarers refuse to content themselves with Kant’s well-charted land of truth and its phenomena. But what do we human beings need that cannot be found in Kant’s land of truth? Nietzsche here opposes to reality something we comprehend and possess, reality as a wondrous riddle open to our gaze, but not to our reason. Just today, Nietzsche insists, we need such seafarers. – Why do we need them? I shall return to that question. But that such seafarers, such lovers of visible riddles, will find kindred spirits in Kunst- und Wunderkammern is to be expected. Just this makes our topic so timely. The Kunstkammer stages such riddles. What lures us here is the wondrous and mysterious that defies comprehension and understanding. Something in us refuses to dwell contentedly in Kant’s well charted and thus familiar land of truth, longs for what will amaze and make us wonder, be it some remarkable artifact, be it some curious product of nature, such as the horn of a unicorn or a mandrake root: anything strange or monstrous. Children still create for themselves such cabinets of wonder. All sorts of things here find their place: pictures, coins, stamps, pressed flowers, fossils, crystals, perhaps some antlers or the skull of a fox found in the woods. A certain order emerges in such cabinets without much deliberation. Significant resemblances and suspected meanings organize what has been collected into collections. And collections want to be exhibited. Not so very different was the formation of the Wunderkammern of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, for example of the famous Kunst- und Wunderkammern of Emperor Rudolph II. When I think of such cabinets of wonder I see some rather dark room, with shelves and cases stuffed with all sorts of curious objects, waking the imagination. Family resemblances let us suspect significant relations, intimate some higher logos presiding over these relations. Not 8

Friedrich Nietzsche. “Vom Gesicht und Räthsel.” Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Book for All and None. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Modern Library, 1995.

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that we are able to get hold of this logos; that would require a magus. Into such a room belongs a John Dee, whom Rudolph II once called to Prague. In Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book Library there is a manuscript supposedly by him, the not yet deciphered and, I suspect, never to be deciphered Voynich manuscript: the illustrations suggest that were someone able to read that text he would find there some deep hidden meaning, perhaps a recipe for genuine rejuvenation and thus a weapon against death. Into this world belongs a painter such as Arcimboldi, on whom the Emperor, as Gustav René Hocke tells us, heaped honors and gold, and who had much to do with the establishment of his master’s Kunst- und Wunderkammern. And Rudolph II was a ravenous collector, acquiring “all sorts of wondrous objects, such as giant worms, dwarves, giants, scorpions, Siamese twins, magic stones and instruments, labyrinths, music boxes, clocks, petrified plants and animals, optical instruments, different kinds of mirrors, curiosities from India, China, and Peru.”9 Hardly a window opens in these cabinets through which the light of the Enlightenment might enter. The great age of such Wunderkammern was the late 16th and early th 17 century. Can we speak here of scenes of knowledge? What kind of knowledge would that be? Secret connections are suspected here in a way that has to blur the boundary that separates science from magic. To find its proper way science had to resist such a blurring. That sharp separation of science from magic over which Descartes and Mersenne labored was and remains a presupposition of the work of science. And yet even today something in us resists such a separation. We still know the Nietzschean longing for the open sea. And once again we can visit cabinets of wonder such as that wondrous Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California, that David Wilson has given us.10 And Germany, too, has once again its Wunderkammern, as e.g. the Kunstkammer of the Swiss art-maker or Kunstmacher Martin Schwarz in Castle Bartenstein not far from Stuttgart. But how are we to understand this longing? What is missing in Kant’s land of truth? For a first answer another riddle: what is missing in the reality we encounter in Kant’s land of truth is precisely – reality. But what is this supposed to mean? The final word of the title of this conference, ‘Bühne’ or ‘theater’ offers some help.

9 10

Gustav René Hocke. Die Welt als Labyrinth. Manier und Manie in der europäischen Kunst. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957. 151. Cf. Weschler. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet.

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4. If the Kunstkammer is a characteristic expression of the age of Mannerism, the theater provides a key to the world-picture of the Baroque. Even today the theater remains a fundamentally Baroque building type: the stage brightly lit, the auditorium with its galleries darker. The spectator’s relationship to what he sees is very different from that of a visitor to some Wunderkammer. In the theater the spectator is assigned a place. He remains in the dark. What he sees on stage is related to that place and would lose its magic if the spectator were to step unto the bright stage or seek a place behind its painted architecture. I called the theater a fundamentally Baroque building type. But can we not say more? Is the culture of the Baroque not a culture in which the theater came to dominate, embracing and transforming the other arts, especially architecture – where I am not thinking first of all of Baroque theaters, as they have survived so beautifully in Munich, Schwetzingen, and Drottningholm, nor of anatomical theaters, but of Baroque churches in which the Theatrum Sacrum of the mass is still being performed week after week. This approach to architecture again presupposed a profoundly theatrical understanding of the world that continues to find expression in such fundamentally Baroque expressions as theater of war or scene of the crime – we can add the anatomical theater. The Baroque is the age of the world-theater. Here just a few lines from Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau’s poem “Lust der Welt,” “Pleasure of the World.” What is the pleasure of the world? No more than a carnival play That long anticipated, quickly vanishes, Since our masks don’t stick, as one might wish And the beginning fails to rightly match the end. We are like those who set off fireworks, A moment often eats up a year’s cares.11

Like the dream, the theater is the metaphor of a world that is experienced as unreal. We say, don’t be so theatrical! We sense that pretense here does not correspond to reality. Something of this Baroque under-

11

“Was ist die Lust der Welt? Nichts als ein Fassnachts-Spiel,/ So, lange Zeit gehofft, in kurzer Zeit verschwindet,/ Da unsre Masken uns nicht haften, wie man will/ Und da der Anschlag nicht den Ausschlag recht empfindet./ Es gehet uns wie dem, der Feuerwerke macht,/ Ein Augenblick verzehrt oft eines Jahres Sorgen.” Georg Thürer “Vom Wortkunstwerk im deutschen Barock.” Die Kunstformen des Barockzeitalters. Ed. Rudolf Stamm. Bern: Francke, 1956. 354-82, especially 369.

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standing of reality is still alive in Kant’s understanding of experience, which denies us access to things in themselves. The metaphor of the world-theater, too, invites us to think of a reality concealed behind what we experience first of all and most of the time. Presupposed is knowledge about the distance that separates what is familiar to us from what is truly real. So understood, we find the concept of the world-theater already in Plato, the Stoics, the Church Fathers, and later, in an unusually articulated form, in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury, a book that remained popular well into the Baroque period. But knowledge about and painful awareness of the way our reality is subjected to time and therefore dreamlike is only one aide of the Baroque understanding of reality. We have to think also of the festal culture of the Baroque, the pleasure it took in spectacles of all sorts, especially in fireworks. Here the moment did indeed often devour a year’s cares, but that means not only that huge sums were spent on such fleeting pleasures, but also that such festivities ate up the year’s cares, and that means: allowed human beings to forget them. In time the beautiful fleeting illusions, whose production was so much a concern of the festal culture of the Baroque, allowed human beings to forget, at least for a time, the suffering that was part of their act in the theater of the world. Did Nietzsche not say that we were given art so that we would not perish over the truth? 5. Does the laboratory belong into this world-picture? When I think of a laboratory I imagine it white, with much light. Here there is need for careful observation. But, as is suggested already by the word ‘laboratory,’ seeing, observing is here only prelude to work that aims to understand nature and to render us human beings, as Descartes promised, its masters and possessors. Thus it presupposes a very different worldpicture, a different estimation of the eye, of seeing, and of knowing. The laboratory belongs into our modern world, into this age of the world-picture, as Heidegger calls it,12 that is to say, into an epoch whose world-understanding is delineated already by Descartes. Mannerist Kunstkammer and Baroque theater call this world-picture into 12

Martin Heidegger. “The Age of the World Picture.” Trans. William Lovitt. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper, 1977. 115-54.

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question, have no real place in it. And thus I understand the title of this symposium as an invitation to open a window in the house that science and technology have built, to open up what Heidegger calls “the age of the world-picture” to reality. But what does ‘reality’ mean here? Does a reality supposed to elude scientific comprehension in its very essence, a reality that is to be sought beyond the phenomena with which science contents itself, indeed has to content itself if it is to remain science, deserve to be called ‘reality’? Does reality not become here something for spirit-seers and similar enthusiasts? The expression ‘world-picture’ raises questions. Is a picture not essentially related to seeing? And does all seeing not presuppose something like a scene of seeing, a stage? Could Heidegger have called his essay just as easily “The Age of the World-Theater”? Is not Descartes, too, a Baroque thinker, who belongs into the age of the Baroque world theater? The Baroque world-theater was indeed his place of departure. But he took it to be his task to show us the way out of this theater. We should not make things too easy for ourselves with the step from Heidegger’s world-picture to the Baroque world-theater. To be sure, the word ‘picture’ promises here some sort of bridge, for the Baroque theater stands very much under the hegemony of the picture, more precisely of the picture determined by the perspectiva artificialis inaugurated by Alberti. Inquiries into the origin of the age of the world-picture thus quickly lead to Alberti’s Della pittura. As Descartes was to do later, Alberti already finds his Ariadne thread in mathematics. Given a certain point of view, the mathematical form of representation enables the painter to represent reality so well that the eye may well be deceived. In this sense, Alberti’s method promises to render the painter, not the master and possessor of nature, but of its visible appearance. What matters to Alberti is not an understanding of how the things that make up nature function, but the ability to create representations that, given certain assumptions may, well deceive the eye. It is important here to keep in mind the artifice involved: in order to keep his perspective construction simple, Alberti presupposes a flat earth and a single stationary eye. Given these assumptions the correctness of his construction is easily demonstrated. Important here is the way Alberti’s art of perspective subjects appearances to a human measure, which in turn answers to a demand for ease of representation. Given the right conditions, the artful illusions created by the painter should let us forget their illusory character and present us with a second reality. The artist here becomes a second God who lets what he has created take the place of God’s creation.

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It is easy to understand Jacques Maritain, when he laments the step that carries us in some museums from the galleries that hold the paintings of the primitive masters, with their gold background and haloes, to those dedicated to the masters of the Renaissance as a step that lets us trade reality for theater.13 We have crossed the threshold that separates the theocentric Middle Ages from the anthropocentric Modern Age. Like Heidegger, Maritain also connects the Modern Age with the hegemony of the picture, for when he speaks here of theater, this is a theater that has subjected itself to Albertian perspective, a theater in which a quasi-pictorial spectacle triumphs over what theater once was, a triumph that also subjects the actor to the observer’s standpoint. Spectacle here becomes more important than claims to truth. That Alberti had already crossed this threshold is shown by his rejection of the gold background. Here we have a metaphor that lets us understand the age that Alberti leaves behind. The gold background endows what is placed before it with the aura of a higher significance, places what is represented in a spiritual perspective.14 Alberti’s perspective, on the other hand, would render the material picture transparent, would have us experience it as if it were a window that allowed us to see the represented as if it were reality. But all the painter can offer our amazed gaze is a beautiful illusion. In this sense one could say that so understood art does indeed open windows in the world-theater in which we, too, are actors, but windows that do not let us see a deeper reality, absorbing instead fictions that offer an escape from a world in which pain all too often seems to outweigh pleasure. Here already we are on the way towards the modern aesthetic understanding of art. The art of the Middle Ages aimed at something else. In the theater of the world art was to open windows to what was thought to be the true reality. The loss of this spiritual perspective is a presupposition of Albertian perspective. The former is understood less and less, as the history of the development of gold background or halo demonstrates. The art that emerges has its center no longer in God, but in the spectator who turns to spectacles to compensate for what the world withholds from him. What now calls for admiration is the ingenious and artificial.

13 14

Jacques Maritain. Art and Scholasticism, and the Frontiers of Poetry. Trans. Joseph W. Evans. New York: Scribner, 1962. 52. Friedrich Ohly. Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977. 15, 35-37.

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6. But what does all this have to do with Heidegger’s “Age of the WorldPicture”? That there is a connection is at least hinted at when Heidegger mentions, besides science and machine technology, as a third essential characteristic of the Modern Age the process, “of art’s moving into the purview of aesthetics. That means that the art work becomes the object of mere subjective experience.”15 But despite this pointer, art plays no significant part in that essay. Alberti is not mentioned. Significant, however, is Descartes. But even though 200 years separate Alberti and Descartes, his method nevertheless has its precursor in the perspectiva artificialis and brings with it an analogous loss of reality. Alberti, to be sure, did not promise to make human beings the masters and possessors of nature; more modest, he only promised to make painters the masters and possessors of nature’s appearances. Here, too, method makes the master. And here already method subjects appearances to a human measure that in turn obeys the demand for easy to execute representation. The mathematical form of perspectiva artificialis obeys this demand. It founds a practice that knew how to represent human beings and things so convincingly that contemporaries thought of magic. In a similar way, Cartesian method subjects nature to a human measure that answers to the demand for easy-to-execute representation. Here too method aims at a practice that promises to represent the things of the world, for example a human heart, so convincingly that some day it should become possible to replace it with an artificial heart. If Alberti’s form of representation presupposes a single, stationary eye placed before the picture, the Cartesian world-picture places the subject before the world, thus letting it fall out of the world. Just as the spectator has no place in the picture he is observing, so a Cartesian res cogitans has no place in nature, whose essence Descartes determines as res extensa. The human subject had to fall out of the so determined world. And for that reason our science still does not know anything of such a subject. To be sure, it knows brain processes and computers, simulated intelligence, but it cannot know anything of persons demanding respects just because they are persons, as Kant was well aware. Persons have no place in the scientific world-picture. They demand a different world-understanding. As Wittgenstein writes of himself in the Tractatus: 15

Heidegger. “The Age of the World Picture.” 116.

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5.631 The thinking, presenting subject; there is no such thing. If I wrote a book ‘The world as I found it.’ I should have therein to report on my body and say which members obey my will and which do not, etc. This then would be a method of isolating the subject or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject: that is to say, of it alone in this book mention could not be made. – 5.632 The subject does not belong to the world but is a limit of the world.16

But we must step over this limit if we are to find a way to the person. To find that way we have to be willing to leave Kant’s land of truth, have to voyage in his stormy ocean. That Wittgenstein, too, speaks of the world-picture is hardly surprising (2.19). The subject, the person is necessarily absent from that picture. And this world-picture remains a presupposition of our science, which has to demand objectivity. In this sense, the laboratory, too, knows nothing of human beings as persons demanding respect, which is of course not to say that just human beings provide endless material for experimentation. But without some experience of freedom showing itself in the world, that is to say, without the experience of persons so understood, every ethics loses its foundation. And this foundation can only be discovered if a window opens in the modern world-picture that frees us for something other, something that speaks to us and claims us. What matters here is neither Alberti nor Descartes, neither Heidegger nor Wittgenstein, but a world-picture that denies the human beings a place in that world, has to deny that place because such a denial has its foundation in the ruling form of representation, we can also say, in the ruling perspective, which demands objectivity of all that would lay claim to what deserves to be called knowledge. There is the easy objection that this world-picture may not be confused with our lifeworld. But this objection should not make us forget the extent to which science and technology are transforming our life-world ever more profoundly. And such transformation carries us ever more decisively into the proximity of either the Cartesian res cogitans or the Cartesian res extensa. On one hand we have become freer, more mobile than ever before: there is less and less that binds us. Thus we experience our own being increasingly as material that we can form and manipulate as we please. But such flights of freedom are shadowed by the degradation of human beings into mere human material. That aura that lets us experience human beings as truly human gets lost in the age of their technical reproducibility. 16

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. C. K. Ogden. London: Routledge, 1922. 151.

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7. But isn’t it misleading to look at Alberti for the origin of our worldpicture? Does this not overlook what so decisively distinguishes Alberti’s picture from Heidegger’s world-picture? Alberti is thinking of a work of art, some beautiful fiction that so captivates us that we forget the world with its concerns and cares. What matters to his artist is not truth and knowledge. His picture takes its leave from reality. This cannot be said of Heidegger’s world-picture. Quite the opposite: for that picture claims to have room for everything that deserves to be called real. For that reason it is easy to confuse this world-picture with the world. “World” here means, to speak with Wittgenstein, “all that is the case” (Tractatus 1) or “the totality of facts” (1.1). And it is no longer art, but science that promises us a picture that is truly adequate to the world, where Wittgenstein is thinking of Newton: 6.341 Newtonian mechanics, e.g., brings the description of the universe to a unified form. Let us imagine a white surface with irregular black spots. We now say: Whatever kind of picture these make I can always get as near as I like to its description, if I cover the surface with a sufficiently fine square network and now say of every square that it is white or black. In this way I shall have brought the description of the surface to a unified form. This form is arbitrary, because I could have applied with equal success a net with a triangular or hexagonal mesh. It can happen that the description would have been simpler with the aid of a triangular mesh; that is to say, we might have described the surface more accurately with a triangular, and coarser, than with the finer square mesh, or vice versa, and so on. To the different networks correspond different systems of describing the world. Mechanics determine a form of description by saying: All propositions in the description of the world must be obtained in a given way from a number of given propositions – the mechanical axioms. It thus provides the bricks for the building of the edifice of science, and says: Whatever building thou wouldst erect, thou shalt construct it in some manner with these bricks and these alone.17

Wittgenstein here offers us a picture of the work of science. The white surface covered with spots here represents reality. Science places its nets over this surface. These yield pictures of reality. For the sake of ease of representation these pictures sacrifice the irregularity of reality. Seen in this way, science always runs the risk of confusing reality with its pictures. Isn’t it science that finally determines what deserves to be called real? Descartes might have said, whatever deserves to be called real can be thought clearly and distinctly, and that means, cannot in 17

Ibid. 173-75.

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principle elude the reach of science. Our ability to comprehend reality here becomes the measure of reality. And quite in this sense Wittgenstein, too, elided in the Tractatus the distinction between reality and its scientific representation when he identifies the world with the facts in logical space (1.13). Instead of settling for the more modest formulation, the scientific world-picture gives us a logical model of a reality transcending the logical space that circumscribes science (cf. 2.11, 2.12). Such a blurring also determines Heidegger’s concept of the worldpicture: “With the word ‘picture’ we think first of all of a copy of something. Accordingly the world picture would be a painting, so to speak, of what is as whole. But ‘world picture’ means more than this. We mean by it the world itself, the world as such, what it is in its entirety.”18 This world-picture, if it is to include all that is, has to include also us human beings. We belong to it. And yet persons deserving respect cannot be found in that picture. If Wittgenstein begins his description of science relying on the metaphor of a picture, he concludes it with an architectural metaphor. His scientist is an architect who works with essentially invisible stones. His architecture is correspondingly invisible. And does not scientific understanding demand such invisibility? Is not all that can be seen and sensed mere appearance? The claim to knowledge demands objectivity. The scientific world-building answers to that claim. Objectivity again demands that we free ourselves from all perspectives that would limit our seeing and understanding, demands that we bracket our feelings and interests. With good reason Wittgenstein could therefore say: “The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value – and if there were, it would be of no value” (6.41). In it there also can be no persons demanding our respect. For that very reason it becomes necessary to open windows in this world-building, to oppose to a knowledge that demands objectivity experiences that gives us a very different sort of insight. How are we to conceptualize this “outside the world”? Wittgenstein knows that science is of no help here. “Propositions cannot express anything higher” (6.421). What is higher has to show itself. When Wittgenstein here opposes what is higher to our reality, this lets us think of the Baroque world-theater, which similarly invites thoughts of something higher. But how are we today to find the way to what is 18

Heidegger. “The Age of the World Picture.” 129.

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higher? Following Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein here points to aesthetics, which is said to be one with ethics, and incapable of being expressed (6.421). Schopenhauer again had invoked Kant’s definition of the beautiful as object of an entirely disinterested satisfaction. “Interest,” according to Kant, is “the satisfaction which we combine with the representation of the existence of an object.”19 A disinterested satisfaction accordingly is unconcerned about reality. Does this mean that for us moderns what is higher cannot be more than some beautiful illusion that cannot lay claim to reality, although it may help us to cope in a fundamentally meaningless world? To repeat Nietzsche’s word once more, do we have art to save us from the truth? But just Kant forces us to call into question such an aestheticizing of what is higher. If there were no reality other than the world of science, ethics would be without foundation, for every ethics presupposes that, as human beings, we experience freedom becoming visible in the world, even though it eludes all our attempts at conceptualization. Kant speaks of an “immeasurable gulf … fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom.”20 But all ethical behavior bridges that gulf and the same must be said of any human being we experience as demanding our respect. The supersensible must be able to show itself in our world, and that is to say: our world is not adequately understood as the totality of facts or as the Heidggerian world-picture. What is higher demands a different kind of seeing, demands a knowing that transcends what science can comprehend. Without such experiences every ethics would idle. It then would become impossible to distinguish in principle human beings from computer-driven robots. That feeling of respect, which, according to Kant, every human being demands of us and which is inseparably part of our encounter with human beings would then be but a relic of an understanding of reality that a more advanced civilization had left behind. How are we to think this experience? Kant points to a way when he understands the aesthetic judgment as a faculty that allows us to bridge the immeasurable gulf between the scientific concept of nature and the supersensible concept of freedom. In beautiful nature Kant senses the incomprehensible presence of spirit answering to our own spirit. Understood in this light, beauty has the power to open in the world understood as the totality of facts, a window to the true reality. Thus Kant 19 20

Kant. Critique. A 5. Kant. Critique. A XIX.

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helps us to understand that the path out of the Baroque theater of the world that Descartes was so concerned to show us, leads only to a world of phenomena, not to reality. Is it not just today the task of art to call into question the loss of reality that is the price paid by those who allow our modern world-picture, determined as that picture is by science and by technology, to circumscribe their life-world? To rephrase the question: is it not just today the task of art to preserve the things in the phenomena our science is able to comprehend? As Kant knew, to experience a person as a person is to experience a thing in itself. Here we glimpse what deserves to be called reality. This is why it is so important to preserve the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. And this is why we should not subject experience and insight to what we are able to comprehend. Just in this age of the ever advancing reproducibility of reality we need to preserve that aura that lets human beings be human beings, that lets things be things. In old Kunst- und Wunderkammern we sense even today something of that aura. Translation by the Author.

WORKS CITED Descartes, René. The Philosophical Works. Trans. Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. New York: Dover, 1955. Descartes, René. Oeuvres complètes. 16 vols. Ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: Vrin, 1964. Heidegger, Martin. “The Age of the World Picture.” Trans. William Lovitt. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper, 1977. 115-54. Hocke, Gustav René. Die Welt als Labyrinth. Manier und Manie in der europäischen Kunst. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965. Maritain, Jacques. Art and Scholasticism, and the Frontiers of Poetry. Trans. Joseph W. Evans. New York: Scribner, 1962. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A Book for All and None. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Modern Library,1995. Ohly, Friedrich. Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977. Thürer, Georg. “Vom Wortkunstwerk im deutschen Barock.” Die Kunstformen des Barockzeitalters. Ed. Rudolf Stamm. Bern: Francke, 1965. 354-82. Weschler, Lawrence. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. New York: Pantheon, 1995. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. C. K. Ogden. London: Routledge, 1922.

About the Authors

HARTMUT BÖHME Professor of the theory of culture and the history of mentality at the Humboldt Universität Berlin. Research interests: literary history of 18th to 20th century, ethno poetry and autobiography, history of nature and technology in the overlapping fields of philosophy, art, and literature, historical anthropology, in particular the history of the body, the emotions, and the senses. Publications i. a.: Das Andere der Vernunft. Zur Entwicklung von Realitätsstrukturen am Beispiel Kants (together with Gernot Böhme, Frankfurt/Main 1983); Orientierung Kulturwissenschaft. Was sie kann, was sie will (Hamburg 2000); Die Besteigung des Chimborazo. Annäherungen an Alexander von Humboldt (together with Ruth Tesmar, Berlin 2002). HORST BREDEKAMP Professor of art history at the Humboldt Universität Berlin and member of the Hermann von Helmholtz Centre of Technology of Culture. Research interests: history of art, culture, and science of the Renaissance and the Early Modern Age, history of the Wunderkammer and of the technical picture. Publications i. a.: Repräsentation und Bildmagie der Renaissance als Formproblem (Munich 1995); Thomas Hobbes’ visuelle Strategien. Der Leviathan: Das Urbild des modernen Staates. Werkillustrationen und Portraits (Berlin 1999); Sankt Peter in Rom und das Prinzip der produktiven Zerstörung. Die Baugeschichte von Bramante bis Bernini (Berlin 2000); Antikensehnsucht und Maschinenglauben: Die Geschichte der Wunderkammer und die Zukunft der Kunstgeschichte (Berlin 2000) [English edition: The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology (Princeton 1995)]; Theatrum Naturae et Artis (Ed., Berlin 2000); Florentiner Fußball: Die Renaissance der Spiele (Berlin 2001). OLAF BREIDBACH Prof. Sc.D. Ph.D., director of the Institute of the History of Medicine, Natural Sciences and Technology of the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, director of the museum Ernst Haeckel House, chair of history of natural sciences and head of the Department of Theoretical Biology and of the biological-pharmaceutical faculty of the FSU Jena. Research interests: theory and aesthetics of the natural sciences. Publications i. a.: Die Materialisierung des Ichs (Frank-

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About the Authors

furt/Main 1997); Natur der Ästhetik, Ästhetik der Natur (Vienna 1997); Das Anschauliche oder über die Anschauung von Welt: Ein Beitrag zur Neuronalen Ästhetik (Vienna, New York 2000); Lorenz Oken. Ein politischer Naturphilosoph (Co-Ed., Weimar 2001); Deutungen. Zur philosophischen Dimension der internen Repräsentation (Ed., Weilerswist 2001); Naturwissenschaften um 1800 (Co-Ed., Weimar 2001); Hegel und die Lebenswissenschaften (Co-Ed., Berlin 2002). BEKET BUKOVINSKÁ Ph.D., art historian, member of staff at the Institute of History at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Research interests: crafts at court of Rudolf II. Collaboration on the catalogue Prag um 1600 (Essen, Vienna 1988); collaboration on the exhibition Rudolf II and Prague (1997), conception, exposition, and catalogue of the exhibition section crafts and Kunstkammer of Rudolf II; organisation of the international conference Rudolf II., Prague, and the world (1997). Publications i. a.: Die Kunst am Hofe Rudolfs II. (Co-Ed., Praha 1988); Rudolf II, Prague and the World (Co-Ed., Praha 1998). HARRY COLLINS Professor of sociology at Cardiff University. Research interests: sociology of knowledge, Artificial Intelligence, relationship between humans and machines. Publications i. a.: Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science (together with T. J. Pinch, Henley-on-Thames 1982); Artificial Experts: Social Knowledge and Intelligent Machines (Cambridge 1990); The Golem: What You Should Know About Science (together with T. J. Pinch, Cambridge 1993); The Golem at Large: What You Should Know About Technology (together with T. J. Pinch, Cambridge 1998); The Shape of Actions: What Humans and Machines Can do (together with M. Kusch, Cambridge 1998); The One Culture?: A Conversation about Science (Co-Ed., Chicago 2001). SAMUEL Y. EDGERTON Professor of Art History at the Williams College, Williamstown. Research interests: Italian Renaissance and Mesoamerican art. Publications i. a.: The Renaissance. Rediscovery of Linear Perspective (New York 1975); Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance (Cornell 1985); The Heritage of Giotto’s Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution (Cornell, 1991); Die Entdeckung der Perspektive (Munich, 2001). ROBERT FELFE Ph.D., art historian, research interests: history of collection in the Early Modern Age, graphic art of the 16th and the 17th century, aesthetics of nature and contemporary photography. Publications i. a.: Naturgeschichte als kunstvolle Synthese. Physikotheologie und Bildpraxis bei Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (Berlin 2004).

About the Authors

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PETER GALISON Professor of History of Science and Physics at the Harvard University. Winner of the Max Planck Prize. Research interests: philosophy and history of modern physics, architecture of science. Publications i. a.: How Experiments End (Chicago 1987); Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago 1997); Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Co-Ed., Stanford 1992); Picturing Science, Producing Art (together with C. A. Jones, London 1998); The Architecture of Science (together with E. Thompson, Cambridge 2000); Science in Culture (Co-Ed., New Brunswick 2001). RAINER GRUBER Sc.D., dissertation about quantum field theory. After trips to the field of photomorphological genesis and to the industry works since 18 years at the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching/Munich. KARSTEN HARRIES Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. Research interests: philosophy of art and architecture, phenomenology, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Philosophy of the Renaissance. Publications i. a.: The Meaning of Modern Art (Evanstone 1968); The Bavarian Rococo Church: Between Faith and Aestheticism (Yale 1983); The Broken Frame: Three Lectures (Washington 1990); The Ethical Function of Architecture (Cambridge 1998); Infinity of Perspective (Cambridge 2002). HANS CHRISTIAN VON HERRMANN Ph.D., habil., freelance lecturer at the University of Leipzig. Research interests: aesthetics and physiology, history of culture and the media of European theatre. Publications i. a.: Sang der Maschinen. Brechts Medienästhetik (Munich 1996); Orte der Kulturwissenschaft. 5 Vorträge (Co-Ed., Leipzig 1998); Kaleidoskopien. Theatralität – Performance – Medialität (Co-Ed., Leipzig 1996 et seq.). DORIS KOLESCH Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Habilitation treatise on staging of emotions in the 17th and 18th century. Member of the Young Academy of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanity. Research interests: theory and aesthetics of Modern Age theatre; emotionality in the Early Modern Age; aesthetics in Modern Literature. Publications i. a.: Roland Barthes (Frankfurt/Main, New York 1997); Kulturen des Performativen (Co-Ed., Berlin 1998); Berliner Theater im 20. Jahrhundert (Co-Ed., Berlin 1998); Räume der literarischen Postmoderne (Co-Ed., Tübingen 2000). JAN LAZARDZIG M.A., academic member of the interdisciplinary research project Kulturen des Performativen at the Freie Universität Berlin. Research interests: theatrical history of culture and science in the 17th century. Ph.D. thesis on “Stage Ma-

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About the Authors

chinery and Fortification. Paradoxical Aspects of Knowledge Production in the 17th Century.” TIMOTHY LENOIR Professor of History at the Stanford University, head of the program History and Philosophy of Science. Research interests: history of the media, of literature, and of science. Publications i. a.: The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology (Dordrecht, Boston, London 1982); Politik im Tempel der Wissenschaft: Forschung und Machtausübung im deutschen Kaiserreich (Frankfurt/Main 1992); Instituting Science: The Cultural Production of Scientific Disciplines (Stanford 1997); Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication (Ed., Stanford 1998). HENRY LOWOOD Ph.D., curator of the collections on history of science and technology at the university library of Stanford. Together with Timothy Lenoir head of the research project How They Got Game: The History of Interactive Simulations and Videogames at the Stanford Humanities Laboratory. Main field of research: the history of the computer game. Publications i. a.: Frederick E. Brasch and the History of Science (Stanford 1987); Patriotism, profit, and the Promotion of Science in the German Enlightenment: the Economic and Scientific Societies, 1760-1815 (New York 1991). JAMES MCALLISTER Ph.D., University Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Leiden. Guest professorship at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the Center for Philosophy of Science, Pittsburgh. Editor of International Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Publications i. a.: Beauty and Revolution in Science (Cornell 1996); No Exit: America and the German Problem, 19431954 (Cornell 2002); The Question of Style in Philosophy and the Arts (CoEd., Cambridge 1995). FLORIAN NELLE Ph.D., habil., academic member of staff at the Institute of Theatre Studies of the Freie Universität Berlin. Main field of research: aesthetic dimensions of science in 17th century, in particular the relationship between manieristic poetics and experimental science. Publications i. a.: Exzentrische Räume (Co-Ed., Stuttgart 2000); Bühnen des Wissens (Co-Ed., Berlin 2003). WERNER OECHSLIN Professor of history of art and architecture in Zurich, head of the foundation Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. Research interests: history of architecture and art of the Renaissance, the Early Modern Age and the Modern Age, theory of architecture. Publications i. a.: Festarchitekturen. Der Architekt als Inszenierungskünstler (Stuttgart 1984); Mart Stam: Eine Reise in die Schweiz, 1923-

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531

1925 (Ed., Zurich 1992); Stilhülse und Kern: Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos und der evolutionäre Weg zur modernen Architektur (Zürich 1994) [English edition: Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, and the Road to Modern Architecture (Cambridge 2002)]; Moderne entwerfen (Cologne 1999); Das ArchitekturModell, Instrument zwischen Theorie und Praxis (Berlin 1999); A. H. Steiner: Architekt, Städtebauer, Lehrer (Ed., Zurich 2001); Das Neue gegen das Alte. Werner Kallmorgen – Hamburgs Architekt der Nachkriegszeit (Co-Ed., Hamburg, Munich 2003). ANDREW PICKERING Professor of Sociology, director of the Department of Sociology University of Illinois. Research interests: Sociology of science and technology. Publications i. a.: Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Chicago, Edinburgh 1984); The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science (Chicago 1995); Science as Practice and Culture (Ed., Chicago 1992). CLEMENS RISI Ph.D., academic member of the interdisciplinary research project Kulturen des Performativen at the Freie Universität Berlin. Studies of musicology, theatre studies, and business studies in Mainz, Munich, and Rome. 2001 Doctorate in Mainz with a Ph.D. thesis on dramaturgy, staging, and reception of Italian music drama before Verdi; edition of notes; publications on opera, staging of opera, music theatre, lied, and analysis of performances. WOLFGANG SCHÄFFNER Ph.D., academic member of the Hermann von Helmholtz Centre of Technology of Culture in Berlin. Research interests: history of science and the media, history of semiotic processes, algorithms and data processing since the Early Modern Age. Publications i. a.: Die Ordnung des Wahns. Zur Poetologie psychiatrischen Wissens bei Alfred Döblin (Munich 1995); Michel Foucault/ Herculine Barbin: Über Hermaphroditismus (Co-Ed., Frankfurt/Main 1998); Das Laokoon-Paradigma. Zeichenregime im 18. Jahrhundert (Co-Ed., Berlin 2000). WILHELM SCHMIDT-BIGGEMANN Professor of philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin. Research interests: mysticism and philosophy in the Early Modern Age. Publications i. a.: Maschine und Teufel. Jean Pauls Jugendsatiren nach ihrer Modellgeschichte (Freiburg 1975); Topica Universalis. Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft (Hamburg 1983); Philosophia perennis. Historische Umrisse abendländischer Spiritualität in Antike, Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Frankfurt/Main 1998) [English edition: Philosophia perennis: Historical Outlines of Western Spirituality in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought (Berlin, Heidelberg 2004)]; Blaise Pascal (Munich 1999); Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie/ Die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. 4 (Co-Ed., Basel 2001).

532

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HELMAR SCHRAMM Professor of theatre studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Research interests: theatrical culture in the area of tension of the history of science and the media. Publications i. a.: Cachaça. Fragmente zur Geschichte von Poesie und Imagination (Co-Ed., Berlin 1996); Karneval des Denkens. Theatralität im Spiegel philosophischer Texte des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Berlin 1996); Bühnen des Wissens (Ed., Berlin 2003). LUDGER SCHWARTE Ph.D., academic member of the interdisciplinary research project Kulturen des Performativen at the Freie Universität Berlin. Guest professorship at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris) and at the Columbia University (New York). Main field of research: philosophy of the architecture of science. Publications i. a.: Gene. Mären (Berlin 1998); Die Regeln der Intuition. Kunstphilosophie nach Adorno, Heidegger und Wittgenstein (Munich 2000); Kunst als Strafe (Co-Ed., Munich 2003); Körper und Recht: Anthropologische Dimensionen der Rechtsphilosophie (Co-Ed., Munich 2003). BARBARA MARIA STAFFORD Professor at the University of Chicago, participant at the National Academy of Science/ National Research Council 2000. Research interests: visual theories and theories of art of the ending 16th century to the Romantic Period, modern media, and key intersections between the arts and the sciences in the Modern Age. Publications i. a.: Symbol and Myth: Humbert de Superville’s Essay on Absolute Signs in Art (Cranbury 1979); Voyage into Substance: Art, Science, Nature and the Illustrated Travel Account, 1760-1840 (Cambridge 1984); Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, London 1991); Body Criticism (Cambridge 1993); Artful Science. Enlightenment, Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cambridge 1994); Good Looking. Essays on the Virtue of Images (Cambridge 1996); Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (Cambridge 1999); Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen (together with F. Terpak, Los Angeles 2001).

Image Credits

Schramm: (Fig. 1) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1635. Vol. 1. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 2) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1637. Vol. 2. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 3) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1667. Vol. 8, 490. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 4) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1667. Vol. 8, 416. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 5) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1646. Vol. 2, 416. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 6) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1635. Vol. 1, 456. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 7) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1635. Vol. 1, 101. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 8) From: Abelinus, Johann Philipp (ed.). Theatrum Europaeum. furt am Main, 1637. Vol. 2, 510. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.

FrankFrankFrankFrankFrankFrankFrankFrank-

Schäffner: (Fig. 1) From: Bouelles, Charles. Géométrie pratique. Paris, 1542. (Fig. 2) From: Hulsius, Levinus. Traktat der mechanischen Instrumente. Frankfurt, 1604. (Fig. 3) From: Ariotti, Piero E. “Aspects of the Conception and Development of the Pendulum in the 17th Century.” Archive for the History of Exact Sciences 8 (1972). (Fig. 4) From: Uttenhofer, Kaspar. Circinus Geometricus. Nuremberg, 1626. (Fig. 5) From: Hooke, Robert. Micrographia, or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses. London, 1665.

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Schwarte: (Fig. 1) From: Perrault, Claude. Histoire des Animaux. Paris, 1671. v. Herrmann: (Fig. 1) From: Satkowski, Leon. Giogio Vasari. Architect and Courtier. Princeton and New Jersey, 1993. Fig. 83. © 1992, National Gallery of Art (Rosenwald Collection), Washington D. C. (Fig. 2) From: Satkowski, Leon. Giogio Vasari. Architect and Courtier. Princeton and New Jersey, 1993. Fig. 78. © 1992, National Gallery of Art (Rosenwald Collection), Washington D. C. (Fig. 3) From: Il Luogo Teatrale a Firenze. Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, Parigi. [Exhibit. cat.] Milan, 1975. Fig. 8.42, 124. (Fig. 4) From: Il Luogo Teatrale a Firenze. Brunelleschi, Vasari, Buontalenti, Parigi. [Exhibit. cat.] Milan, 1975. Fig. IV, 30. (Fig. 5) From: Hewitt, Barnard and Coral Gables, eds. The Renaissance Stage. Documents of Serlio, Sabbattini, and Furttenbach. Florida, 1958. 28. © Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. (Fig. 6) From: Grote, Andreas. Florenz. Gestalt und Geschichte eines Gemeinwesens. 7th revised edition. Munich, 1997. Fig. 26, 356. Oechslin (Fig. 1) Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey. Conseils pour former une Bibliothèque peu nombreuse, mais choisie [...]. Berlin, 1756. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 2) Marcus Valerius Probus. De Notis Romanorum […].Venice, 1525. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 3) Giulio Camillo. Due Trattati [...] l'uno delle Materie [...] l'altro della Imitatione. Venice, 1544. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 4) Vito Latis. I Libri nella Casa, Quaderni di Domus. Milan, 1945. Vol. 1. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 5) Jonathan Swift. A Tale of a Tub […]. London, 1710. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 6) Johann Heinrich Lambert. Anlage zur Architectonic oder Theorie des Ersten und Einfachen […]. Riga, 1771. Vol. II. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 7) Johann Jakob Leibnitz. Inclutae Bibliothecae Norimbergensis Memorabilia […]. Nuremberg, 1674. Frontispiece. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 8) Vito Latis. I Libri nella Casa, Quaderni di Domus. Milan, 1945. Vol. 1. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin. (Fig. 9) Raymond Queneau. Pour une Bibliothèque Idéale […]. Paris, 1956. © Stiftung Bibliothek Werner Oechslin.

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Risi: (Fig. 1) Claudio Monteverdi. “Lamento della Ninfa.” Madrigali guerreri, et amorosi con alcuni opuscoli in genere rappresentativo >…@. Libro ottavo. Venetia, 1638. © Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Scrin. A/661. Kolesch: (Fig. 1) From: Scudéry, Madelaine de. Clélie, histoire romaine. Paris, 1654. 398. © Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Lazardzig: (Fig. 1) From: Küster, George Gottfried. Antiquitates Tangermundenses. Berlin, 1729. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 2) From: Kugler, F., F. E. Meyerheim, and J. H. Strack. Architectonische Denkmäler der Altmark Brandenburg. Berlin, 1833. 11. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. Bukovinská: (Fig. 1) © Cliché Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Inv. no. 1980/210. (Fig. 2) © Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. Kunstkammer, inv. no. 3060/ photo by the museum. (Fig. 3) © Archive Prazského Hradu, Prague. Photo: P. Paul, Institute for Art History at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. (Fig. 4) © Collection of the Ruling Count of Liechtenstein, Vaduz. From: Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien (1976). (Fig. 5) Daniel Fröschl [?]. Marginal drawings from the inventory from 16071611. Fol. 11‘; 15‘; 111; 116. From: Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien (1976). (Fig. 6) Daniel Fröschl (attrib.). Dronte, „Museum Kaiser Rudolfs II.“ Cod. min. 130, f. 31r. From: Thesaurus Austriacus. Europas Glanz im Spiegel der Buchkunst. [Exhibit. cat.]. Ed. E. Irblich. Vienna, 1996. Cat. no. 47/7. © Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Wien, Handschriften- und Incunablen-Sammlung. (Fig. 7) © National Museum, Prague. Inv. no. P6V–4389. Photo P. Paul. Institute for Art History at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. (Fig. 8 u. 9) © Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. Kunstkammer, inv. no. 6866/ photo by the museum. (Fig. 10) © Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien Kunstkammer, inv. Nr. 3394/ photo by the museum. (Fig. 11) © Albertina, Vienna. From: Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien (1957).

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Felfe: (Fig. 1) Frontispiece (woodcut, approx.. 28x38 cm). From: Imperato, Ferrante. Dell’Historia Naturale. Naples, 1599. With the kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Sign.: 37.2 Phys. 2°). (Fig. 2) Petrus Iselburg. Frontispiece (copperplate, approx.. 15x22 cm). From: Besler, Basilius. Fasciculus Rariorum et Aspectu dignorum varii Generis […]. Nuremberg, 1616. With the kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Sign.: 22.1 Geom). (Fig. 3) G. Wingendorp Frontispiece (copperplate, approx. 34x38 cm). From: Worm, Olaus. Museum Wormianum […]. Leiden, 1655. (Fig. 4) Io. Bapt. Bertonus and Hieronymus Viscarius Frontispiece (copperplate, 24x26 cm). From: Ceruti, B. and A. Chicco. Museum Calceolarium […]. Verona, 1622. With the kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Sign.: 38 Phys 2°). (Fig. 5) Blerendorf. Plate (copperplate, approx. 20x32 cm). From: Beger, Lorenz. Thesaurus Electoralis Brandenburgicus selectus. Cologne, 1696. (Fig. 6) H. von Hensberg Frontispiece (copperplate, approx. 18x14 cm). From: Olearius, Adam. Gottorffische Kunstkammer. Schleswig, 1674. With the kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Sign.: 24.1 Phys). (Fig. 7) Jacobus the Later Frontispiece (copperplate, approx. 34x21 cm). From: Rumphius, G. E. Amboinsche Rariteitkamer […]. Amsterdam, 1705. With the kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Sign.: Nh 2° 7). (Fig. 8) I. v. Viane Frontispiece (copperplate). From: Levinus, Vincent. Wodertooneel der nature […]. Amsterdam, 1706. © Photo: Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen. (Fig. 9) C. Huyberts. Frontispiece (copperplate, approx. 21x16 cm). From: Ruysch, Frederik. Opera omnia. Amsterdam, 1720. With the kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel (Sign.: Ma 148). (Fig. 10) M. Wenig. Decoration of Dominico Mauro for „Servio Tullio“ by Agostino Steffani and Ventura Terzago (copperplate). Munich, 1686. From: Brauneck, Manfred: Die Welt als Bühne. Geschichte des europäischen Theaters. Stuttgart, 1996. Vol. 2, 419. (Fig. 11) Frontispiece (copperplate, approx. 18x14 cm). From: Neickelius, Caspar Friedrich. Museographia oder Anleitung zum rechten Begriff und nützlicher Anlegung der Museorum oder Raritäten-Kammern. Leipzig, 1727. (Fig. 12) Frontispiece (copperplate). From: Hebenstreit, Johann Ernst. Museum Richterianum. Leipzig, 1743. © Photo: Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen.

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(Fig. 13) Johann Jakob Scheuchzer [?]. Collage (approx. 38x24 cm, between 1716 and 1730). Idem: Theatr[um] Diluv[ianum] Nautilis. Icones pro lexico dilviano. ZBZ Ms Z VIII 21 d, fol. 98r. (Fig. 14) Johann Jakob Scheuchzer [?]. Collage (approx. 38x24 cm, between 1716 and 1730). Idem: Theatr[um] Diluv[ianum] Corn[u] Amm[onis] n.16. Icones pro lexico dilviano. ZBZ Ms Z VIII 21 d, fol. 42r. (Fig. 15) I. A. Friedrich after Johann Melchior Füßli and Johann Daniel Preißler Plate (copperplate). From: Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob. KupferBibel in welcher die Physica Sacra oder geheiligte Natur-Wissenschafft […] deutlich erklärt [...]. 4 vols. Augsburg and Ulm, 1731-35. Vol. 3, tab. DXLIV. (Fig. 16) Domenico Remps [?]. Cabinet. (99x136 cm, late 17th century). © Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence. (Fig. 17) C. Huyberts. Plate (copperplate). From: Ruysch, Frederik. Thesaurus Anatomicus primus […]. Amsterdam, 1721. Tab. I. (Fig. 18) C. Huyberts. Plate (copperplate). From: Ruysch, Frederik. Opusculum Anatomicum de Fabrica Glandularum in Corpore Humano […]. Amsterdam, 1722. With the kind permission of the Zentralbibliothek Zurich (Sign.: IF 200). (Fig. 19) C. Huyberts. Plate (copperplate). From: Ruysch, Frederik. Thesaurus Anatomicus secundus […]. Amsterdam, 1722. Tab. III. With the kind permission of the Zentralbibliothek Zurich (Sign.: IF 200). (Fig. 20) Claude Mellan. Christ’s Face on the Veil (copperplate, 1649). From: Frieß, Peter: Kunst und Maschine. 500 Jahre Maschinenlinien in Bild und Skulptur. Munich, 1993. Fig. 2, 31. (Fig. 21) Frederik Ruysch [?]. Brain (coloured print). From: Idem. Icon durae Matris […] ad objectum artificiosissimè praeparatum à clarissimo Viro Fred. Ruyschio […] delineata, & coloribus distincta typa impressa à Joanne Ladmiral. Amsterdam and Leiden, 1738. With the kind permission of the Zentralbibliothek Zurich (Sign.: IF 200). Bredekamp: (Fig. 1) From: Kircher, Athanasius. Musurgia Universalis. Schwäbisch-Hall, 1650. Vol. II, 303. (Fig. 2) From: Hoogstraten, Samuel van. Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst, anders de Zichtbaere Werelt. Rotterdam, 1678. 260. (Fig. 3) From: Gombrich, Ernst H. Schatten. Ihre Darstellung in der abendländischen Kunst. Berlin, 1996, 19. (Fig. 4) From: Bettini, Mario. Apiaria universae philosophiae mathematicae. Bologna, 1642. Part 5, 7. (Fig. 5) From: Saunders, Richard. Physiognomie. London, 1671. Taken from: Roob, Alexander. Alchemie & Mystik. Cologne et. al., 1996. 579. Breidbach: (Fig. 1) From: Fludd, Robert. Supernaturalia, Naturali, Praeternaturali et

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Contranaturali. Microcosmi Historia. In Tractatus Tres Distrubata. Oppenhemii, 1619. (Fig. 2) From: Alsted, Johannes Henricus. Encyclopaedia. Herborn, 1630. (Fig. 3-5) From Kircher, Athanasius. Ars Magna Sciendi. Amsterdam, 1669. (Fig. 6) From: Kircher, Athanasius. Ars magna lucis et umbrae. Rome, 1646. Nelle: (Fig. 1) © National Gallery, London. (Fig. 3) © Editrice Artistica Piemontese Srl, Savigliano. Stafford: (Fig. 1) A. van Büÿsen Wunderkammer (engraving, Netherlands, 1715). From: Levinus, Vincent. Wondertooneel der nature: geopent in eene korte beschryvinge der hoofddeelen van de byzondere zeldsaamheden daar in begrepen: in orde gebragt en bewaart/ door Levinus Vincent. Plate 5. © Barbara Maria Stafford. (Fig. 2) Unknown artist. Display Case. (Augsburg, approx. 1620-30. Ebony, pear tree wood, oak, boxwood, walnut, chestnut, marble, ivory, semiprecious stone, tortoise shell, snake skin, enamel). As well as Three Miniatures by Albert Jansz Vinckenbrinck (73x58x59 cm). Swoboda-Nichols, Sumiya Assemblage (2000, shells, minerals, and other types, 43,2x47,5x 48 cm). Beverly Hills, Edward Swoboda Collection. © The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. (Fig. 3) Multiplying Spectacles (England, approx. 1650, metal, glass, approx. 7,7x 12,8 cm). © Barbara Maria Stafford. (Fig. 4) © Barbara Maria Stafford. (Fig. 5) Samuel van Hoogstraten Perspective box of a Dutch interior (1662/63, oil on walnut and mirror glass, 42x 30,3x28,2 cm). © The Detroit Institute of Arts, Visual Resources Department. (Fig. 6) Martin Engelbrecht Book-binding workshop (Germany, approx. 173050, copperplate and watercolour on untrimmed cardboard). © Barbara Maria Stafford. Böhme: (Fig. 1) From: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. „Arcana Naturae Detecta“. Omnia. Leiden, 1722. Vol. II, 327. (Fig. 2) From: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. „Arcana Naturae Detecta“. Omnia. Leiden, 1722. Vol. II, 32. (Fig. 3) From: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. „Arcana Naturae Detecta“. Omnia. Leiden, 1722. Vol. II, 425. (Fig. 4) From: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. „Arcana Naturae Detecta“. Omnia. Leiden, 1722. Vol. II, 199. (Fig. 5) From: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. „Arcana Naturae Detecta“. Omnia. Leiden, 1722. Vol. II, 283. (Fig. 6) From: Hooke, Robert. Micrographia. London, 1667. 175.

Opera Opera Opera Opera Opera

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(Fig. 7) From: Hooke, Robert. Micrographia. London, 1667. 207. Edgerton: (Fig. 1) Mark van Stone. Diagram of a Prototypical Mexican Convent (drawing). (Fig. 2) © Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán. (Fig. 3) © Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. (Fig. 4) From: Valadés, Fray Diego Rhetorica Christiana. Perugia, 1579. 107. With the kind permission of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. (Fig. 5) Mark van Stone. The Formation of Tenochtitlan. After the frontispiece of the Codex Mendoza. Bodleian Library, Oxford. (Fig. 6) Mark van Stone. Mixtex World-tree. Detail after: Codex Vindobonensis. Staatsbibliothek Wien. Fol. 37. (Fig. 7-9, 12-14, 16-22, 24) Photos by Jorge Pérez de Lara. (Fig. 10) From: Valadés, Fray Diego. Rhetorica Christiana. Perugia, 1579. 111. With the kind permission of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. (Fig. 11) From: Codex Borgia. Biblioteca Apostolica, Vatican, Rome. Fol. 56. With the kind permission of the Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz. (Fig. 15) © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Fig. 25) Mark van Stone. Huehuecoyotl. After: Codex Borbonicus. Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée Nationale, Paris. Fol. 4. (Fig. 26) Mark van Stone. Ixnextli. After: Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Bibliothèque Nationale. Paris. Fol. 11. (Fig. 27) From: Wolf-Heidegger, Gerhard and Anna Maria Cetto: Die anatomische Sektion in bildlicher Darstellung. Basel et. al., 1976. Lenoir/Lowood: (Fig. 1) From: Weickhmann, Christoph: New-erfundenes grosses KönigsSpiel. Ulm, 1664. With the kind permission of the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. (Fig. 2) © Codemasters/ Bohemia Interactive. Gruber: (Fig. 5) With the kind permission of: Helmut Hornung. “Botschaften vom Rand des Universums.” Max Planck Forschung 4 (2001): 25. (Fig. 6) Centaurus A. With the kind permission of the Internet archives of the following organisations: 1. (top left) Radio: Courtesy Jack O. Burns, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. Optical: Courtesy David Malin, Anglo-Australian Observatory. 2. (top right) NASA, SAO, R. Kraft. 3. (middle left) ESA/ ISO, ISOCAM Team, I. F. Mirabel and O. Laurent (CEA/ DSM/ DAPNIA). 4. (middle right) STSci, OPO, E. Schreier (STSci) and NASA,

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NOAO. 5. (bottom left) STSci, OPO, E. Schreier (STSci) and NASA. 6. (bottom right) STSci, NASA.

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Index of Names Abraham, Max 497-98 Adorno, Theodor W. 122, 470 Agnelli, Scipione 149 Agrippa von Nettesheim 510 Alaleone, Giovanni Battista 330 Alberti, Leon Battista 69, 105-08, 518-22 Alsted, Johann Heinrich 132, 136, 289, 294 Alvarez, Luis 504 Anders, Günther 361 Andreae, Johann Valentin 179-80, 183 Anna of Austria 164 Archimedes 67, 347 Arcimboldo, Giuseppe 217 Arianna (Ariadne) 148, 152, 510, 514, 518 Aristotle 35-41, 43, 46, 49-52, 58, 64-66, 130, 136, 139, 310, 356, 370, 376, 468, 485, 488 Artusi, Giovanni Maria 160 Augustine 394, 509-10

Blumenberg, Hans 365-66 Boerhaave, Hermann 257 Boetius de Boodt, Anselmus 219-20 Boln, H. 213 Bonanni, Filippo 378, 380-81, 389, 374, 376, 385 Bonanni, Peter 449 Bonin, Georg von 189-90 Bonnet, Nicolas 188 Borromini, Francesco 135 Bosse, Abraham 274 Bosses, Bartholomaeus des 276 Boyle, Robert 333-34, 389 Bragdon, Claude 134 Brahe, Tycho 93, 365 Bredekamp, Horst 119, 210, 367 Brodsky Lacour, Claudia 84 Brooks, Rodney 5 Browne, Thomas 136 Bucherer, Alfred 497 Bürgi, Jost 205, 212 Bussy-Rabutin, Roger de 166

Bacon, Francis 79, 133, 176, 179, 181-83, 185, 187, 194, 206, 332 Bacon, Roger 134-36, 141 Baker, Henry 368 Barbadillo, Salas 316 Bazin, Hervé 142-43 Beeckman, Isaac 63 Beger, Lorenz 237 Besler, Basilius 231-33 Biedermann, Gustav 141 Bird, John 71

Caccini, Giulio 147 Caldera, Louis 450 Calvin, Johannes 329 Camillo, Giulio 127, 132-34, 141, 294 Campanella, Tommaso 21, 510 Campanus, Johannes 57 Castrucci, Cosimo 222 Cesi, Frederico 385 Christine, Queen of Sweden 188 Christo 340 Chytil, Karel 207

572 Clément, Claude 130, 136, 138-39 Clinton, Bill 443 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste 93, 189 Collins, Harry 501 Columbus, Christopher 423 Comenius, Johann Amos 179, 183-84, 188-90 Commandinus, Fredericus 57 Condorcet, Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat de 139-41 Consadine, Brian 343 Copernicus, Nicolaus 41, 478 Cornell, Joseph 344 Cortés, Hernan 394, 424 Cosby, Neale 441-42 Cosimo I 109, 111 Cromwell, Oliver 23 Curtius, Matthaeus 76, 78 Cyrus, Mike 437 Daiber, Jürgen 160 Darwin, Charles Robert 290 Dee, John 515 DeJean, Joan 164 Derrida, Jacques 68, 122-23 Desargues, Girard 274 Descartes, René 3, 29, 61, 63, 67-69, 80, 82-84, 86-96, 130, 151, 163, 170, 371-72, 488, 510-15, 517-18, 520-22, 525 Diderot, Denis 509 Dinteville, Jean 321 Dionis, Pierre 79 Dirac, Paul 491 Duke of Brunswick 308 Dunnigan, James F. 430-32 Dürer, Albrecht 58, 82, 385 Eamon, William 194 Edgerton, Samuel Y. 58 Einstein, Albert 476, 481, 484, 487-88, 491, 496-98, 500 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 443

Index of Names Epicurus 389 Erasmus of Rotterdam 320 Eratosthenes of Cyrene 124 Estienne, Charles 82 Euclid 57-58, 67, 69-70, 311, 473 Faraday, Michael 488 Favrot Peterson, Jeanette 411 Feyerabend, Paul 496 Feynman, Richard 491 Fleck, Ludwik 460-61 Fludd, Robert 294 Fodor, Jerry A. 285 Follino, Federico 148 Fontenelle, Bernard de 131, 256 Foucault, Michel 68, 96-97, 119-20, 171 Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg 188 Franks, Tommy 439 Fröschl, Daniel 208 Fuþíková, Eliška 202, 206, 214-15 Furetière, Antoine 509-10 Galen/ Claudius Galenus of Pergamon 78, 127, 132, 141, 150 Galilei, Galileo 35, 147, 335, 474-76 Galilei, Vincenzo 147 Gante, Fray Pedro de 402 Gassendi, Pierre 68 Geertz, Clifford 492 Giambologna/ Jean de Boulogne 111-12 Gibson, William 353 Glaser, Donald 504 Glisson, Francis 173 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 10, 355-63, 367-68, 373, 385, 387 Gonzaga, Francesco 148 Gottignies, Gilles François de 135 Graaf, Reinier de 370-73 Gratch, Jonathan 451-52 Griesemer, James 498

Index of Names Guericke, Otto von 95 Gustav Adolf, King of Sweden 191 Hanson, N. R. 496 Hartsoeker, Nicolaas 370-71 Hartung, William 443 Harvey, William 379 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 141 Heidegger, Martin 2, 6, 517-23 Heisenberg, Werner 10 Henry VIII 321, 511 Herman, Mark 432 Herschel, William 358-59 Hertz, Heinrich 494 Heseler, Baldasar 78 Hesse, Hermann 508 Hilbert, David 483 Hippocrates 149 Hobbes, Thomas 130, 271 Hocke, Gustav René 515 Hockney, David 347 Hoefnagel, Joris and Jacob 385 Hoffmann, Hans 217 Hofmannswaldau, Hofmann von 516 Holbein, Hans the Younger 250, 319, 321-22, 325, 327, 511-12 Holmes, Tiffany 352 Homer 130 Hoogstraten, Samuel van 271-72 Hooke, Robert 70-71, 333, 355, 369, 372, 385-88 Hoyningen-Huene, Paul 499 Hulsius, Levinus 63 Husserl, Edmund 2, 58 Huygens, Christiaan 38, 47, 347 Imperato, Ferrante 231 Irwin, Robert 352 Jaffe, Arthur 491 Jamnitzer, Christoph 215 Jamnitzer, Wenzel 385 Jane, Fred 430

573 Kafka, Franz 104-06, 474, 480 Kant, Immanuel 96, 133, 140, 357, 360, 363-65, 513-17, 520-21, 524-25 Kaufmann, Walter 497 Kelly, Ellsworth 352 Kelvin, William Thomson 494 Kepler, Johannes 35, 82, 312, 469, 485 Kerr, Roy 481 Kiesler, Frederick 137 Kircher, Athanasius 146-57, 159-60, 243, 269, 273, 283, 288-291, 294-295, 297-98, 300, 345, 368, 374 Koyré, Alexandre 72 Krulak, Charles C. 446-47, 451 Kubrick, Stanley 341 Kues, Nikolaus von 79 Kuhn, Thomas 496, 499 Kurzweil, Ray 350 Las Casas, Fray Bartholome de 401 Lambert, Johann Heinrich 133, 140 Latour, Bruno 501-02 Le Corbusier 134 Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van 355, 368-74, 376-80, 382-86 Leibnitz, Johann Jakob 123, 137 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 72, 179, 184-87, 191, 195, 266-69, 271-78, 279, 291, 308, 310, 472, 476 Leigh Star, Susan 498 Levanti, Antonio 80 Lever, Sir Ashton 344 l’Hermite, Tristan 166 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph 365 Livermore, William R. 429 Livius, Titus 165 Locke, John 356 Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon 474, 484, 497 Louis XIV 93, 164

574 Loyola, Ignacio de 322 Lull, Raimund 131, 140, 290, 294 Luther, Martin 320, 329 Lynn, Greg 347 Maignan, Emmanuel 512 Malpighi, Marcello 379, 385-86 Mandelbrot, Benoit 2 Margaret of Savoy 148 Maria Theresia 199 Maritain, Jacques 519 Marshall, Andrew W. 431-32 Matthias, Roman Emperor 206 Mauro, Domenico 243 Maxwell, James Clark 484, 488, 494 Mazarin, Jules 164 McClintic, Fred 432 McLuhan, Herbert Marshall 368 McNeil, Tim 343 McPhee, John 6 Meckel, Klemens Wilhelm Jakob von 429 de’Medici, Cosimo 109, 111 Mellan, Claude 260-62 Melville, David 341 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 2 Mersenne, Marin 511-12, 515 Meyer, Edward C. 432 Michelangelo 111 Millikan, Robert Andrews 500 Minkowski, Hermann 475 Miseroni, Ottavio 200, 205, 218, 220 Montesquieu, Charles de 122-23 Monteverdi, Claudio 146-49, 151-52, 157, 159-60 Morpurgo, Giacomo 3 Moore, Thomas 321 Motolinia, Fray Toribio 406, 408 Moufet, Thomas 385 Muchka, Ivan 202

Index of Names Mumford, Lewis 103 Neickel, Caspar Friedrich 244 Nekes, Werner 340 Neumann, Erwin 208 Newton, Isaac 3, 10, 29, 38, 48-49, 72, 358, 362, 387, 389, 467-73, 476-78, 485, 488, 496, 503, 522 Niçeron, Jean François 321, 512 Nicolai, Friedrich 325 Nietzsche, Friedrich 364, 514-17, 524 Nofi, Al 430 Nollet, Abbé Jean Antoine 79 Obeyesekere, Gananath 492 Oeckelen, Cornelius van 341 Oken, Lorenz 290 Ortelius, Abraham 426 Osio, Carlo Cesare 134 Ozanam, Jacques 169 Pacassi, Nikolaus 199 Paciaudi, Paolo Maria 124-26, 142 Paleotti, Gabriele 331 Palissy, Bernhard 385 Panek, Richard 366 Panofsky, Erwin 420 Pascal, Blaise 274, 363 Perrault, Claude 80, 89-96, 130 Perry, William 444 Peter I (the Great) 256-57, 268, 508-09 Philipp II 329 Piranesi, Giovanni Battista 350 Plato 39, 41, 130, 139, 257, 272, 304, 311-12, 356, 517 Pliny the Older 368 Plotin 304 Poggi, Isotta 340 Poincaré, Henri 484, 488, 497 Popper, Karl 465 Porta, Giovanni Battista della 510 Pound, Robert 494

Index of Names Pozzo, Andrea 322-23, 325, 327, 334 Ptolemy 173, 312, 363, 468, 478 Price, Merritt 343 Proclus Diadochus/ Proklos 57, 305 Purcell, Edward 494 Putnam, Hilary 285, 299 Pythagoras 41, 130, 139, 308 Quade van Ravesteyn, Dirk de 217 Queneau, Raymond 142-43 Quinn, Frank 491 Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne Marquise de 163 Ramsden, Jesse 71 Redi, Francesco 374 Reisswitz, Georg Heinrich Leopold von 429 Remps, Domenicus 254 Riegl, Alois 135 Roberts, Charles S. 430 Rojas, Fernando de 316 Rudolf II 199-200, 202-03, 205-08, 213-16, 218-19, 224, 514-15 Ruysch, Frederik 242, 246, 254-59, 261-63, 508 Saenredam, Jan 272 Sahlins, Marshall 492 Salisbury, John of 517 Savoy, Margaret of 148 Scaliger, Julius Caesar 136 Schaffer, Simon 501 Schelling, Friedrich Willhelm Joseph 305, 313 Scheuchzer, Johann Jakob 247, 249-51, 257, 263 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang 5 Schlosser, Julius von 207 Schooten, Frans van 61 Schopenhauer, Arthur 524 Schwarzkopf, Norman 434-35 Schwarz, Martin 515

575 Schwarzschild, Karl 480-81 Schweinberger, Anton 215 Scudéry, Madeleine Mademoiselle de 167, 170, 173-74 Searle, John R. 285 Seba, Albertus 249 Selves, Georges de 321 Serlio, Sebastiano 115 Shannon, Claude Elwood 300 Sibum, Otto 3 Sigüenza, José de 329 Simonsen, Redmond 430-31 Simenon, Georges 142 Shakespeare, William 426 Skytte, Bengt 178-79, 187-91, 193 Sloane, Hans 249 Spencer, John 128 Spener, Johann Jakob 509-10 Spielberg, Steven 341, 450 St. Hieronymo 214 St. John of Patmos 394 St. Thomas 427 Staudinger, Manfred 216 Stelluti, Francesco 385 Stevin, Simon 41, 59-62 Stolle, Gottlieb 122-23 Swammerdam, Jan 385 Swift, Jonathan 130 Sydenham, Thomas 356 Terpak, Francis 340 Tesauro, Emanuele 325, 334 Thater, Diana 352 Theophrast 39-40 Theseus 152 Thomasius, Christian 123 Thompson, D'Arcy 2 Thorpe, Jack A. 435-37, 441 Turrell, James 352 Valadés, Fray Diego 396, 402 Valerius Probus 127 Vasari, Giorgio 103, 109-12, 329 Vaucanson, Jacques de 341 Verdy du Vernois, Julius von 429 Vermeyen, Jan 219

576 Verney, Joseph Guichard du 79 Vesalius, Andreas 76-79 Virgil 125 Vismann, Cornelia 104 Vitruvius 82 Vos, Marten de 394 Vredemann de Vries, Hans 202 Vredemann de Vries, Paul 202 Vries, Adrian de 223 Walker, Kara 347 Wall, Jeff 351 Wallis, John 61 Walter, W. Grey 4 Warburg, Aby 338, 359 Ware, Gary 434

Index of Names Weaver, Warren 300 Wells, Herbert George 430 Weyden, Rogier van der 409 Whorf, Benjamin 496 William the Conqueror 491 Wilson, David 515 Wind, Edgar 335 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 9-11, 31, 489, 520-24 Wolff, Christian 509 Wolfram, Stephen 2 Woodward, John 249 Wren, Christopher 372 Zeno of Elea 58, 64 Zyda, Michael 450

Index of Subjects

Academy/Academy of Play 91, 93, 120, 176, 179, 183-84, 187, 19091, 268-69 Académie Royale des Sciences 100 Accademia dei Lincei 184, 365 Accademia del Cimento 119-20, 335 Acoustics 12, 78, 182, 269, 303-14 Actor 17, 67, 79, 84, 99, 155, 159, 231, 233, 235-37, 239, 242, 314, 348, 401, 405-06, 424, 468, 488, 512-13, 519 Activity 37, 164, 218, 314, 374, 459, 462, 465, 502-03 Action 1, 16, 76, 80, 84, 96, 165, 167, 169, 173-74, 184, 187, 236, 271, 285-86, 288, 311, 322, 338, 435, 439-41, 447, 449, 457 Actuality 116, 303 Administration 103-12, 119, 164, 176, 190, 443 Aesthetics 90, 366, 383, 520, 524 Affect/Affection 140, 146-60, 163, 170-74, 189, 192, 443 Africa 210, 322, 425, 502 Air Pump 33, 501 Alchemy 30 Allegory 111, 167, 242, 321-22, 325, 327 Altar 328-29, 401 America 185, 210, 317, 322, 394, 398, 410-11, 417, 423, 426, 429, 446-47, 452-52, 454

Amsterdam 242, 251, 255, 273 Amusement 165, 356 Analogy 23, 61-62, 139, 173, 25051, 312, 421-22 Anamorphosis 276, 321, 327, 334, 511-13 Anatomy/Theatrum Anatomicum 29, 75-101, 172-73, 251, 254-56, 258-59, 266-67, 333, 362-63, 369-70, 373, 377, 379, 386, 426, 508, 516 Animal 25, 87, 194, 208, 212, 21516, 220, 222, 231, 233, 242, 250, 267, 317, 333, 347, 369, 370, 374, 383, 385-86, 406-08, 41011, 417, 423, 508, 515 Annunciation 409, 414, 421, 424 Anthropology 290, 385, 389, 492, 494, 497, 505 Antiquity 41, 57, 59, 165, 169, 180, 213, 237, 241-43, 250-51, 308, 356, 385 Cabinet of Antiquities 237 Apparatus 1, 36, 44-45, 98, 113, 182, 339, 345, 349, 351, 353, 366-67, 461, 470, 490, 493, 502 Appearance 42, 82, 84, 93, 98-99, 159, 185, 211-12, 256, 276, 295, 303-07, 309-10, 313-14, 330, 335, 345, 356-58, 362, 365, 462, 480, 512-13, 518, 520, 523, 525 Archaeology 251 Architecture/Architectonics 9-11, 16, 27-28, 31, 58, 75-101, 103, 109-10, 115, 126, 133-37, 139-

578 40, 165, 176-95, 199-200, 239, 242-43, 247, 288, 290, 292, 294, 298, 300, 323, 327, 347, 360, 399, 426, 432, 436-38, 446, 448, 500, 516, 523 Archive 12, 103-04, 109, 179, 344, 416, 492 Arena 80, 85, 160, 162-65, 169, 394, 454 Argutezza 141, 325-27 Ariadne’s Thread 510, 514, 518 Arithmetic 58-62, 73, 135, 304, 309, 422 Arminian 189 Ars 131-32, 134, 140, 229, 273, 288-90, 292, 294-95, 298, 300, 368, 388 Ars Combinatoria 273, 294 Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae 273, 298, 368 Ars Magna Sciendi 288-90, 295, 298 Ars Memorativa 229, 292, 294 Arsenal 267 Art 11, 21, 24, 32, 38, 58, 106, 112-13, 116, 119-20, 133, 135, 147, 153, 178, 191, 203, 206-07, 215, 219, 224, 228-29, 254-55, 257, 261-63, 267-68, 273, 276-80, 280, 294, 317, 319-22, 325, 327, 333-34, 338-39, 350, 364, 368, 385, 38789, 402, 421, 451, 465-66, 50725 Artifact 38, 243, 249, 316, 318, 328, 333, 339-40, 467, 514 Artist’s Studio 193 Art School 402 Asia 210, 322, 423, 425 Associative 228 Astonishment 333, 462 Astrology 360, 510 Astronomy 36, 41, 93, 355, 359, 361-62 Asylum 192-93, 195 Auditorium see Lecture Hall

Index of Subjects Augsburg 251 Aura 257, 307, 330, 344, 380, 384, 510, 519, 521, 525 Automaton 269, 348 Auto/Auto Sacramental 399 Autopsy 28 Axiom 40, 291, 522 Aztecs 394-96, 398, 400, 403, 421-24, 426 Baroque 98, 113, 135, 139, 141, 148, 159, 178, 243-45, 507-09, 516-19, 523, 525 Belief 127, 153, 156, 183, 318, 322, 329, 359, 422 Bensalem 181 Biology 2, 341, 355, 411, 494 Birth 25, 28, 79, 362, 373, 389, 417, 424, 470-71 Body 2, 4, 6, 18, 24, 27-28, 35, 42, 46, 48, 50-52, 65-68,, 76, 78, 83, 88-90, 93-101, 150, 159,163, 166, 172-73, 182, 212, 216, 254-57, 259, 311, 333-34, 348, 362, 426, 466, 477, 481, 521 Body Fluids Theory see Humoral Pathology Bologna 51, 80, 267, 331, 379 Book Illustration 231, 247, 254, 257 Border 24, 110, 172-73, 177, 185, 187, 202, 229, 237, 24243, 247, 254, 416-17, 480, 497, 503 Botany 39, 362, 386 Brandenburg University of Peoples, Sciences and Arts (Brandenburgische Universität der Völker, Wissenschaften und Künste) 176, 178, 187-89 Brandenburg-Prussia 178, 187-89, 190 Brunswick (Braunschweig) 267, 308 Bureaucracy 103-05, 116, 120

Index of Subjects Cabala 290, 294, 510 Cabinet 23, 38, 92, 112, 117, 178, 193, 212-13, 215, 219, 237, 243, 257, 266-69, 341, 344-45, 34849, 467, 507-10, 514-15 Cabinet of Curiosities 38, 92, 193, 269, 389 Calendar 330, 421-22 Calvinism 189 Camera Obscura 88, 348, 352 Cannocchiale Aristotelico 327 Carnival 78, 113, 330-31, 516 Cartography see Map Castle 104-05, 192, 194, 199, 20203, 205, 216, 219, 447, 515 Cave/Cave Parable 12, 182, 272, 347 Ceremony 15, 18, 399, 416, 422, 424, 451 Certainty 97, 298, 316, 318-22, 327, 329, 367, 371, 373, 383, 458, 462, 464, 511 Chance 430 Chaos 131, 325, 327, 334, 371, 441 Chapel 394, 400-01 Character Formation 186 Charlatanry 356 Chemistry/Chemical Laboratories 188, 268, 500, 509 Chiaroscuro 403-05, 408, 410 Chimera 67 Chiromantic 510 Christianity 190, 395-96, 421 Christianopolis 179-80 Chromatic 152, 358, 366 Chronology 170, 174, 211, 267, 310 Church/Church Interiors 46, 99, 107, 154, 180, 298, 317, 319-23, 325, 328-31, 334, 349, 394, 396, 400, 414, 511, 516-17 Church Father 517 Clock 93, 212-14, 314, 344, 475, 498, 501, 515

579 Cloister/Convent 317, 394, 396, 398-99, 401, 404-06, 408-11, 413-14, 416-17, 419, 421, 42324, 512 Cloister Paintings 411 Cogito 67-69, 84 Cognition/Cognitive Sciences 162, 269, 285, 290-91, 294, 322, 339, 379, 473 Collection 23, 93, 116-17, 119-20, 125, 128, 142, 176, 180, 182, 189, 194, 203, 206-08, 211, 21516, 218-19, 224, 228-63, 267-69, 290, 292, 340, 344, 350-51, 389, 490, 507-09, 514 Collegio Romano 135, 345 Colonisation 180 Colour 10, 29, 83, 89, 98, 108, 216, 220, 222, 262, 385, 461-62 Combinatorics 9, 273, 284, 28990, 295, 297-98, 300 Comedy 83-84, 112, 115, 317 Commerce 174, 344, 444 Communication 18, 68, 136, 151, 153-54, 156, 159, 191, 195, 20203, 465, 437, 439, 441, 496-97 Compass 21, 70, 86 Computer 4, 97, 140, 288, 308, 338, 340, 347, 351-52, 427-28, 431-50, 455, 491-92, 498-500, 502, 520, 524 Confrontation 80, 146, 159, 441, 496, 503-04 Conquest 93, 162, 182, 317, 394, 398 Consciousness 7, 182, 185, 285, 319, 338, 359, 364, 387 Consensus 127, 132, 457, 460 Constancy 464 Construction 2, 4-5, 9-10, 61, 80, 83, 93, 109, 112-15, 174, 180, 182, 194, 199-200, 202-03, 236, 240, 267, 274, 321, 323, 325-27, 334, 344, 357, 364, 389, 394, 434-35, 451, 481, 491, 511, 518 Container 1-7, 52, 343, 468, 474

580 Continent 423, 425-26 Contingency 98, 368 Continuum 59, 67, 305, 307 Control 3, 5-6, 95, 99, 108, 119, 164, 169, 183, 185, 300, 347, 362, 437-38, 451 Copperplate/Engraving 27, 78, 113, 254, 260, 262, 272, 350, 367, 385, 396, 402 Copy 166, 257-58, 348, 447, 461, 523 Council of Trient/Tridentinum 322 Core-Set 457-60 Corpse 25, 29, 426 Autopsy 28 Cosmos/Cosmology/Cosmography 36, 94, 119, 150, 172-73, 229, 242, 307, 312, 314, 344, 469 Counter-Reformation 318, 321-22, 327-29 Courtyard 110, 203, 394, 398 Craft/Handiwork 31, 184, 186, 194, 218, 233, 343-44, 421, 501, 504 Creation 10, 83, 90, 97, 130, 13536, 147, 150, 182, 215, 263, 275, 303-04, 308, 317, 341, 345, 371, 462, 470, 501, 518 Culture 11, 15-16, 21, 27, 30-31, 141, 163, 170, 291, 318, 344, 446, 450, 490-98, 500, 502, 507, 511-12, 516-17 Cunning 303, 514 Curiosity/Curiositas 38, 92, 194, 269, 271, 339,344, 348, 365, 389, 508-10, 515 Cybernetics 341 Dance 80, 113, 152, 399-400 Dance Floor 80 Deception 88, 181-82, 317, 366 Declamation 147 Della pittura 69, 108, 518 Delocalization 501, 504, 505 Democracy/Democratisation 103, 164, 463-64

Index of Subjects Demonstration 37, 40, 70, 78-80, 93, 251, 276, 332, 339, 345, 347, 362-63, 462, 491-93, 498 Detectors 461, 492, 501 Devil 313, 323, 347, 403, 420-21, 423 Diagram 69, 458 Dialectics 304, 306, 314, 317, 334 Diarium Europaeum 189 Dictionnaire universel 509 Didactic and Popular Theatre 269 Didactics 37, 179, 402, 405, 408, 421, 426 Dilemma 329, 331, 377, 411, 460, 484 Dimension 10, 22, 58, 73, 78, 8687, 96, 98, 100, 115, 117, 122, 135, 162, 169, 174, 199, 208, 235, 243, 257, 311, 318, 328, 353, 363, 441, 450, 508 Disclosure/Investigation 10, 36, 40, 48, 59, 95-96, 181-82, 194, 202, 364, 370-71, 509 Discours de la Méthode 82 Discours de Metaphysique 275 Discourse 57-58, 69, 86, 89, 167, 171, 251, 371, 386, 499, 510 Discovery 3, 24, 37, 162, 207, 216, 308, 333, 359, 370, 372, 380, 383 Dismantling 10 Display Case 251, 254 Dispositiv 89, 162, 173 Distance 61, 82, 169, 237, 271, 292, 328, 458, 462-64, 473-74, 478, 481, 517 Disturbance 110, 142, 233, 319, 407, 459, 511-12 Doctor 82, 189, 194, 249, 373, 474, 480 Drama/Actor 98, 113, 183, 31415, 328-29, 331 Dream 12, 322, 352, 395, 469, 516-17 Drôle de Pensée 268-69, 273, 27678

Index of Subjects Drottningholm 516 Dynamics 9, 23, 25, 122, 125, 152, 159, 166-67, 174, 233, 242, 251, 275-76, 305, 342, 346, 440-41, 449, 484, 488, 494-95, 500 Early Modern Age 35, 57, 67, 228, 341 Economy 110, 126, 140, 444 Element 15, 21, 57-58, 60-61, 67, 69-73, 87, 135, 163, 166, 170, 240, 243, 254, 259, 288, 290, 295, 310-14, 348, 429, 437, 451, 458, 468-69, 476, 478, 481, 498, 500, 502-03 Emanation 305, 346 Emblem 5, 317, 334, 365, 413-12, 449 Embryology 2, 259, 262, 369, 379, 383 Emotion 147, 149, 154, 157, 159, 162-63, 171, 173-74, 339, 346, 350, 440, 451 Empiricism 36, 97, 266, 368, 379, 384, 389, 495 Enchantment 273, 325, 458, 46263 Encyclopaedia/Lexicon 132, 249, 251, 505 Engineer/Engineering 4-7, 59, 115, 351, 429, 436, 471, 491-92, 497-98, 500, 502-03, 505 England 18-19, 29, 184, 318, 321 Engraving see Copperplate Enlightenment 31, 167, 183, 323, 325, 339, 346, 348, 356, 507, 509, 515 Enthusiasm 353, 380, 389, 449 Epicureanism 389 Epistemology 35, 39, 44, 58, 61, 48, 72-73, 75-76, 100, 119-20, 167, 170-71, 229, 331, 357, 36262, 368, 371, 380, 492, 496, 499 Eschatology 327 Ethics 521, 524 Eucharist 316, 318, 327-34

581 Europe 12, 17, 28, 116, 120, 153, 178, 192, 322, 344, 346, 411, 419, 425, 429 Event 1-2, 6, 18, 113, 228, 247, 250, 314, 323, 330, 339, 353, 406, 424, 429, 437, 439-41, 471, 480, 493 Evidence 27, 30, 36, 40, 43, 45, 48, 50-52, 76, 76, 78, 90, 119, 310, 318, 363, 367, 372, 377, 384, 387, 421, 469, 481 Exactness 335 Exchange 23, 93, 101, 163, 166, 183, 161, 195, 229, 246, 249, 269, 339, 380, 446, 470, 484, 488, 494, 497-98, 500-04 Excitement 148, 159, 353 Exercitia 327 Exhibit 180, 208, 215-16, 231, 233, 238, 241-42, 244-47, 254, 266, 269, 271 Exhibition 6, 16, 119, 207, 211, 224, 268, 328, 334, 338, 340-41, 343, 352-53, 467, 507-08, 514 Experiential Space 10-11, 22, 27, 29, 31, 362 Experientia 160 Experiment 3-4, 21, 35-53, 58-59, 63-64, 67, 69, 73, 75-101, 120, 146, 154-55, 159-60, 194, 229, 316, 318, 331-35, 347, 356, 364, 368, 370, 373, 378, 380, 383, 389, 427, 432, 439, 457-84, 49091, 500, 503, 521 Thought Experiment 35, 38-39, 44-53, 86, 93 Experimental Organisation 4445, 73, 95-100, 120, 153, 155,160, 356, 359, 361-62, 363, 366, 377, 383, 462, 493 Experimental Set-Up 462 Expertise 382, 450, 463-64, 503 Exterior 91, 162-63, 306, 481 Eye 37, 42, 70, 72, 82, 87-88, 9091, 95-96, 108-09, 123, 135,

582 156, 169, 181, 187, 241, 255, 260, 275, 292, 319, 323, 330, 332-33, 338, 348, 358, 360, 36266, 373, 377, 379, 380, 383, 385-87, 394, 401, 464, 468, 508, 513, 517-18, 520 Façade 9, 111-12, 199, 237-38, 240, 308, 413-14 Facts/Facticity 23, 29, 96, 100, 140, 173, 363, 366, 384, 472, 474, 476, 483, 501, 522-24 Faking 335 Fantasy 84, 87, 89, 180, 266, 345, 372, 447 Faszinosum (Fascinating Phenomenon) 229, 328, 339, 386-87 Festival/Banquet 15, 80, 183 Festival Hall 80 Fiction 84, 86, 173, 278, 341, 350, 354, 410, 411, 417, 424, 435, 519, 522 Figure 12, 47, 67, 72, 86, 97, 111, 164, 167, 169, 222, 240-42, 25051, 271-72, 274-75, 307, 311-12, 321, 338, 347, 360, 403, 424, 511 Film (Movie) 273, 340, 348, 428, 450-51, 425, 501 Firework 18, 21, 516-17 Flanders 394 Florence 103, 106-07, 109, 111, 119, 222-23, 267, 329 Form 2, 9-11, 21, 38, 40-41, 4547, 49-50, 52, 61, 80-81, 90, 94, 98-99, 108, 117, 122, 125-26, 134-35, 157, 166, 257, 262, 278, 280, 303, 426, 469-70, 493, 50203, 522 Fortification/Fortress 12, 22, 169, 191-92, 194-95, 203, 416 Fort Knox 440 Frame 157, 167, 229, 242-43, 247, 254, 262, 286, 344, 439, 470

Index of Subjects Fresco 322, 325, 327, 334, 402, 512 Friar 409, 411, 414, 417, 421-24 Friary see Cloister Fullness 308, 313 Fundament 10, 36, 38, 41-42, 44, 49, 53, 85, 132, 136, 151-52, 276 Future 15, 19, 106, 182, 228, 339, 353, 372, 385, 428, 431, 435, 440-41, 443, 492, 509 Gallery 112, 116, 119, 182, 203, 211, 341, 352, 408 Game see Play Garden 194, 205, 267, 325, 352, 408-09, 411, 413-14, 416-17, 419-20, 422, 424, 511 Gaze 19, 30, 78, 91, 96-98, 111, 180, 182, 233, 241, 244, 247, 323, 332-33, 383, 386, 510, 514, 519 Gender 162, 167 Geography 170, 172, 351 Geology 289 Geomantics 510 Geometry 7, 27, 57-63, 67, 69-70, 72, 82, 86-89, 134-35, 274-76, 311, 348, 467, 468-69, 472-73, 475-77, 483, 485, 487, 503-04 Gestalt 490, 496-97 Gesture 9-10, 19, 23, 27, 90, 163, 231, 233, 242, 255, 358, 370, 377, 452 Globe/Global 181, 211-13, 24041, 246, 341, 351, 353, 426, 432, 464, 470, 483-84, 488, 503, 505 God/Eye of God 12, 94, 136, 150, 179, 184, 240, 250, 257, 260-62, 275-76, 290, 294, 300, 308, 31314, 317, 322-23, 328-31, 333, 335, 366, 394-95, 398, 405, 40809, 417, 419, 422, 468, 518-19 Gold/Gold Background 213-14, 219, 223, 407, 515, 519 Gresham College 176

Index of Subjects Grisaille 410, 417 Grotesque 24, 348, 403 Gunpowder 21 Habitus 186 Halle 188, 267, 509 Hallucination 345, 347 Hand 47, 68, 91, 96, 107, 139, 157, 180, 217, 250, 260, 314, 325, 510, 514 Handiwork see Craft Haptic 137, 339 Harmony 41, 90, 130, 228, 275, 307-14, 319, 322, 334 Hermeneutics 97, 126, 142, 294, 300, 502 Hermetics 345, 359 Hieroglyphs 289, 295 History 3, 5-6, 9, 38, 49, 58-59, 67, 80, 85, 104, 107, 110, 119, 123, 126, 135, 140, 147, 182, 219, 228-29, 231, 247, 250-51, 263, 269, 291, 314, 322, 347, 353, 359-60, 363, 365, 368, 389, 427, 429-31, 441, 444, 464, 472, 503, 505, 507-09, 519 Historian 12, 19, 165, 229, 340 History of Architecture 110 History of Art 58, 119, 135, 389 History of Astronomy 359 History of Consciousness 359 History of Culture 508 History of Music 147 History of Nature 38-39, 231, 250-51, 368, 508 History of Philosophy 9 History of the Point 49, 67 History of Science 6, 80, 119, 263, 291, 472, 503, 505, 509 History of the Telescope 360 Human History 251, 347 Hole 66, 348, 447 Black Hole 480-83 Peephole 348 Humanism 2-4, 6, 106, 120, 126, 317, 321

583 Humoral Pathology 150, 170, 172-73 Hybrid 162-63, 170, 177, 254, 300, 345, 503 Hydraulic 345, 362 Ichnographia 276 Iconography 240, 260, 411 Ideal/Idealization 10, 36, 39-40, 49, 58, 65, 69, 71, 97, 124, 142, 178, 180, 191, 203, 206, 208, 231, 243, 257, 261, 307, 310, 312, 317, 321, 394-96, 408, 411, 468, 497 Illusion/Illusionism 82-83, 202, 243, 254, 257, 259, 276, 303, 317, 320-22, 325, 335, 346, 385, 404-05, 408, 416, 463, 512-13, 517-19, 524 Illustration 9, 12, 19, 78, 156, 208, 231, 247, 249, 251, 254, 257, 385, 387, 515 Image 6, 11, 15, 24, 68, 85, 87, 130, 134, 150, 167, 169, 182, 187, 228, 231, 233, 236-37, 24143, 246-47, 249, 251, 257-60, 262-63, 266, 276, 278, 283, 292, 327, 329, 338-39, 344, 347-50, 352-53, 363-64, 366-68, 370-71, 382-83, 386-87, 389, 400, 404, 413, 416, 419, 421, 437-38, 447, 468, 483, 490, 493, 498, 500, 511 Imagination 1, 5, 9, 47-48, 50, 83, 86, 89-91, 95, 104, 108, 117, 124, 150, 167, 173, 179, 212-13, 266, 269, 273, 278-79, 292, 306, 312-13, 327, 338-39, 343, 350, 353, 360-61, 364, 371, 373-74, 379-80, 410-11, 429, 435, 443, 451, 468, 473, 476-77, 479, 505, 509, 511, 513-14, 517, 522 Imitation 84-85, 104, 147, 166, 229, 314, 316, 428 Imitatio Christi 327 Imitatio Historiae 182

584 Imitatio Naturae 182 Immersion 236, 247, 340 Impulse 150, 163, 432 Incommensurability 61, 498 India 23, 213, 216, 423, 515 Indian 394, 396, 398-408, 411, 413-14, 416-17, 420-21, 423-24 Individual 42, 84, 96-97, 152-54, 157, 159, 179-80, 277, 292, 305, 331, 355, 436, 440, 493 Industrial 341, 351, 428, 443-46, 450, 452-54, 497 Industrial Revolution 5 Information 23, 27, 96, 123, 126, 139, 207, 271, 283, 285, 300, 340, 341, 352-53, 438-39, 442, 460, 465, 502 Installation 269, 339, 352 Instauratio Magna 179, 181 Instrument 25, 27-28, 62, 64-65, 70-72, 75, 78, 86, 92, 96, 11920, 126, 140, 142, 151, 180-81, 212, 246, 271, 290, 294, 303, 322, 332, 334, 338-41, 343-45, 355-58, 361, 365-66, 370-71, 373-74, 385-86, 445, 461, 487, 493-96, 498, 501, 504, 515 Interaction 3-4, 6, 160, 162, 182, 228, 343, 353, 470, 483-85, 488, 497-99, 502-03 Interior 9, 22, 28, 82, 91, 103, 117, 148, 162-63, 229, 231, 233, 23540, 242-44, 246-47, 250, 289, 306, 346, 348-49, 353, 394, 400, 512 Interlude/Intermedium 113, 147 Intuition 39, 83 Inventory 207-08, 211-13, 215-17, 219, 223-24, 344 Investigation see Disclosure Invisibility 70, 136, 162, 167, 174, 306, 348, 351, 362-66, 373, 377, 383, 462-63, 523 Italy 105, 107, 110, 113, 153, 184, 266, 316, 318, 330, 374, 379, 394, 463

Index of Subjects Jena 267 Jerusalem 425 Jesuits 51, 288, 290, 298, 322, 325, 330, 345 Jeu d’Esprit 165 Judgement 122, 141, 460, 466 Knowledge 2, 4, 11, 24-25, 30-31, 35-38, 40-42, 46, 49, 53, 57-59, 68-69, 75, 86, 88-89, 92-93, 9899, 120, 123-26, 134, 136-39, 142, 151, 162-63, 165, 170, 17374, 177-83, 187, 194-95, 208, 210, 216, 224, 229, 241-42, 247, 251, 262-63, 266, 268-69, 278, 280, 283, 285-86, 289-92, 295, 297-300, 316, 318-20, 322, 33133, 335, 338, 340, 358-59, 363, 365, 369, 386, 389, 407, 420, 430, 442, 459-60, 462, 485, 49091, 493, 498, 500-01, 507-11, 513, 515, 517, 521-23 Representation of Knowledge 283, 285 Theatre of Knowledge 269 Kunstkammer/Wunderkammer 9, 11-12, 23-25, 27, 30-31, 38, 92, 103-04, 116-17, 119-20, 199, 202-03, 206-08, 210-19, 223-24, 228-29, 231, 235-37, 239-41, 243-44, 247, 249-51, 257, 26263, 266-68, 273, 280, 340, 50711, 514-17, 525 Kupfer-Bibel 251 Laboratory 3-4, 9, 11-12, 27, 2931, 35, 37-39, 48-49, 53, 57, 103-04, 119-20, 180, 193, 205, 268, 316, 332, 346, 433, 462, 490, 492-94, 498, 500-01, 50405, 507, 509-10, 517, 521 Labyrinth 31, 104, 134, 319, 447, 510, 512-13, 515 Lamento della Ninfa 157, 159-60 Landscape 38, 84, 93, 173, 222, 240, 250, 292, 351-52, 477, 512

Index of Subjects Laterna Magica/Magic Lantern 271-72, 338, 347, 350 Law 1, 3, 27, 35-37, 42-43, 45-48, 52, 59, 67, 86-87, 104-06, 141, 155, 165, 271, 360, 364, 471, 476-78, 480, 483, 493 Lecture Hall/Auditorium 78, 80, 180, 194, 516 Leipzig 25, 509 Le Nozze di Tetide 149 Lens 88, 338, 345, 347-48, 365, 369, 379-80, 509 Leopoldina 176, 249-50 Letter (Communication) 63, 171, 189, 276, 308, 323, 331, 369, 372-74, 376-77, 380, 384, 510 Lexicon/Encyclopaedia 132, 249, 251, 505 Library 93, 122-24, 126-27, 130, 136-40, 142, 180, 188, 216, 249, 267, 340, 509, 512 Light 9, 29, 86, 92, 98, 179, 181, 184, 236, 262, 271-76, 303, 31214, 319, 323, 329-30, 338, 34647, 348, 351, 366, 368, 403-04, 464, 468, 474-75, 481, 484-85, 514-15, 517 Listener/Auditores 146, 148-49, 153, 155, 159-60 Literature 106, 159, 208, 266, 325, 465 Locality/Localization 1, 9, 15-16, 21-22, 31, 35-39, 42, 75-76, 97, 100, 107, 112, 154, 159, 172, 177-79, 181-83, 190-92, 195, 199, 202, 208, 211, 286, 288, 318, 352, 439, 442, 470, 472, 483-88, 490, 496, 498, 500-02, 505 Logic 10, 66-67, 120, 136, 202, 208, 257, 291-92, 307, 309-11, 318, 460, 490, 495, 498, 523 London 5, 72, 120, 130, 344, 346, 376, 426, 501 Love 152-53, 157, 162, 165-67, 169-70, 172-74, 317, 399, 408

585 Lutheran 189 Machine 5, 9, 21, 73, 79, 86, 88, 92-93, 95, 104, 106, 213, 251, 273, 291, 300, 303-05, 338, 340, 345, 402, 442, 452, 493, 498, 501, 505, 520 Macrocosm 90, 150, 172, 180, 229, 356, 360 Madrigal 147, 151, 157 Magic 257, 325, 339, 345-46, 348, 440, 448, 473, 484, 510-11, 513, 515-16, 520 Mannerism 210, 219, 325, 327, 507, 509, 511, 516-17 Manuscript 274, 417, 461, 515 Map/Cartography 17-18, 22, 2728, 97-98, 154, 162-63, 166-67, 169-74, 352, 414, 419, 425, 42830, 434, 439, 441-42, 472-73, 501, 513 Mappa Mundi 425 Mask 12, 83, 181, 516 Mass 35, 46-48, 51, 97, 328-29, 334, 401, 411, 475-77, 480-81, 483, 496-97, 516 Mass Media 350-51 Master Builder 57 Material Culture 490, 493-94, 502 Materiality 1, 4, 7, 35, 38, 43, 46, 70, 72-73, 85-87, 94, 98, 120, 126, 135, 179, 184, 192, 194, 208, 215, 218-19, 257, 275, 31214, 346, 348, 352, 363, 389, 461, 490, 493-94, 498-99, 501-02, 504, 519, 521 Mathematics 1, 7, 35-36, 41-42, 59, 68, 70-72, 85, 97, 120, 180, 182, 275-76, 291, 305, 308-10, 312, 332, 339, 348, 360, 362-63, 469-70, 472-73, 476, 487, 49192, 497-98, 500, 503-04, 509-10, 518, 520 Mathematical Instrument 70-71 Mathematical Tower 203, 211

586 Measure 3, 25, 29, 47, 62, 73, 87, 90, 94, 108, 150, 169, 182, 283, 285-86, 307, 310-12, 332, 348, 364, 424, 428, 459, 462, 472, 475, 502, 513, 518, 520, 523 Measurement 3-4, 58, 62, 178, 300, 462 Mechanics 3, 9, 27, 35-36, 38-43, 46-53, 63, 70, 82, 86-88, 94, 289, 303, 347, 360, 362, 385, 430, 480, 483, 494-95, 500, 522 Medialization 247 Effect of the Media 363 Medicine 87-88, 97, 188, 289, 355, 362, 373, 379, 383 Meditation 68, 84, 327, 330-31, 411 Medium 1, 25, 51, 71-72, 107-08, 185, 222, 231, 238, 247, 254, 257-59, 261-63, 344, 368, 371, 428, 463 Melody 310-11, 314 Memento Mori 320, 327 Memoria/Memory/Mnemotechnics 16, 21, 127, 140, 142, 178, 286, 292, 311, 338, 502 Mnemonic Theatre 16, 21 Metamorphosis 106, 113, 271, 275, 345, 474 Metaphor 6, 9, 108, 125-26, 130, 139, 171, 179, 244, 276, 295, 318, 334, 352, 495-96, 499, 507, 512, 516-17, 519, 523 Metaphysics 122, 136, 140, 243, 303-05, 318, 328, 335, 345, 35559, 362-65, 368, 373 Method 10, 12, 30-31, 36, 38, 40, 51, 70, 78-79, 84-85, 88-90, 126-27, 132, 186-87, 251, 255, 274, 277, 279, 291, 309, 325, 327, 334, 363, 378, 380, 384, 461, 468, 472, 491, 501, 505, 510, 518, 520-21 Mexico 394-426

Index of Subjects Microcosm 90, 150, 172, 180, 211, 229, 251, 262, 343, 348, 356, 360, 469 Micrographia 70, 385, 387, 389 Microscope 59, 70-72, 96, 257, 333, 345, 355-59, 361-63, 36571, 373-74, 377, 379-80, 382, 385-86, 388-89, 485 Middle Ages 76, 100, 112, 179-80, 218, 305, 411, 419, 519 Military 27, 93, 105, 107, 162, 164, 169, 185, 394, 427-36, 43941, 443-55, 497 Mineralogy 219, 249, 355 Miniature 117, 206, 208, 213-14, 216, 254, 262, 342, 385, 430 Miracle Play 399-401 Mirror 9, 16, 23, 83, 206, 212-13, 276, 327, 338, 344-47, 352, 413, 493, 509, 515 Missionary 322, 325, 394, 399, 408, 411, 423 Model 9, 36, 40, 52, 64, 93, 95, 97, 103, 107, 113, 115, 125, 128, 132, 134, 136, 139, 141, 163, 166-67, 170, 174, 179, 182, 206, 222, 243, 246, 251, 254, 268, 274, 295, 362, 383, 386, 404, 428, 432, 434, 437-38, 441, 445, 448, 451, 453-54, 483, 488, 494, 496, 499, 523 Modern Age 9, 71, 73, 120, 134, 298-300, 318, 351, 360, 365, 519-20 Monastery see Cloister Money 191, 269, 317, 417 Monochrome 262 Monstrosity 72, 345, 361, 514 Movement 21-25, 27, 31, 43, 64, 82, 87, 89, 93, 103, 148-50, 152, 156, 167, 173-74, 233, 272, 286, 288, 303-05, 308, 310, 312, 314, 322, 325, 339, 346, 350, 380, 429-30, 435, 437-38, 441, 453, 465

Index of Subjects Museum 75, 92, 140, 210, 216-17, 228-29, 231, 233, 235-39, 24147, 251, 254, 262-63, 266-68, 278, 340, 342, 345, 349, 352, 374, 509, 515, 519 Museographia 244 Museum Calceolarium 236 Museum of Jurassic Technology 515 Museum Richterianum 246-47, 254 Museum Wormianum 235 Music 95, 113, 146-57, 159-60, 271, 289, 303-04, 309-12, 314, 350, 401, 422, 446, 515 Musical Instruments 25, 212, 303 Musica Pathetica 153-54 Musurgia Universalis 146, 151, 159 Naples 267, 351 Nature 6, 10, 35-38, 42-43, 45, 48, 53, 58, 70, 82, 86, 92, 95, 116, 169, 182, 195, 206, 208, 216-17, 219-20, 228-29, 240, 242-43, 246, 250-51, 257, 262-63, 26769, 277, 280, 303, 310, 321, 332-35, 344, 355-56, 361, 364, 368, 507-09, 513-14, 517-18, 520, 524 Natura Naturans 229, 250 Natura Naturata 229 Natural Law 35-36, 42-43, 45, 48, 86, 141 Natural History/Natural Science 38-39, 119, 216, 250-51, 290, 355, 368, 509 Natural Philosopy see Philosophy Natural Specimens 38, 243, 249 Neoplatonism 41, 266, 469, 472, 476 Nervous System 82 Netherlands (Holland) 188, 216, 512

587 New Atlantis 181 Nonentity 57, 60, 69, 304-05, 308, 363 Notation 73, 86 Number 28, 31, 59-63, 66, 69, 71, 150, 213-14, 278, 304-11, 315, 349 Objectivity 159, 181, 300, 356, 521, 523 Oblivion 424 Observatory 91-95, 360, 367 Observer/Observation 6, 11-12, 27, 29-31, 36-37, 47, 51-52, 59, 64-65, 73, 84, 89-90, 92-93, 95, 97-98, 128, 139, 164, 233, 25455, 266, 269, 274, 334, 352, 360-62, 365-67, 371, 373-74, 377-78, 380, 382-83, 386, 440, 480-81, 495-96, 503-04, 511, 517, 519 Oedipus Aegyptiacus 295 Open-Air Theatre 399 Opera 113, 146-48, 152, 160, 269, 349 Operation 57-63, 68-69, 72-73, 78, 106-07, 109, 132, 199, 263, 291, 298, 300, 428-30, 433-34, 436, 441-42, 447-49, 452-53, 471 Optics 41, 71, 87, 137, 181-83, 237, 242, 254, 271, 273-76, 289, 325, 327, 334, 338-41, 344, 346, 352-53, 361, 366, 368, 380, 382, 442, 483, 493, 502, 509-10, 512, 515 Order of Things see Symbol Organ (Body) 28, 68, 82, 86-87, 90, 94, 96-97, 172, 251, 262, 345 Organ (Musical Instrument) 151, 314, 401, 408 Orient 241, 419 Ornament 38, 117, 220, 240, 247, 254, 512 Orphanage 194 Orthodoxy 457-58

588 Padua 80, 426 Paganism 417 Painting 58, 108-09, 113, 117, 119, 167, 180, 203, 222, 242-43, 246-47, 254, 262, 317, 319-23, 325, 340, 344, 352, 403-04, 40811, 422, 519, 523 Panorama 23, 169, 351-52, 441, 483 Panorthosia 184 Paper 21, 63, 70, 72, 86, 107-08, 142, 179, 189, 191, 194, 258, 261, 271, 330, 348, 444, 457, 491, 501 Paper Architecture 179, 189 Paradigm 31, 71, 78, 100, 116, 170, 259, 389, 464, 494, 496, 499 Paradise 181, 330, 394, 406-08, 411, 416-17, 419, 421, 424 Paradox 11, 31, 58, 164, 183, 317, 334-35, 339, 353, 373, 475 Paris 5, 80, 92, 100, 103, 164, 183, 317, 334-35, 339, 353, 373, 475 Parody 166, 317-18 Passage 163, 511 Passion 119, 147, 165, 174, 205, 220, 269, 271, 327 Passions de l'Âme 151 Pathos 153-54, 244, 364, 366, 406 Peep Show 338, 352 Pendulum 46, 63-66, 73, 463 Perception 19, 21, 27, 31, 81-83, 86, 88, 90, 93, 96-98, 101, 126, 138, 154, 160, 182, 263, 275, 304, 320-21, 332, 335, 338, 345, 352, 357, 361, 364-66, 385, 464, 467-68, 471, 476 Performance 4, 16-17, 45-47, 78, 84-85, 87, 111, 113, 115, 15557, 160, 167, 174, 233, 239, 243, 247, 303, 313-14, 374, 377, 379, 383, 400, 408, 424, 427, 429, 512-13 Performativity 79 Periodization 494-95, 497

Index of Subjects Periphery 184, 179, 501 Perspective 4, 9-12, 21-22, 38-39, 73, 82-83, 97, 103, 108-11, 127, 167, 169, 229, 236, 238, 247, 250, 263, 271, 273-77, 280, 291, 307, 319-26, 332, 335, 345, 348, 382, 403, 408, 442, 468, 471, 511-13, 518-19, 521, 523 Perspectiva artificialis 518, 520 Phantasmagoria 348 Pharmacy 180 Philosophy 5, 9-10, 36-41, 43, 51, 75, 84, 88, 294, 305, 334, 35758, 385, 389, 470, 489, 494 Philosophy of Nature 36-41, 43, 51 Photography 340, 367, 440 Phylogenetics 343 Physica Sacra 251, 254 Physics/Physical Science 1-2, 1011, 35, 48, 57-58, 64, 67, 69-71, 79, 93, 95, 120, 180, 219, 251, 254, 362, 347, 356, 364, 327, 436, 451, 461-62, 464, 467-89, 490-505, 509 Physiology 89, 94, 155, 172, 174, 289 Pisa 51, 63 Play/Game 11, 12, 15, 71, 78, 83-84, 142, 162, 165-67, 174, 250, 259, 262, 266, 268-69, 276-77, 280, 303, 314-15, 316, 318, 321, 333, 349-50, 353, 399401, 406-08, 424, 427-36, 441, 446-55, 480, 489, 508, 512-13, 516 Pleasure 90, 96, 120, 189-90, 269, 317-18, 323, 325, 335, 380, 383, 389, 467, 516-17, 519 Pleroma 313 Pneumatic 362 Poetics 325, 327, 333-34 Point Point (geometrical) 41, 57-73, 169, 288, 306-07, 309, 311, 313, 484

Index of Subjects Point of View/Point of Perspective 102, 111, 135, 140, 156, 208, 214, 229, 263, 275-77, 321-32, 334, 341, 348, 442, 460, 476, 348, 442, 460, 476, 487, 504, 512, 518-19 Point of Reference 96, 135, 325 Gathering Point 178, 183, 191 Boiling Point 459 Politics 7, 15-16, 24, 27, 29, 93, 97-98, 105, 109, 122, 162-65, 177, 180, 186, 190-91, 296, 322, 328, 431-32, 464 Polygraphia Nova et Universalis 288-89, 295 Positivism 495 Potentiality 313 Power 18-19, 50, 76, 83, 98-99, 103-07, 111, 120, 147, 154-55, 162-63, 165, 169, 174, 183, 185, 199, 228, 263, 279, 307-08, 311, 318-21, 334, 347, 360-31, 36567, 371, 385, 398, 435, 437, 455, 463, 470, 484, 493, 501, 504-05, 512, 524 Precious Object 250 Precision 3, 22, 27, 70-71, 493 Prediction 434 Presence 6, 19, 51, 90, 124, 159, 163, 247, 254, 257, 262, 283, 313, 322, 328, 330-31, 335, 346, 357, 408, 413, 524 Presentation 23, 28-29, 76, 78, 96, 117, 162, 214, 229, 233, 245, 271, 278, 357, 362, 386-87, 408, 460 Prussian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Preußische Societät der Wissenschaften und Künste) 177 Private Sphere 37, 106, 380 Procession 23, 305, 400, 406-07, 410-11, 414, 416 Production/Productivity 24, 27, 30, 35, 58, 70, 79, 113, 119, 150, 220, 229, 316, 327, 370, 446, 492-93, 498, 501, 503, 517

589 Profile 78, 96, 98 Program 120, 179-80, 187, 20203, 205, 214, 327, 389, 442, 444-46, 451, 471, 478, 494 Progress 47, 49, 140, 195, 340, 371, 389, 449, 474 Projection/Projection Technology 16, 25, 84, 87-88, 167, 173-74, 178, 184-85, 188, 190-91, 27273, 275-76, 347, 352 Project 4-7, 30, 39, 69, 97, 109, 147, 184, 188, 190, 192, 251, 263, 298, 341, 352, 365, 427, 432, 435-36, 440-43, 450-54, 504-05 Proof 141, 317, 363, 372, 374, 387, 460-61, 491 Proportion 41, 62, 90-91, 94, 150, 152, 155, 312-13, 372, 401, 426 Props 246, 348, 356, 402 Proscenium 243, 246 Provisional 16, 23, 80 Psychology 155, 163 Public 76, 79, 106, 111, 139, 159, 383, 455, 458, 462-63, 466 Public Sphere 16, 75-76, 179, 194 Public Theatre 21, 82, 426 Punishment 15, 18-19 Pythagorean 60, 303-14, 473 Quality 59, 62-63, 73, 76, 83, 89, 96, 125, 150, 172, 236, 262, 333, 335, 377, 384, 420 Quarantore 330-31 Rarities/Rarity Cabinet 178, 239, 266-68, 344 Reflection 68-69, 154, 182, 306 Registry 16, 30, 107 Relic 250, 328, 344, 524 Religion 189, 257, 317, 322, 32728, 332, 421, 423-24, 511 Reliquary 250 Remedy 87, 271 Renaissance 38, 100, 113, 119, 147-48, 218, 305, 308, 317, 321,

590 339, 353, 359, 394, 403-05, 40809, 467-68, 472, 507, 519 Repertoire 98, 147 Repository 231, 240, 242, 246 Representation 4, 23, 31, 59, 61, 90, 92, 120, 141, 146-47, 152, 159-60, 162-74, 179, 215, 22863, 268, 278, 280, 283-300, 314, 327, 348, 362-63, 385, 403, 411, 437, 442, 445, 458, 469-70, 512, 518, 520-24 Res Cogitans/Res Extensa 67, 52021 Resistance 42, 49, 104, 163 Revelation 76, 136, 298, 313, 338, 345, 394 Rhetoric 78, 160, 163, 178, 190, 291-92, 311, 341, 377, 379, 38384 Rhythm 157, 303, 310-11 Ritual 18, 23, 164, 166, 183, 328, 330, 396, 402, 414, 417 Robotics 4-5, 7, 286, 288, 341, 524 Rococo 341 Rome 113, 127, 135, 146, 243, 267, 273, 288, 321, 330, 512 Rotation 48, 82, 103, 469, 471-72, 483-84 Royal Society 120, 176, 189, 249, 318, 332, 365, 369, 373, 376-77, 384, 386, 389 Rule 12, 105, 116, 119, 153-54, 165-66, 171, 176, 178, 184, 206, 214, 269, 289-90, 295, 297, 334, 341, 409, 421, 428-30, 498, 510 Ruler 70, 86 Sacrament 328-31 Sacred Space 243, 395-96, 419, 422, 425, 512 Salzdahlum 267 Saggi di Naturali Esperienzie 120, 335 Scalpel 96

Index of Subjects Scenario 67, 71, 73, 162, 169, 231, 427, 429, 434-35, 441-42, 447, 452, 483 Scene 38, 47, 49-50, 53, 72, 112, 115-16, 167, 233, 241, 246, 251, 254-55, 257, 263, 314, 327, 341, 348, 350, 359, 382, 396, 405, 408, 411, 414, 437-38, 452, 50718 Scene/Stage 12, 16-17, 22, 76, 112, 115-16, 246, 348, 382, 405, 414, 516, 518 Scenography 87, 110, 276, 328 Scepticism 257-58 Schema/Schematism 69, 71, 79, 96, 101, 239, 251, 295, 297, 298, 364, 396, 419, 425, 461 Scholasticism 41, 44, 64, 64, 84, 150, 470 Schwetzingen 516 Science 1-7, 32, 35-42, 47, 49, 58, 75-76, 78, 80, 92-93, 96, 98, 100, 119-20, 122, 126, 146, 170, 172, 177-79, 182, 185, 187-91, 194-95, 215-16, 224, 228, 267, 285, 289-91, 297-98, 318, 33133, 339-40, 353, 355, 358-59, 361-64, 368, 373, 382, 389, 434, 445, 450, 457-66, 490, 492, 494, 499, 501, 505, 507-11, 513, 515, 518, 520-25 Architecture of Science 31, 75, 98, 179, 187, 191 Scientific Organisation 1-5, 37, 39-40, 42, 75, 90-91, 100, 119, 176, 179, 194-95, 228, 297, 31718, 335, 339, 371, 389, 458, 460-66, 490, 498-505, 507-09, 511, 518 Score 157, 160, 311, 314, 394 Sculpture 111-13, 119, 203, 213, 250, 339, 344, 385, 511 Search Architecture 294 Search Engine 285 Search Tree 289, 298-99

Index of Subjects Secret 27, 31, 117, 179, 187, 195, 206, 256, 322, 340, 345, 467, 472-73, 475, 480, 510, 515 Sense/Sensation 2, 6, 38, 46, 68, 70, 82, 87-88, 90, 95, 108, 113, 123, 126, 135, 138, 140, 150, 159, 182-83, 229, 236, 243, 263, 279, 310-12, 314, 317-19, 321, 325, 327, 331-32, 335, 338-39, 344, 353, 354-65, 380, 385-89, 452, 467-68, 523-25 Shadow 93, 98, 160, 254, 262, 271-80, 320, 338, 347, 403-05, 431, 508, 521 Shadow Theatre see Theatre Shape 2, 35, 40, 42, 46, 51-52, 83, 156, 171, 338, 345, 347, 349, 372, 396, 417, 503 Siglo de Oro 317 Sign/Sign Experiment 21, 57, 59, 68, 82, 96, 127, 162-63, 167, 173-74, 295, 319, 329, 395, 413, 474-75, 480 Simulation 317, 427-55 Sinology 188 Skeleton 508 Smell 83, 113, 327 Scent House 113, 182 Social Utopia 180 Societas Philadelphica 185 Societé des Sciences 189 Society 120, 163-64, 176-77, 17981, 184-89, 249, 318, 332, 335, 365, 369, 373, 376-77, 384, 386, 389, 491, 494 Fruitful society (Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft) 184 Society Buildings 180 Society Plans 179, 185 Solomon 133, 409 Solomon’s House 133 Sophopolis 192 Sound 83, 154, 303, 312-14, 371, 438, 444, 452 Spain 318, 394

591 New Spain 394 Spectacle/Spectacular 12, 15, 28, 58, 69, 79, 82, 330-33, 339, 352, 356, 399, 402, 408, 421, 426, 508, 510, 517, 519 Spectacles (optical instrument) 352, 361 Sphere 16, 24, 38, 52, 75, 94, 107, 181, 186, 194, 212, 231, 242-43, 310, 312, 319, 359, 366, 468-69, 473, 478, 480, 486, 500 Spirits of Life/Spiritus Animales 150-53 Stage 11-12, 15-16, 19, 22-23, 3031, 58, 92, 98, 103, 110-15, 11920, 146, 163, 167, 169, 172, 195, 235, 243-44, 246-47, 251, 254, 257, 278, 314, 325, 327-35, 348, 382, 400-02, 406, 411, 421, 426, 468, 470-71, 476, 488, 507, 512, 516, 518 Stage Architecture 443 Stage Decoration 243 Stage Technology 329, 348, 401-02 Staging 15, 78, 96, 100, 244, 250, 318, 321, 330-31, 333-34, 382, 429, 511-12 Stoicism 517 Strasbourg 267 Strategy 10, 27, 30, 162-63, 166, 170, 172, 174, 228, 247, 257, 262, 268, 288, 318, 325, 334, 379, 428-32, 451, 453 Style 6-7, 40, 164-65, 237, 317, 386, 402, 404, 408, 445, 475, 504 Subculture 490, 492, 496-98, 500 Suffering 96, 401, 517 Symbol/Symbolism 4-5, 25, 61, 67-68, 73, 92, 113, 120, 132, 134, 136, 162, 170, 173, 179, 181, 183-84, 187, 190, 195, 237, 241, 244, 255, 257, 261, 276, 295, 308, 312, 317, 320-22, 341, 345, 362, 365, 371, 384, 395-96,

592 404, 408-09, 413-16, 420-21, 426, 492, 498, 504 Order of Things 120, 247, 289, 291-92, 294 System/Systematization 1, 6, 9-12, 16-18, 21-22, 27, 30-31, 40, 61, 75, 82, 91, 95, 104, 106-08, 114, 123, 125-26, 129, 133-34, 13942, 144, 154, 162, 170, 173, 182, 184-85, 208, 213, 215, 218, 239, 247, 249, 255, 257, 262, 269, 275, 278, 283-300, 308, 312, 339, 346-67, 377, 379-80, 386, 421, 425, 428-52, 468, 472, 47476, 486-87, 495-96, 499-500, 522 Table 1, 80, 117, 183-84, 212-13, 220, 222-24, 237, 241, 405, 42930, 502 Round Table (Tischgesellschaft) 183-84 Tableau 140 Tantalus 511 Taste 83, 89-90, 164, 182-83 Tasting House 182 Taxonomy 170, 172 Technology 3, 11, 58, 113, 120, 162-63, 170, 228, 269, 272-73, 290, 298, 317, 329, 334, 338, 340-41, 346-48, 350-53, 361-62, 364, 427, 429, 432, 435-38, 44041, 444-46, 448-53, 463-64, 498, 502, 505, 507, 515, 518, 520-21, 525 Telescope 88, 332-33, 345, 35567, 371, 385, 481, 483, 493 Temperament/Temperament Theory 87, 149-50, 153-55 Temple/Temple of Science 122, 190, 292, 329, 395 Territory/Territoriality 103, 110, 162, 169, 171-73, 176-80, 187, 190, 218, 492, 513 Thaumaturgy 348

Index of Subjects Theatre/Theatrum 11-16, 19, 21, 30-31, 75-76, 78, 80, 82-84, 89, 98, 100, 104, 106, 111-16, 116, 146-47, 169, 172, 243-44, 246, 254, 266-69, 271, 274-78, 280, 294, 303-05, 310-15, 317, 330, 334, 344, 348-49, 352, 382, 385, 394, 399, 426-27, 431-34, 446, 449, 505, 508-09, 512-13, 51519, 523, 525 Shadow Theatre 271-80 Theatre of Conversion 394, 399, 405, 414 Theatre of Knowledge 269 Theatre of Nature und Art/Theatrum Naturae et Artis 267-68, 277, 280, 508 Theatre-like 394 Theatre Metaphor 244, 507, 51617 Theatrum orbis terrarum 426 Theatrum Sacrum/Teatro Sacro 330, 516 Theatricality 12, 15-16, 18, 21, 31, 37, 78-79, 111-12, 116-17, 146, 169, 243-44, 247, 280, 314, 318, 327-28, 330, 380, 402, 405, 408, 411, 414, 421, 424-25, 512-13, 516 Theodicy 275, 278 Theology 19, 105, 136, 251, 254, 261, 295, 295, 298, 307-08, 313, 419, 424 Thermometer 459 Thesaurus Animalium 242 Thesaurus Brandenburgicus 237 Thought Structure 291-92 Topic/Topos/Topology 68-69, 164, 166, 170, 174, 290-91, 317, 349, 356, 378, 514 Topography 24, 116, 166, 171-74, 351, 416, 481 Town 16, 84, 169, 188, 190, 192, 194, 202, 249, 269, 417 Tragicomedia de Calixto y Melibea 316

Index of Subjects Trace 9, 11-12, 30, 62, 84-85, 170, 172, 174, 217, 250, 261, 276, 363, 384, 441, 462, 502 Traffic 3, 453 Tragedy 112, 314 Traité des coniques 274 Travel 23-24, 65, 117, 162, 192, 267, 347, 350, 352, 473, 501-05 Tremendum 361 Trick 292, 303, 461, 463, 492, 501 Trinity 295, 308, 400 Trompe-l'oeil 254, 262, 319, 323, 348 Unio mystica 327 Universality 35, 37-39, 139, 190, 228 Universe 35-37, 48-49, 82, 95, 276-77, 305, 311-12, 317, 319, 333, 341, 344-45, 347-38, 356, 360, 363, 385, 469, 472, 478, 481, 511, 522 University 4, 76, 80, 137, 188-90, 192, 194-95, 430, 434, 450, 50809 Utilitarianism 186 Utopia/Utopianism 164, 177, 17980, 184, 191, 277, 231, 385, 389 Vacuum 95, 335, 359, 362-63, 498 Vanitas/Vanitas Mundi 255, 31920, 508 Vera Icon 260 Verisimilitude 262 Via lucis 183 Vibration 47, 153-54., 156 Vienna 150-51 Viewer 231, 233, 235-40, 242-45, 247, 254, 259, 269, 276, 319-23, 333, 338, 341, 346, 348, 351-52, 386, 417, 465 Violence 18, 185, 305, 360 Virtuality 35, 37, 39, 49, 53, 70, 82, 92, 238, 259, 339, 341, 35253, 427, 431, 437-38, 441, 445, 448-49, 451-52

593 Visualisation 38, 112, 136, 159, 166-67, 170-74, 181, 229, 231, 235-38, 250-51, 254, 257, 267, 269, 276, 279, 288, 292, 303-04, 312-14, 321, 327, 338, 340, 342, 348, 352-53, 362-68, 371, 373, 377, 379, 382, 386-67, 402, 436-38, 442, 444, 468, 486, 496 Visual Rays 108-09, 181 War 4, 6, 12, 24, 29, 107, 185, 189, 192, 206, 427-35, 439-46, 446-49, 451, 453-54, 463, 480, 494, 502-04, 516 Theatre of War 12, 427, 516 Thirty Years War 12, 188, 206 War Games 427-35, 441-42, 446-48 Water Pump 254 Weapon/Armoury 119, 180, 442-43, 447, 449, 500, 504, 515 Weight 40, 46, 50-52, 150, 208, 332, 462, 473-74, 491 Westminster Abbey 512 Wisdom 183-84, 190, 192, 333 Witchcraft 332 Witness 27, 37, 51, 148, 250, 377, 382-83, 400-01, 406, 414, 493, 501 Wolfenbüttel 267 Wonder 23-25, 27, 38, 104, 214, 220, 271, 276, 312, 323, 327, 338, 340-41, 348, 352-53, 359, 463, 510, 514-15 Cabinet of Wonders (Wunderschrank) 341, 514-15, 343-44, 347-48, 352 Wondertooneel der nature 242-43

594 Workshop 37, 119, 180, 182, 190, 205, 219, 222, 268, 409, 431, 450, 510 World Academy 179, 183-84 World Theatre 83, 314, 516-19, 523 World View/World Understanding 318, 322, 517, 520 Worldliness (Welthaltigkeit) 179, 187

Index of Subjects Writing 11, 40, 70, 72, 85, 104, 107, 119-20, 123, 151, 160, 213, 249, 251, 292, 422, 461-62, 465 Wunderkammer see Kunstkammer Zero 44, 60-61, 63, 67-69, 72, 473, 480 Zoo/Zoology 194, 208, 212, 21516, 355, 362, 369, 386, 410-11