Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T01:15:55.184Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Emblems to Diagrams: Kepler's New Pictorial Language of Scientific Representation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Raz Chen-Morris
Raz Chen-Morris*
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University and The University of Sydney
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Kepler's treatise on optics of 1604 furnished, along with technical solutions to problems in medieval perspective, a new mathematically-based visual language for the observation of nature. This language, based on Kepler's theory of retinal pictures, ascribed a new role to geometrical diagrams. This paper examines Kepler's pictorial language against the backdrop of alchemical emblems that flourished in and around the court of Rudolf II in Prague. It highlights the cultural context in which Kepler's optics was immersed, and the way in which Kepler attempted to demarcate his new science from other modes of the investigation of nature.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 134 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Alison, and , Linden, Stanton J. eds. Emblems and Alchemy. Glasgow, 1998.Google Scholar
Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. London, 1650.Google Scholar
Alberti, Leon Battista. On Painting and On Sculpture: The Latin Texts of De Pictura and De Statua. Ed. and trans. Cecil Grayson. London, 1972.Google Scholar
Alciati, Andrea. Emblemata liber … Augsburg, 1531.Google Scholar
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. Barnes, J. 2 vols. Princeton, 1984.Google Scholar
Ashworth, William B. “Natural History and the Emblematic Worldview.” In Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (1990), 303–32.Google Scholar
Ashworth, William B. “The Habsburg Circle.” In Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Culture at the European Court, 1500–1700, ed. , Moran, B. T. 137–67. Woodbridge, 1991.Google Scholar
Barocchi, Paolo, ed. Trattati d'arte del cinquecento fra manierismo e controriforma. 3 vols. Bari, 1960.Google Scholar
Barolsky, Paul. Infinite Jest: Wit and Humor in Italian Renaissance Art. London, 1978.Google Scholar
Bath, Michael. Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture. London, 1994.Google Scholar
Bolzoni, Lina. The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press. Toronto, 2001.10.3138/9781442681330CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruno, Giordano. Articuli adversus mathematicos. Prague, 1588.Google Scholar
Buchdahl, Gerd. “Methodological Aspects of Kepler's Theory of Refraction.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 3 (1972): 265–98.10.1016/0039-3681(72)90011-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen-Morris, Raz. “Optics, Imagination, and the Construction of Scientific Observation in Kepler's New Science.” The Monist 84 (2001): 453–86.10.5840/monist200184422CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen-Morris, Raz. “Shadows of Instruction: Optics and Classical Authorities in Kepler's Somnium.” Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005): 223–43.10.1353/jhi.2005.0032CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chidester, David. Word and Light: Seeing, Hearing, and Religious Discourse. Urbana, 1992.Google Scholar
Clark, Stuart. Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture. Oxford, 2007.Google Scholar
Cleary, John J. “On the Terminology of ‘Abstraction’ in Aristotle.” Phronesis 30 (1985): 13–45.10.1163/156852885X00165CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clulee, Nicholas H. John Dee's Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion. London, 1988.Google Scholar
Colie, R. Paradoxia Epidemica: The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox. Princeton, 1966.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, Brian P. “Natural Magic, Hermeticism, and Occultism in Early Modern Science.” InReappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (1990), 261–301.Google Scholar
Croll, Oswalds. “The Adminitory Preface of Oswald Crollie, Physitian: To the Most Illustrious Prince Christian Anhaltin.” InPhilosophy Reformed & Improved in Four Profound Tractates… Ed. and trans. H. Pinnell. London, 1657.Google Scholar
Croll, Oswalds. A Treatise of Oswaldus Crollius of Signatures of Internal Things; or, A True and Lively Anatomy of the Greater and Lesser World. London, 1659.Google Scholar
Crombie, A. C. “The Mechanistic Hypothesis and the Scientific Study of Vision.” Proceedings of the Royal Microscopical Society 2 (1967): 1–112.Google Scholar
Daly, Peter M. Literature in the Light of the Emblem. Toronto, 1979.Google Scholar
Davis, A. E. L. “Systems of Conics in Kepler's Work.” Vistas in Astronomy 18 (1975): 673–85.10.1016/0083-6656(75)90152-XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Jong, H. M. E. Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens: Sources of an Alchemical Book of Emblems. Leiden, 1969.Google Scholar
Edgerton, Samuel Y. “The Renaissance Development of the Scientific Illustration.” In Science and the Arts in the Renaissance (1985), 168–97.Google Scholar
Elkins, James. The Poetics of Perspective. Ithaca, 1994.Google Scholar
Elkins, James. “Marks, Traces, ‘Traits,’ Contours, ‘Orli,’ and ‘Splendores’: Nonsemiotic Elements in Pictures.” Critical Inquiry 21 (1995): 822–60.10.1086/448776CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elkins, James. The Domain of Images. Ithaca, 1999.Google Scholar
Evans, R. J. W. Rudolf II and His World. Rev. ed., London, 1997.Google Scholar
Farago, Claire. Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650. New Haven, 1995.Google Scholar
Field, J. V. “Two Mathematical Inventions in Kepler's ‘Ad Vitellionem paralipomena.’” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 17 (1986): 449–68.Google Scholar
Figala, Karin, and , Ulrich, Neumann. “Michael Maier (1569–1622): New Bio-Bibliography Material.” In Alchemy Revisited: Proceedings of the International Conference on the History of Alchemy at the University of Groningen, 17–19 April 1989, ed. , von Martels, Z. R. W. M. 34–50. Leiden>, 1990.Google Scholar
Findlen, Paula. “Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe.” Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990): 292–331.10.2307/2862366CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Findlen, Paula. “Between Carnival and Lent: The Scientific Revolution at the Margins of Culture.” Configurations 6 (1998): 243–67.10.1353/con.1998.0016CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fludd, Robert. Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia. 2 vols. Oppenheim, 1617–20.Google Scholar
Frangenberg, Thomas. “The Angle of Vision: Problems of Perspectival Representation in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” Renaissance Studies 6 (1992): 1–45.10.1111/j.1477-4658.1992.tb00255.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franklin, James. “Diagrammatic Reasoning and Modelling in the Imagination: The Secret Weapons of the Scientific Revolution.” In 1543 and All That: Image and Word, Change and Continuity in the Proto-Scientific Revolution, ed. , Guy, Freeland and , Anthony, Corones, 53–115. Dordrecht, 2000.10.1007/978-94-015-9478-3_3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freedberg, David. The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends and the Beginnings of Modern Natural History. Chicago, 2002.10.7208/chicago/9780226261539.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fried, Michael N., and , Sabetai, Unguru. Apollonius of Perga's Conica: Text, Context, Subtext. Mnemosyne. Suppl. no. 222. Leiden, 2001.10.1163/9789004350991CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaukroger, Stephen. “Aristotle on Intelligible Matter.” Phronesis 25 (1980): 187–97.10.1163/156852880X00115CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gombrich, E. H. “The Heritage of Apelles.” In Gombrich, The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, 3–18. Oxford, 1976.Google Scholar
Gordon, Walter M. Humanist Play and Belief: The Seriocomic Art of Desiderius Erasmus. Toronto, 1990.Google Scholar
Hannaway, Owen. The Chemist and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry. Baltimore, 1975.Google Scholar
Heimann-Seelbach, Sabine. “Diagrammatik und Gedaechtniskunst: Zur Bedeutung Der Schrift Für Die Ars Memorativa Im 15. Jahrhundert.” In Schule und Schueler im Mittelalter, ed. , Martin, Kintzinger, , Sönke, Lorenz, and , Michael, Walter, 385–410. Cologne, 1996.Google Scholar
Hollanda, Francisco de. De la pintura antigua por Francisco de Hollanda, version castellana de Manuel Denis. Ed. , Tormo, E. Madrid, 1921.Google Scholar
Hussey, Edward. “Aristotle on Mathematical Objects.” In Peri tōn mathēmatōn, ed. , Ian, Mueller, Apeiron 24, no. 4 (1991): 105–34.Google Scholar
Jones, Caroline A., and , Peter, Galison, eds. Picturing Science and Producing Art. New York, 1998.Google Scholar
Josten, C.H. “A Translation of John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica (Antwerp 1564), with an Introduction and Annotations.” Ambix 12 (1964): 112–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. The School of Prague: Painting at the Court of Rudolph II. Chicago, 1988.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. “Arcimboldo's Serious Jokes: ‘Mysterious but Long Meaning.’” The Verbal and the Visual: Essays in Honor of William S. Heckscher, ed. , Selig, K. L. and , Sears, E. 59–80. New York, 1990.Google Scholar
Kemp, Martin. “Temples of the Body and Temples of the Cosmos: Vision and Visualization in the Vesalian and Copernican Revolution.” In Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science, ed. , Baigrie, Brian S, 40–85. Toronto, 1996.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. Ad Vitellionem paralipomena, quibus astronomiae pars optica traditor. Frankfurt, 1604.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. Tychonis Brahei Dani Hyperaspistes…. Frankfurt, 1625.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. Gesammelte Werke. Ed. , Walter von, Dyck and , Max, Caspar. 24 vols. Munich, 1937–.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. The Harmony of the World. Trans. E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan, and J. V. Field. Philadelphia, 1997.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. Optics: Parlipomena to Witelo and Optical Part of Astronomy. Trans. William H. Donahue. Santa Fe, 2000.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes. Kepler's Somnium: The Dream or Posthumous Work on Lunar Astronomy. Trans. Edward Rosen. Reprint, New York, 2003.Google Scholar
Khunrath, Heinrich. Amphiteatrum sapientiae aeternae … Hanau, 1609.Google Scholar
Klein, Jacob. Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. Trans. Eva Brann. Cambridge, MA, 1968.Google Scholar
Klibansky, Raymon, , Erwin, Panofsky, and , Fritz, Saxl. Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art. London, 1964.Google Scholar
Kusukawa, Sachiko. “Leonhart Fuchs on the Importance of Pictures.” Journal of the History of Ideas 58 (1997): 403–27.10.1353/jhi.1997.0027CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laird, W. Roy. “Galileo and the Mixed Sciences.” In Method and Order in Renaissance Philosophy of Nature: The Aristotle Commentary Tradition, ed. , Daniel, DiLiscia, , Eckhard, Kessler, and , Charlotte, Methuen, 253–70. Aldershot, 1997.Google Scholar
Lear, Jonathan. “Aristotle's Philosophy of Mathematics.” The Philosophical Review 91 (1982): 161–92.10.2307/2184625CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefevre, Wolfgang, ed. Picturing Machines 1400–1700. Cambridge, MA, 2004.Google Scholar
Lefevre, Wolfgang, , Jurgen, Renn, and , Urs, Schoepflin, eds. The Power of Images in Early Modern Europe. Basel, 2003.10.1007/978-3-0348-8099-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindberg, David C. “Laying the Foundations of Medieval Optics: Maurolico, Kepler, and the Medieval Tradition.” In The Discourse of Light from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, ed. , Lindberg, David C. and , Geoffrey, Cantor, 3–65. Los Angeles, 1985.Google Scholar
Lindberg, David C. “The Genesis of Kepler's Theory of Light: Light Metaphysics from Plotinus to Kepler.” Osiris, 2nd ser., 2 (1986): 5–42.10.1086/368651CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mahoney, Michael S. “Diagrams and Dynamics: Mathematical Perspectives on Edgerton's Thesis.” In Science and the Arts in the Renaissance (1985), 198–220.Google Scholar
Maier, Michael. Lusus serius. Oppenheim, 1616.Google Scholar
Maier, Michael. Atalanta fugiens, hoc est, Emblemata nova de secretis naturae chymica. Oppenheim, 1617a.Google Scholar
Maier, Michael. Jucus severus. Frankfurt, 1617b.Google Scholar
Malet, Antoni. “Keplerian Illusions: Geometrical Pictures vs. Optical Images in Kepler's Visual Theory.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 21 (1990): 1–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, John. The Emblem. London, 2002.Google Scholar
Martens, Rhonda. Kepler's Philosophy and the New Astronomy. Princeton, 2000.Google Scholar
Moran, Bruce T. The Alchemical World of the German Court: Occult Philosophy and Chemical Medicine in the Circle of Moritz of Hessen (1572–1631). Stuttgart, 1991.Google Scholar
Mosley, Adam. “Objects of Knowledge: Mathematics and Models in Sixteenth-Century Cosmology and Astronomy.” In Transmitting Knowledge (2006), 193–216.Google Scholar
Mueller, Ian. “Aristotle on Geometrical Objects.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 52 (1970): 156–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueller, Ian. “Physics and Astronomy: Aristotle's Physics II.2.193b22–194a12.” Arabic Science and Philosophy 16 (2006): 175–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nuti, Lucia. “The World Map as an Emblem: Abraham Ortelius and the Stoic Contemplation.” Imago Mundi 55 (2003): 38–55.10.1080/0308569032000097486CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oresme, Nicole. Nicole Oresme and the Medieval Geometry of Qualities and Motions: A Treatise on the Uniformity and Difformity of Intensities known as Tractatus de configurationibus qualitatum et motuum. Ed. and trans. Marshall Clagett. Madison, 1968.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. “Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form.’” In Vortrage der Bibliothek Warburg, 1924–25, 258–330. Leipzig, 1927.Google Scholar
Panofsky, Erwin. “‘Nebulae in Pariete’: Notes on Erasmus’ Eulogy on Dürer.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 (1951): 34–41.10.2307/750351CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pantin, Isabelle. “Kepler's Epitome: New Images for an Innovative Book.” In Transmitting Knowledge (2006), 217–38.Google Scholar
Pauli, Wolfgang. “Der Einfluss archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler.” In Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy, ed. , Enz, Charles P. and , Karl von, Meyenn, 219–79. Berlin, 1994.10.1007/978-3-662-02994-7_23CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pecham, John. John Pecham and the Science of Optics: Perspectiva communis. Ed. and trans. David Lindberg. Madison, 1970.Google Scholar
Pinkus, Karen. Picturing Silence: Emblem, Language, Counter-Reformation Materiality. Ann Arbor, 1996.Google Scholar
Plato. The Collected Dialogues. Ed. Hamilton, E. and , Cairns, H. Princeton, 1989.Google Scholar
Pliny the Elder. Pliny the Elder's Chapters on the History of Art. Trans. K. Jex-Blake. Chicago, 1976.Google Scholar
Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Trans. W. H. S. Johns. 10 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1980.Google Scholar
Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery. Reprint, Rome, 1964.Google Scholar
Proclus. A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements. Ed. and trans. Morrow, G. R. Princeton, 1992.Google Scholar
Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution. Ed. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman. Cambridge, 1990.Google Scholar
Sanchez of Salamanca, Francisco. Commentary on Alciati's Emblemata. 1573. British Library, Egerton MS 1234.Google Scholar
Science and the Arts in the Renaissance. Ed. J. W. Shirley and F. D. Hoeniger. Washington, DC, 1985.Google Scholar
Simon, Gerard. Kepler astronome astrologue. Paris, 1979.Google Scholar
Smith, A. Mark. “What is the History of Medieval Optics Really About?” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148 (2004): 180–94.Google Scholar
Smith, L. P. Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton. 2 vols. Oxford, 1907.Google Scholar
Smith, Pamela H. The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stoichita, Victor I. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting. Trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen. Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar
Straker, Stephen M. “Kepler's Optics: A Study in the Development of Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy.” PhD diss., Indiana University, 1971.Google Scholar
Straker, Stephen M. “The Eye Made ‘Other’: Durer, Kepler, and the Mechanization of Light and Vision.” In Science, Technology, and Culture in Historical Perspective, ed. , Knafla, L. A. , Straum, M. S. , Trarens, T. H. E. 2–25. Calgary, 1976.Google Scholar
Summers, David. Michelangelo and the Language of Art. Princeton, 1981.Google Scholar
Summers, David. The Judgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the Rise of Aesthetics. Cambridge, 1987.Google Scholar
Szulakowska, Urszula. “Geometry and Optics in Renaissance Alchemical Illustration: John Dee, Robert Fludd and Michael Maier.” Cauda Pavonis, n.s., 14 (1995): 1–12.Google Scholar
Tachau, Katherine H. Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundations of Semantics, 1250–1345. Leiden, 1988.Google Scholar
Tilton, Hereward. The Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in the Work of Count Michael Maier (1569–1622). Berlin, 2003.10.1515/9783110896572CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Transmitting Knowledge: Words, Images, and Instruments in Early Modern Europe. Ed. Sachiko Kusukawa and Ian Maclean. Oxford, 2006.Google Scholar
von Samsonow, Elizabeth. Die Erzeugung des Sichtbaren: Die philosophische Begründung naturwissenschaftlicher Wahrheit bei Johannes Kepler. Munich, 1986.Google Scholar
Waal, Hans van de. “The Linea Summae Tenuitatis of Apelles: Pliny's Phrase and Its Interpreters.” Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemine Kunst Wissenschaft 12 (1967): 5–32.Google Scholar
Walker, D. P. “Kepler's Celestial Music.” In Studies in Musical Science in the Late Renaissance, ed. , Tripp, J. B. 34–62. London, 1978.Google Scholar
Watson, Elizabeth. Achille Bocchi and the Emblem as Symbolic Form. Cambridge, 1993.Google Scholar
Webster, Charles. From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science. Cambridge, 1982.Google Scholar
Westman, Robert S. “Nature, Art, and Psyche: Jung, Pauli, and the Kepler-Fludd Polemic.” In Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance, ed. , Brian, Vickers, 177–229. Cambridge, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. Chicago, 1966.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. Theatre of the World. London, 1969.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. London, 1972.10.4324/9780203166017_chapter_16CrossRefGoogle Scholar