JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
This is just a quick addition to a continuing series on antiquarian cosmological images (the two major posts, Visual Chronology of Cosmology, Part I and Part II) containing 80 images, mostly before the 19th century) and a long series on the History of Dots. The engraving below comes from the great intellectual explorer, Fr. Athansius Kircher, in his ultra-fabulous three-volume Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652-4). And in here–as is the case with some other cosmological images–in between the sphere of the Sun and the sphere of the stars was the realm of the planets, and that is where Fr. Kircher’s artist employed the use of dots, to differentiate the planetary real estate from everything else.
And the image in full view (both images reproduced from the Hachette reprint):
