JF Ptak Science Books     Post 1839

Continuing a thread of interesting and odd observations of things that are empty, absent and disappeared are the following two images: the first, of the human soul; and the second, a picture of The Heaven. 

The image above is a very spotty, molecular-like and modest image of the human soul, which seems to fill at least the outlines of the body, though there is a lot of nothingness in-between.  I’m not sure if the cloth, or sheet, is in front or behind the soul, or if the soul is impregnated into the object; I think that I’d rather believe it to be in front, placed there for whatever slim modesty it affords the gone person behind it.  This Outline (?), or  Depiction (?) is  found in Anima Hominis. (on pages. 88–9) from Charles Hoole’s English translation of Comenius’ Orbis Sensualium Pictus* published in 1659.

The English translation of the Latin verse reads as follows: :

The Soul is the life of the body, one in the whole: Only Vegetative in Plants. Withal sensitive in Animals; And also Rational in man.

This consisteth in three things;

In the understanding whereby it judgeth, and understandeth a thing good and evill, or true or apparent;

In the will, whereby it chooseth, and desireth, or rejecteth or misliketh a thing known.

In the Mind, whereby it pursueth the good chosen, or avoideth the evill rejected.

Hence is hope, and Fear, in the desire and dislike;

Hence is love and joy, in the fruition;

But Anger, and Grief, in suffering.

The true judgment of a thing is Knowledge; the false is Error, Opinion, and Suspicion.

I found this image while looking for something entirely different, and was tremendously and wonderfully interrupted, at She-Philosopher. 

Also, earlier in this same book (occupying pp 10–11) is plate IV, Coelum (“The Heaven”),  which as filled up with lines as it is still looks surprisingly empty–after all, no one’s home.

You can click on the image for something large, or at least large enough to read the numbers hat are referred to in the verse.  Unfortunately, the number “4” towards the bottom-left just refers to this being the fourth illustration, and does not find a home in the text (another 4 being present within the circle of the engraving).  It would’ve been much more interesting had this extra-universal 4 referred to the whiteness around it, far removed from the depiction of what was thought to be the cosmos so neatly contained in the circles to its right.  .

(I would like to point out that the use of the word “twinckle” toi describe starlight is about the earliest usage for the word that I’ve seen.)

The English translation of the Latin verse reads:

The Heaven 1. is wheeled about, and encompasseth the Earth 2. standing in the middle.

The Sun 3. wheresoever it is shineth perpetually, howsoever dark Clouds 4. may take it from us; and by its rayes 5. it causeth light, and the light, Day.

On the other side over against it is Darkness 6. and thence Night.

In the Night, shineth the Moon, 7. and the Stars 8. glister, and twinckle.

In the Evening 9. is Twilight, In the Morning, 10. the breaking, and dawning of the Day[.]

*The lovely and very full title is actually as follwos:  Joh. Amos Commenii Orbis sensualium pictus. Hoc est, omnium fundamentalium in mundo rerum, & in vita actionum, pictura & nomenclatura. Joh. Amos Commenius’s Visible world, or, a picture and nomenclature of all the chief things that are in the world, and of mens employments therein. A work newly written by the author in Latine, and High-Dutch (being one of his last essays, and the most suitable to childrens capacities of any that he hath hitherto made) & translated into English, by Charles Hoole, teacher of a private grammar-school in Lothbury, London. For the use of young Latine-scholars. London: Printed for J. Kirton, at the Kings-Arms, in Saint Paules Church-yard, 1659.

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1842   (Continuing a post on The Importance of Nothing in the History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things thread.)

There is nothing quite so attractive sometimes as nothing.  Free, unused blank, empty space that can occur on a painting or in a print or on a green or red landscape or between notes in a piece of music;  the use of nothing, of blank space as an attenuator or a simple resting spot can be a critical element.

Images from natural history, physical and medical sciences and encyclopediae can be extremely full with a hundred or more sections and not be crowded at all, though very full–other attempts at designing information display like this are far less successful, and become just crowded amalgams that remind us of badly articulated cabinets of curiosity.  Of course these things are not made to stand on their own and were to be used in conjunction with texts, but still, they seem to be strong enough to stand on their own.

The blank spaces seem to occur more naturally on maps, in spite of the impulses of mapmakers (or at least their engravers) to fill the blank spaces with whatever might have been on hand–found or fictional or hypothesized landforms/animals/people/waves and such.  But some came quite naturally to the blank and free spaces, even in fictional maps, like the following (from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726, amended 1735), or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships):

But these originally-occurring blank spaces are not why we’re here today.  As much as they can be beautiful, as in the following, as in this example of not filling up space by Louis Jean Pierre Vielliot in his 1805 work on natural history:

What brings me to empty space tody is its pursuit in crowded images.  For example, the following image, a lovely and very crowded thing from the gorgeous encyclopedia by Abraham Rees, is made less crowded with some slight manipulation in photoshop, removing enough to cause the engraving to have a new and scrupulous interest in its missing bits and blank space: