JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post #123

Perhaps the only bigger five put-together lines than Feynman
diagrams may be home plate; otherwise I’m hard pressed to come up with a better
thing that can be drawn in this way with this many lines.

The impossibly bright Richard Feynman (1918-1988, Nobel in
1955 for the development of quantum electrodynamics; physics of superfluidity;
path integral formulation of QM, etc.) worked on a schematic that would  visualize—indeed, stand for–quantum
electrodynamical interactions, the scattering calculations in QFT. The result is known by nearly everyone on
earth as Feynman diagrams. (Murray
Gell-Mann, another Nobelist and ueber diligent partner and competitor of
Feynman’s, and perhaps as influential a physicist (with the Eightfold Way and
etc.), refers to the diagrams as Stuckelberg diagrams, named for a pretty
obscure physicist who, among others, came up with an early schemata closely
resembling Feynman diagrams. His refusal
smacks more than a little of retribution and competitive jealousy even 20 years
after Feynman’s death.)

The images here are the first time the diagrams were
published in the 15 September 1949 issue of The Physical Review and are among
the top-20 prettiest pictures in physics of the 20^th century.

Their descriptive power is matched only by their crystalline
simplicity—few diagrams have ever been constructed with a greater claim.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post #128


This lovely design is a cosmological plan as it appeared in the Opera Accuratissme Castigata (published in 1533) of Publius Vergilius Maro, better known (simply) as Virgil, who was born in northern Italy near Mantua in 70 BCE, and died at 49 in 19 ACE.  His bones and ashes wound up in a tomb at Neapolis on the Via Puteolana [road to Puteoli], with the vase holding his ashes inscribed “Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope, cecini pascua, rura, duces; Mantua bore me, Calabria seized me, now Parthenope holds me; I sang of flocks, fields, generals..”  Nowadays the vase is gone, and the bones are on display; kept in check by iron bars; however, Virgil himself may still be in Purgatorio in spite of Dante’s Aeneid-esque homage to the great poet in the Divine Comedy.  (When Dante first meets Virgil in the Inferno (1 82-5), he cries “O light and honor of all other poets, may my long study and the intense love that made me search your volume serve me now.  You are my master and my author”.  Even still, Virgil was good enough to accompany Dante through Hell (seen below in a painting by Eugene Delacroix “Dante and Virgil in Hell”) and Purgatory, but he was too problematic to show him through Heaven.)

This cosmological system on display here is of course the working of the ancient world—even by the time of Dante it was commonly known (though

uncommonly spoken and written) that the solar system (and etc..) did not revolve around the earth, as in this offering.  There are some other curious elements to the woodcut, some of which I really just don’t understand. 

First of all, though, the image represents Creation, with Earth at the center, surrounded by 13 spheres:  the first three are the rest of the elements (earth followed by water, wind and fire), then followed by the Moon (showing a last-quarter Moon in picture) and Mercury and Venus.  The Sun comes next, followed by Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.  The planets are encapsulated by three final spheres:  the Firmamentus (including the upper sky and the planets), the Cristelenus (which is a term I am not familiar with), and the (Premium) Mobile, the sphere of the Prime Mover, God, and Heaven. 

There are almost-allegories in the corners of the print, the upper two showing sowing and reaping, bu the bottom two are quite different to me.  At lower right we have two workers of some sort (one has an axe), stopping and refreshing themselves with a d rink.  Curiously, it seems to me that nothing at all in this picture generates a shadow except for the three stones in the middle foreground at bottom.)  Then there is the arrival of the ship at left-bottom, which I must say I’ve never seen in any of these sorts of representations of the universe…I’m not sure why this was included; the obvious symbolism really doesn’t apply to what is going on in this print, not really.

The other thing that is strange to me is the very pronounced inclusion of the constellation Hydra—the long, undulating water snake prominently placed in the upper middle of the universe system.  It is the largest of the
modern constellations, and it does have a relation to Hercules (being defeated by him in his second labor) and is a

topic in the Aeneid, but I’m still not sure why this above almost all other constellations. There is actually a little connection between the ship and bottom left and the Hydra, as the constellation nearly touching the Hydra is the Argo Navis, which at one point was the sails of Jason (and the Argonaut’s) ship Argo.  Still the connection is pretty tenuous; I’m probably missing the entire connecting theme for all of the surrounding imagery. 

All in all though it is a lovely thing, this cosmology.