JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post 370

Blank and Empty series, Part 18.

Jean-Jacques Scheuchzer created this cold, lonely, empty picture of the creator’s handiwork on the second day of “creation”.  It is found in his Kupfer-Bibel, in welcher die Physica sacra, oder geheiligte Natur-Wissenschafft derer in heil. Schrifft vorkommenden naturlichen sachen, deutlich erklart und bewahrt, printed in Augsburg and  Ulm by  C.U. Wagner, 1731-1735. Offered in four volumes, illustrated with 758 plates, it is a magnificent work, if not altogether correct, or even near- correct, with an enormously confused pedigree, implying the wisdom and text of the Bible (and the old Testament at that) as the background for a physical history of the world.  BE that as it may, Scheuchzer was an able scientist, professor of mathematics and physics, director of libraries, and somewhere in there he became one of the founders of paleontology.  This work is a little hard for me to understand as piece of the history of science; its hard to get around the incredible ideas ensconced in deeply Baroque borders.  This sort of encyclopedic approach to knowledge—especially without the Bible part—would have to wait another 45 years ro so for the great work of Diderot.  For now, we are left here in 1735 with this picture of the empty Earth, waiting for the rest of it.