Things out of Place Department: a Cloud of Magnetism in the Sky Poked by the Needle of God

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 508

"And even though I'm sitting waiting for Mars
I don't believe there's any future in cause
Hole in the sky, gate way to heaven
Window in time, through it I fly..."

Black Sabbath, "Hole in the Sky", 1975

Well, there were many liberties taken with this title, though on the face of it, the title is correct (sort of).   This image comes from a relatively obscure (or at least quite rare) copy of  Joachim Dalance's work Traite de l'Aiman, divise en deux parties, la premiere continent les Experiences et la seconde les raisons que l'on en peut rendre... which was printed by Henry Weinstein in Amsterdam in 1687 (just across the waters in London Isaac Newton's fantabulous Prinmcipa Mathemtica was being printed in the same year).    This important work on magnetism featured a number of good and useful observations on magnetism, interspersed with some semi-useless bits:  the magnetically floated coffin of Mohamets is mentioned and disproved, the origin of magnetism is asserted by hypothesis and is not pretty, along with some "fanciful conception(s) of the magnet's potential"*; on the other hand, there is a mention of the invention of the compass, the real use of magnets, a mention of declination, and the orientation of a compass needle in a magnetic field is shown.  All pretty good stuff, considering the time.  (The magnum opus on the magnet was published in 1600m by William Gilbert and was called De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure (On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on the Great Magnet the Earth), though folks have been writing on magnetism since Aristotle and Thales)

M. Hofer, the author of the quote above, mentions that the pamphlet's images "are particularly good scientific illustrations", though doesn't mention this, figure 2, as being anything significant.  Trying to dissect the phenomenal imagery, which purports to depict the origins of the sources of magnetism, we see something like a "magnetic cloud" in the sky, about to be pricked by a needle held by the primum mobile.  That, or it is a missing piece of sky, a gapping hole, though not in the sense of what we're getting now in the ozone layer, or in the fantastic billion-light-year wide swath of nothingness in the foamy universe.  Perhaps it is more like the Black Sabbath lyrics after all, a hole in the sky, pricked by the creator, to loosen the fabric of magnetism and getting a glimpse of heaven.    Or something.  

[I should point out that Dalance was an out-and-about guy, with high-level correspondence, and who seemed to be at the right places at the right time.  Among many contributions to the sciences, Dalance--who was a friend of Henry Oldenbourg, helped introduce Huygens to the Royal Society as well as to the French Academy of Sciences, acting as an intermediary for the most part.  He seems to be an interesting guy.]

*--Ph. Hofer, Baroque Book Illustration, page 42

Comments

[Jeff]

It's the obvious thing to say, but ... do you think he had some notion about lightning? About electromagnetism? About potential energy? Or maybe he'd just come from the Sistine Chapel.

[John Ptak]

Great questions. The study of lightning--outside of sparky in Leyden jars--really didn't take place until Franklin towards the end of the 1780's. I'm not sure when lightning types get named, but I suspect it is very recent. Electromag doesn't really get born until Oersted and Ampere, both around 1820. So Dalance was stuck about 100-150 years too early to do any scientific thinking about this stuff is my guess.

[Jeff]

I was just wondering if he might have had a sense of some interconnectedness he could not articulate but which leaked out in this picture. Maybe the artist hit on something, rather than Dalance. Anyway, that picture is cries out for interpretation. There's always the Mother-Ship-in-the-cloud theory, too.

[John Ptak]

Ahh, yesss.... I'm afraid I just don't know enough about the Dalance book to make a real stab at this. It does look a bit like all of nothingness, or all of somethingness, so much of something that everything that is going on is just static. Or nothing. On the other hand maybe the hand in the picture, the hand of the creator, is being puffed up by the Void, and not the hand pricking it--it is a pipette coming out of the Void Cloud, pumping up God, the God of the God, which is Nothing.

[Jeff]

Nice. You could have written the Bible, John. Think how rich you could be.

[John Ptak]

Well, huh. I do have the name for it. The first name that is. Did you know that my surname is the unutterable and most untranslatable of all Klingon curses?

[Jeff]

Maybe the Klingon universe was created in part by someone you went to school with? Did you ever steal a girl from a geeky classmate? Laugh at him in the locker room?

[John Ptak]

Jeff, I was a good boy. Or not. But it does seem a little out of the way to get my name into such an exaltedly low position. On the other hand, it has been on comic books before (are movies comics?). Sgt Nick Fury ran across a wooden boat dock being pursued by men with guns, the bullets hitting beneath his feet on the wood, making a "ptak ptak ptak" sound. And other stuff like that. Kinda like Staten Island in tv crime shows--SI never gets a break. People are marooned there, bodies are dumped there, mobsters escape there, and on and on.