The Oldest Image of a Flying Pig? An Adynaton Antiquarian Illustration, 1687.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 905

How old is the  saying, or rejoinder, “…when pigs fly”?  I dunno, and frankly it doesn’t really matter. Except for right now, when I found this rather extraordinary image of a pig-in-the-sky from 1687.  It isn’t a flying pig, but I’m not sure what it is:  the origin of the image is from J.de  Dalence, Traite de l’Aiman (publihsed in Amsterdam in 1687), a book about the history of magnetism.  But nothing else matters, just the flying, atmos-floating pig, right there in the sky, perfect against a puffy cloud. 

I suspect—without any intention of doing any research on my suspicion—that this may very well be the earliest depigtion of a flying pig.  And it just so happens to have appeared in the same year of Newton’s great Principigia. 

And just for the record, I wonder how often anyone sees an image 300+ or more years old of any of the other great adynations? For example, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”  from the Book of Matthew, 19:24, just doesn’t seem to lend itself to empirical description, as it would pretty much lessen and defeat the purpose of the literary description.

The flying pig, though, may be a horse of a different color, so to speak.