JF Ptak Science Books

Imaging Science: Very Populated but not-Crowded Images, 1728

JF Ptak Science Books      Post 1821

Rene Magritte says that this is not a pipe.  And of course he is correct--it isn't a pipe; it is a painting of a pipe.  And so the Surrealist (or the man who was a painter who painted in a style known as Surrealisme) establishes a bit of character in the history of images in a painting known as The Treachery of Images. 

I am very attracted to non-treacherous displays of scientific evidence and thinking, particularly those illustrations for encyclopediae and large works on large things, universal assemblies of the state of knowledge in some past century, the engraved page holding dozens of pieces of data.  It is a beautiful thing when the page gets very populated but not crowded, when there is room enough for not one more image but plenty of room for what is there.  There is a great elegance to this sort of display, and it is one that escapes me almost completely.

I recently found that the great encyclopedia established by Ephraim Chambers (and associates and related contributors and many others) called, at great-but-acceptable length, Cyclopædia, or, An universal dictionary of arts and sciences : containing the definitions of the terms, and accounts of the things signify'd thereby, in the several arts, both liberal and mechanical, and the several sciences, human and divine : the figures, kinds, properties, productions, preparations, and uses, of things natural and artificial : the rise, progress, and state of things ecclesiastical, civil, military, and commercial : with the several systems, sects, opinions, &c : among philosophers, divines, mathematicians, physicians, antiquaries, criticks, &c : the whole intended as a course of antient and modern learning, and printed in 1728, was available online in searchable form.  (Source, here.) It is a wonderful and magnificent thing, this book, which was a collection of virtually everything that needed to be known in the early 18th century and included in two tall (41 cm) volumes. 

It was pretty popular, too, going into a second edition in 1738, and then five more between 1739-1751/2.  It went into a final edition, expanded by five more volumes, after the death of Chambers, and continued to reach and educate people in a new fashion long after his death. 

The Chambers work is one of those whose illustrations are very full and uncrowded, a fine display of sense-of-place and placement and of good design.  Here's a selection of the images, including the following outlines of nature (A general table of fossils; Botany tab 1 Herbs and trees; Botany tab 2 Distinctions of the leaves, flowers, and cups of plants; Botany tab 3 The genera of mosses; Quadrupeds and serpents; The more scarce and curious birds; The most scarce and remarkable fishes; Insects; Testaceous and crustaceous animals; A general table of shells; Microscopical objects and discoveries):

 

Telling the Future with Urine and Bones: the Lyricism of Urine Wheels

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1820

For many centuries people have been trying to control the future, seeing into future’s past, using tea leaves, foreheads, palm prints, brain bumps, nose angles, the position of the stars, rolled animal bones and printed interpretations of the creator of the universe.  Some of these have faded into embarrassed obscurity, but only some; some methods are present today, stronger than ever. 

The rolled bones part of this makes the prettiest pictures, I think: for example, this image from Paul Pambst¹ (published in 1546) shows some of the dice combinations and what they would correspond to in the revolving paper disks and columns of interpretations in the body of the book, a simple throwing of shaped animal residue somehow laying claim to predictive power.  Not that it is much different from any of the other divination methods. 

One such method that had been in strong and continued use for thousands of years and is now mostly relegated to dust is the heated up and swirling inspection of urine.  It was thought for millenia that pee held secrets to what was going on inside the body, and that was mostly true, except that given the state of medical knowledge the only thing that the practioner could do with the sample was hold it up to the light and make good solid guesses on how color/consistency corresponded to the patient.  A reddish tint (as we see here in this painting by Gerrit Dou (1613-1675, and who made an appearance in yesterday’s post) might suggest that the (female) subject was suffering from morbens virginus (uterine hysteria, “a signifying of too much concoction in the body”), which, when the imaginary disease/unease was diagnosed would’ve led to lead consumption and a good bleeding.

 Moving slightly up the alpha from Pambst is Udalr Pinder, whose Epiphanie Medicorum…² (published in Nurnberg in 1506) is a state-of-the-art disposition on urine inspection, complete with this pee color wheel.  This idea is as interesting as it is entertaining, because at its base is a scientific aspect of trying to establish a common (color) base for discussion of specimens.  The color descriptions (taken in translation from Kirsten Jungersen’s  (MA, classical philologist, visiting scholar, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen) “The relation between text and colours in medieval urine wheels” (here) are poetic, lyrical. They are also a small insight into common things of the 15^th century, the author selecting colors from things that were ubiquitous and known to everyone, and so in this way could be used as a basis for the common understanding of a given color. 

And so here are the glorious colors (complete in “extended reading” below with the Latin above), most of which I’ve never heard as descriptors…and would love to see as an adopted sub-there by Crayola (“Crayola Urine Wheel Colors”):

“Bluish-grey as camel skin; White as wellwater; Light blue/green/grey as lucid horn; Milky as whey of milk; Slightly pale as a not reduced juice of Meat; Pale yellow as of a not reduced lemon; Wine-red as of animal liver; Black as very dark horn; Ruddy as pure intense gold; Green as green cabbage.”  And of course:

“Slightly red as a lowered flame of fire”

and

“Red as a flame of fire not lowered”

 They’re lovely!

But of course none of this was actually going to help anyone very much, especially when you moved from uroscopy into urinomancy (not a word one gets to use very often), where instead of trying to diagnose dis-ease the urinomancer would try to diagnose the future.  Often heat was applied to the jar (matula) of urine, which would do, well, I don’t know what.  It certainly looks dramatic, and makes for some excellent opportunities for artists to discern candle-lit color and wonderful reflections (as in Dou).  Actually, it was in this way that the golden color of urine was determined (poor alchemists!) not to come from gold at all—urine was finally boiled away until its component urea was discovered (in 1773)³. So heat did have a real and important function, but it took hundreds of years to get there properly.

And so it goes that predicting the future with urine was swept into histories dark places, though somehow bone throwers and astrologers managed to escape this fate. 

Notes:
  1. Paul Pambst. Loozbuch zu ehren der Roemischen…published in Strassburg in 1546.  The Robert Sabuda website for popup books ahs a very good short essay on this book, here.

2. Epiphanie Medicorum. Speculum videndi urinas hominum. Clavis aperiendi portas pulsuum. Berillus discernendi causas & differentias febrium.

3.  H.M. Rouelle first discovered and isolated  1773, and then synthesized by Friedrich Woehler in 1828. This was big and important stuff.
 

Color Wheel Colors, continued below:

An Interesting Concentric Graphic and the Number 12 (Twelve XII 2^3X3)

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1819

Oh TIme, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me t'untie! -- Twelfth Night. 2.2.40-41

I really should have included this in yesterday's post about a terrific and creative image of concentric circles used early-on to display concepts of terrestrial distance and importance (A Table of the Cheifest Cities and Towns in England, printed in London in 1600,  ), as they both use this organizing concept in a bit of an uncommon way.  This image appears in  Charles de Bouelles' beautifully titled Que hoc volumine continuentur; Liber de intellectu; Liber de sensu; Liber de Nichilo; Ars oppositorum; Liber de generatione; Liber de sapiente; Liber de duodecim numeris; Epistole complures, and printed in 1510 in Paris (from which also appears another interesting image on the "evolution" of the rock from being to thinking to being again, here), and maps the importance of the city of Jerusalem, but more importantly places its significance in the histories of the number twelve, centering on the city itself and the twelve tribes of Iraeli, and then branching out in more creative listable ways.

Besides the twelve tribes, there are the twelve constellations of the ecliptic, Apostles, knights of the Round Table, trials of Hercules, Olympians, sons of Odin, books of Paradise Lost and the Aeneid, hues of the color wheel, inches, months, dozen, virtues, Olympians, half unit of the day, and on and on. 

There are twelves enough to carry out just about any iconographic need, and that limited to just occidental resources.

Source:  Les Pierres du Songe, Etudes sur les graffiti medievans, here.

A Fine Graphic: "A Table of the Cheifest Cities and Towns in England", 1600

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Here's a rather remarkable and ingenious display of information and distance usually reserved to show the structure of the solar system.  A Table of the Cheifest Cities and Towns in England, printed in London in 1600, the work of an anonymous thinker, utilized the standard and generally universal salient for the planets to show distances of cities and towns from the center of the British universe, London.  

Source: Doug Eskew, "Coriolanus and the Paradox of Place", here.

The Evolution of the Rock: the Progress from Exisitng to Thinking and Back Again, 1510

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1818

This delightful semi-progression of existence was found in Charles de Bouelles' beautifully titled Que hoc volumine continuentur; Liber de intellectu; Liber de sensu; Liber de Nichilo; Ars oppositorum; Liber de generatione; Liber de sapiente; Liber de duodecim numeris; Epistole complures, and printed in 1510 in Paris.  It is, in a way, in a light way, truly a representation of a literal progress of the state of things, perhaps from an  Aristotlean point-of-view.

I've no real expertise in this matter whatsoever, and I don't know the de Bouelles book, but I can do a bit of interpretation of the woodcut, which displays different stages of the existence of all manner of things--of all things.

It starts at left with a rock, with an inanimate object ("Minerale", and then "Petra":, with the overall statement of its being, "est"--that it, it "exists".  This is the common basis to all eight stages of progress:  "est" all the way across, and all the way down. 

Next are the plants, the "vegetables"and "arbor", which live ("vivit"); followed at close heal by animals, "equus", which have"sensibilite", or senses. and sense, "sentit", which is a shared ability of four of the eight stages.

The shared height of progress comes next, in man, of "rationale", who is capable of thought ("intelligit"); these factors are shared by the scholar ("studiosis", who comes next, "virtus").   It is next that we start our descent, back to the simple existence of things, to the "est": the sensate, living, existing luxuriant, observing himself in a mirror, determined to see all that was possible to see.  "Luxuria" follows, a man eating, enjoying nothing but the pleasure of consumption, simply "living"/Vivit".  And then, lastly, to "acedia", to the indolent man, sitting, performing no task, doing nothing:  existing, "est".  Up and down, back to the rock. 

Antiquarian Comparative Analysis: Lakes, Islands, Mountains

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1817

1856 may have been the first time that these 150+ lakes and islands of the Western and Eastern Hemisphere were ever been printed on the same page and in the same scale exclusive of their associative land masses and placed contiguously, side-by-side.  They were, of course, seen in a common perspective before on any world map, but I think that this is the first year in which the islands and lakes of the world were displayed without oceans and land masses, and the effect is a little odd.  If you take away the color and the text the image takes on a very definite biological flavor (I keep thinking of that tiny bone in the ear for the small lakes…)  In any event it is far easier to compare these features without the distractions of the non-lakes and non-islands clouding and confusing our perspective fields.

This was also the beginning of the heyday of publishing comparative this-and-that in atlases:  from 1840-1880 or so was the period in which the majority of descriptive comparatives were published.  This is when you would see comparatives of the lengths of rivers and the heights of mountains and waterfalls beautifully displayed in atlases.  I don’t know what happened after then, but the publication of this sort of data really fell off, with the heights of mountains/lengths of rivers stuff relegated to filling the empty areas in double-hemisphere world maps 

Here’s a relatively early image of this type called “A View of the Comparative Lengths of the Principal Rivers and Heights of the Principal Mountains in the World”, published by Orr & Smith in London (1836), featuring 44 rivers and a hundred or so mountains.  It is a lovely and graphically pleasing work, and an early effort in displaying the dissected river and mountains in such a forensic-like way.

This I think is my favorite genre of specialty map, and I plan to write on them in great detail (and heavily illustrated) in just a bit; but, for now, I’d just like to surface this map by George Colton, and admire it, and try to imagine the kind of impact it must’ve had on people back there in 1856 who were seeing this sort of data displayed so for the first tine.  It would have been a huge revelation to see the lakes and islands compared side-by-side; it was a fresh, new idea, and an insight in how to look at things in general.

A History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things: Pain

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1816  Part of the History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things series

This curious woodcut is found in Lorenz Heister's (1683-1758) Chirurgie, in welcher alles, was zur Wundarzney gehöret, nach der neuesten und besten Art, gründlich abgehandelt, und in 38 Kupfertaf, die neuerfundene und dienlichste Instrumente, nebst den bequemsten Handgriffen der chirurgischen Operationen und Bandagen deutlich vorgestellet werden.  Hesiter was a Nuremberger anatomist and botanist, but most importantly here one of Germany's leading surgeons--and as a matter of fact was the founder of scientific surgery in Germany as well. He studied at Giessen and then at Leyden, where he was taught by great lights such as Ruysch,  Bidloo, Albinus and Boerhaave.  His Chirurgie was first published in 1718 in German, and was soon reprinted many times, and then translated into Dutch, English Italian, Spanish, Latin and French.

The thing that gave me pause in the realm of pausible things, the thing that is probably the least likely to be considered "academic", was the issue of the expression on the faces of the people undergoing amputation in the illustrations of the book.  In the pre-general anaesthesia days of Hester, the man (above in detail and below) is remarkably composed, as is the person undergoing the arm amputation.  It is all quite neat, orderly, non-chaotic and clean. And seemingly painless.

The word "anaesthesia" didn't even exist until 1846 (Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr), when William T.G. Morton made the first successful use of it in the fabulously-named Ether Dome of Massachusetts General Hospital.   I guess the doctors could've dumbed these patients up with opium or other narcotics--but the sponge that was soaked in the stuff and inhaled under the nose is not in evidence.  Of course, they might've ingested the narcotic, or smoked it, or had it applied, but I can't find any evidence of this in a quick look through the text.  The patients also could've been given diethyl ether (the general form of which is perhaps a Lullian invention of the 13th century, though the "aether" part of it came apart three decades before the Hester book with Frobenius), but again, I'm not sure.  Certainly they were given something and not riding out the operation on their own...we just don't know that from the book, which no doubt took the high-and-unscary-road to the issue of the cutting end of the amputation. 

 

Is Life Possible in Fewer than Three Dimensions?

JF Ptak Science Books    Quick Post

Hell is empty and the devils are all here--The Tempest   [Dedicated to Rohan Myers for causing me   to think about this...]    See also "The Dot and the Sphere--Picturing Multiple Dimensions", here.

Listening last night to a reading of The Tempest I was very soundly struck by this famous line--it made me think not so much of hell-on-Earth and all of the other permutations in this vein, but of difficult/devilish questions.  And what came out while I was listening to the play was this, something that seems difficult to me: 

Can life as we know it exist in fewer than three dimensions?

I've never really thought about this before, even after having written a fair amount about the impact of the thinking on the Fourth Dimension in the arts and sciences as well as the history of the rediscovery of perspective in general.  So while thinking about life and living and travel and so on in higher-than-the-third-dimension, it had never really come to me about thinking if it was possible for life to exist in less-than-three-dimensions.

It seems prima facie impossible, but why?  The first thing that came into my mind was that in order for there to be a functioning brain--assuming that there could be a brain, somehow, in the second dimension--there must be a way for the brain to connect with itself.  I do not think that the universe of axons and such could do their job if they had to intersect one one another rather than going above/below/around each other.  All other things being equal, this would be a conversation killer, I think. 

Perhaps it is as difficult to imagine this as it was stupendous for the figures in the two dimensional world in Edwin Abbott's Flatland to see a three dimensional figuring rising into itself from their world.  No doubt the question above is far more interesting than my answer.

History of Anticipation: Waiting for Everything

JF Ptak Science Books     Quick Post   Part of the History of Anticipation series and the History of Blank, Empty and Missing Things series.

Alchemy is far from my strong suit (or even a weak suit), but I was intrigued by this engraving found in Annibel Barlet's Le Vray Et Methodiqve Covrs de La Physiqve Resolvtive, Vvlgairement Dite Chymie: Represent Par Figures Generales & Particulieres. Povr Connoistre La Theotechnie Ergocosmiqve, C'Est Dire, L'Art de Diev, En L'Ovvrage de L'Vnivers..., which was ostensibly a work on alchemy, the second edition (used here) published in 1657.  Taking  a quick tour through the book it looks far more applied, far more medically-oriented, than a standard work on alchemy.  (And by "medical" I'm really meaning "pharmaceutical.)  I don't have the knowledge really to say  much about the application of the Paracelsian alchemical chemistry and how much the various human natures/humors/metals etc. come into play with the prescription--I'd say offhand that the R_xs would be necessarily a little suspect. 

[Images courtesy of the Beinecke Library, Yale University].

I'm visiting the book here though because of the image above, showing the hands of the Primum Mobile (or god) about to see themselves busy with the job of creating everything.  Or almost everything, as the shape of the container of All Things seems to be in place, held by the creating influence in an existence outside of the existence of existence.   Perhaps the artist was just depicting the local existence, with the hands and etc. located in the space beyond the known solar system of 1657, showing the alchemical creation of order in the vast sea of chaos.  It is curious to me how many concentric circles there are in the suggestive orb of possibilities, especially since the following image in Barlet's book shows considerably fewer place-holders.  Perhaps this is all easily explained with a little knowledge of alchemical history, which is something that I do not possess--but for the time being, I'm very entertained by what might be an excitement in that first engraving of the things-to-come. 

Later in the book is found this interestingdiagram bringing together some of the complicated alchemical beliefs of elemental relationships, this showing the coming-together/convergence of elements, humors and geocosmic bits

Fabulous Bathing Beauty Panoramic Photograph, 1925.

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Magnificentt.  Also I just couldn't resist presenting this image vertically to give some aspect of its presence, which is captivating. [Source: the Library of Congress, here].

Balboa Beach Bathing Party, 1925.

A Note on Good Instruction in Thinking for Kids, 1673

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1815

I foudn a curious book called Childrens talk, English & Latin... written by Charles Hoole, and the printed in 1673, in London, ostensibly to teach small ones the properties of Latin.  It is filled with interesting stories which are small tests to logic and testaments to what was to be expected behavior, as told in this story of a stolen knife.

[Source:  the Beinecke Library, Yale University].

One boy asks the other to borrow as knife, but the second boy is reticent, fearful that "it will suffer to travel" and not be returned, and wonders why the borrower needs to borrow,  The first boy explains that his knife was missing, and a nice little knife it was: little, dull, with a blunt point, brass studs, with a hole at the top. This is the description of the knife that the second boy is carrying, the first boy then putting the case to the second that this knife belongs to him, and that it was taken away, stolen.  The second boy makes the cases that the knife may well have belonged to boy one, but now it was his, having purchased it fair and square. 

"Surely it is a knife" says boy one.

"That means nothing to me" says boy two;

"But dare you buy stolen goods" boy one, to which the other responds with a sharp ""any without any difference".  This must've angered the knife pursuer, who states that anyone willfully and knowingly purchasing stolen goods is also committing a crime, "But you are as Ill as a thief".  The second boy is unmoved, stating "Put cases I am not". 

It all finally boils out that the case is taken to the school Master, who adjudicates in an interesting fashion--you'll just have to read for yourself, below.  It is all very interesting to me, shaping an argument for kids, having them think something through, and then have it all make sense in the end.  And in Latin. 

[More readable and expandable text below].

The Lincoln Memorial Pentimenti

JF Ptak Science Books     Quick Post

Henry Bacon  (1866-1924) was the architect of the Lincoln Memorial--it was his last major assignment and I should say his greatest.  I found in the Library of Congress some of the drawings  he made (completed 1910-1917) envisioning the space, and they included what might very loosely be called pentimenti of the statue of Lincoln that was to be provided by Daniel Chester Smith (1850-1931). They are really just placeholders, models, of how the finished statue would occupy the space.  When I saw these drawings I realized how perfectly the finished works lived together. 

A Note on Fear: The Blob, Elvis, Dien Bien Phu, & Gay Marriage.

JF Ptak Science Books     Post 1814

The Blob is probably not a "science fiction" movie because, well, it has very few science-y bits to it; it is also probably not a "monster" movie, either, as the Jell-O-like gelatinous character moved like an ancient stub-legged fat-dog that a person could slowly out-crawl to make good an escape. Maybe it really wasn't so much a "movie" at all, but more like a tonic, a slight refresher enjoyed only at the film's ending when you've realized that a cool 75 minutes was had in a refrigerated environment scooped out of a hot August day in 1958.

It was about a creeping fear of some sort. I doubt that the screenwriters had anything more to say about fear than that they would fear if their movie didn't generate some human monies.  But fear was big and very creeping in the United States at that time--the fullness of the Cold War was really just coming into its monumental and grinding play, with nuclear catastrophe lurking at every other corner.  Literally--city life was festooned with traffic signals and Civil Defense signs, the later showing the way for folks to crowd into underground or moderately protected areas to outweigh the cold heat of radioactivity and protect them from megatons of explosive sewage. Children at school were to take refuge from the

giant fireball under wooden desks¹, families built bomb shelter (complete with food and weapons to ensure the food stayed in the family), orderly evacuation plans for millions of cars were devised to empty out NYC and Boston and Chicago so that the even/odd license plates could be distributed properly into the countryside, plans were made to de-centralize cities so that the entire country would be a massive suburb, and on and on, into the empty nuclear night.

Nuclear annihilation was the great, arching fear above the still-massive supporting fear of Communism, the destroyer of decency and morality and god and individuality and everything else that there was to lose.  Overt fear coming from the USSR; covert fear coming in the form of Fifth Column folks, infiltrators,  screenwriters, conning actors, deviant milkmen, mischevious politicos, liberals, artists:  everywhere from anything.  Spot the Red/or Make me Dead.

Creeping Communism was everywhere and from everywhere the battle of fear must have been fought, which partially explains America's growing involvement with the doomed French as that country strained against all reasonableness to maintain control of the country of Vietnam. Fighting Ho Chi Minh since the end of the Second World War, the French finally ran out of themselves at Dien Bien Phu, which also marked the real beginning of U.S. involvement there (having already spent some billions in an ill-advised support of the cancerous French occupational effort).  Among the first American casualties in that long war would be an Army officer whose last words before being killed were in French: "Je suis Americaine". (The first true casualty in that war--as Goethe has said--was truth).

There was much in the science fiction world that suggested this fear, utter and complete devastation via aliens invasion or runaway nuclear strikes, all of which could be read about or seen in the movies, all supplements to the Great Fear going on outside.  Television would occasionally address these issues but in far lesser numbers than cloak-and-dagger great-goodness of the pathology of nice that was seen going on throughout America, the stuff that makes many people nostalgic for those times--Leave it to Beaver and such.  June Cleaver never had to deal with her boys getting burnt to a crisp at school under their desks. 

[1951]

The Blob's monster wasn't as fantastic as others, and its arrival was never really a question for consideration.  The teens depicted in the movie (including the lead-teen, played by just-shy-of-30 Steve McQueen) weren't really rebelling against anything except for a ruffled deputy sheriff, and at he generations managed to pull themselves together with much fuss to fight the strange invader.

There were of course no Black people in this movie.  Perhaps to white America, Blacks were another creeping fear coming in the guise of desegregation in the great and powerful landmark case of Brown v Board of Education. And Elvis.  Elvis, as the personification of early Rock and Roll, was seen as subjugating the morality of youth and corrupting culture in general with his music, much of which owed its existence to Black people. 

Back to The Blob:  the cure to the terror of its creep was easily found; and, once so, its disposal was just  a matter of short time.  It was a ridiculously easily solution. Cold.  The great creeping terror was frozen immutable by cold, and dropped (by parachute) somewhere near the North Pole, where it was to stay frozen forever.  Not so much with Slim Pickens/Major Kong riding his "Hey John" nuke down the throat of the Russkie first strike capacity, which in Dr. Strangelove found fire fighting fire, with everything ending up in flame.  In the simple The Blob, perhaps the feel-good message was the Cold War being won in the cold?  Well, I doubt that highly--int he end, it was just a not-good film, signifying nothing.  But the rest of all the other fears were very real. 

 

It is remarkable though that one of the greatest fears invented by humans in the 20th century--nuclear annihilation--is today pretty much abandoned, save for the rogue elements here and there trying to deliver a dirty bomb to some populous place.  Certainly discussions of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doesn't pop up anymore except in history classes.  And so fear comes and goes.  Such a fear was created with the adoption of equal (Voting) rights for women, and the equalizing of human rights for Black people.  The consequences of these changes were enormously fear by the status quo; a few decades later, the fear and its representations look silly (as in "how-could-that-possibily-have-been?)  to our children.  It makes me wonder what that Great Fear that beguiles so many today will be an embarrassment in 2030?  Gay marriage?  Immigration?  Both are excellent candidates.  Problem is, there are many others. 

Quiet, Beautiful Bathing Beauties, 1900

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These images are just quietly magnificent.  They were made by the Detroit Publishing Company, and published sometime between 1890 and 1900.  The original is a glass negative, and this digital copy appears on the Library of Congerss site, here. 

Instant Eve-olution and the Angel of Presumption

JF Ptak Science Books    Post 1812

There are in the history of belief and art instantaneous evolutions of various sorts--most famously of course in creation myths, and these most easily followed today in their images relating Old Testament belief, such as in the creation of the world, or more specifically in the example¹ (left) the creation of light.  But here we see the post-creation part, the vision of creation, the achievement.  It seems as though we don't really get to see the instantaneous creation half-way-through, or rarely so, the instant-evolution not quite complete.

I guess that we are recommended to believe the stuff in the middle, to assume it complete, to accept the Angel of Presumption to fill in the necessary blanks. (And here I'm not talking about the "Angel of Presumtpion" of Caedmon who refers to Satan in this way--I'm just taling about the Angel that bridges the missing bits in neural napping parts of real and suspect stories and events, the aid to continuity in imagination).

There are exceptions of course, though it seems like there are not many--one good example is the creation of Eve. In many Renaissance examples illustrating the Old Testament story we see Eve as she is emerging from the side of Adam, a snapshot of the process of the creation of woman that is also in some special way also a product of evolutionary development, only instantly. This would seem to remove this from consideration of being an "evolutionary" development, though there are more modern examples of a "faster" evolution, quicker and more reactive adaptation (as in the case of Galapagos finches study by Peter and Rosemary Grant² (Princeton), or the mercurial DNA changes to white flies in response to the introduction of certain bacteria. 

[Source:woodcut from Biblia cum postillis, Nicolai de Lyra, printed in Venice in 1489.]

But the creators of creations myths from which the stories of Adam and Eve have descended are long and very old, and the process of change in these cases didn't concern them--it was the outcome that was important. 

We do see this process displayed elsewhere to be sure, but it is a very uncommon peep into the creation of certain states of affairs.  Here's a another good example again coming from the Adam and Eve saga, this one showing the creation of man from clay--"Erschatflung des Menschen aus Lehm", from the great Liber cronicorum, and printed by Anthonis Koberger in Nurnberg in 1493:

The images showing partial development of a theme do seem to rest more heavily on the shoulders of Eve than anything else I can think of, presently.
There are many images that show events simultaneously, where on a single panel or canvas we will see a painting depicting multiple periods of time in a person's life, or a depiction of the Fall of Man showing temptation/apple-eating/Archangel banishment--but this is not a depiction of the instantaneous event in the process of creation.