JF Ptak Science Books     Daily Dose from Dr. Odd

This puts me in mind of the work of Albrecht Durer’s (1471-1528) revolutionary drawing
of a geometrical man, compartmentalizing the body into distinct
chunks–these and other woodcuts appeared in his Symmetria partium…humanorum corporum
and must have been an amazing, startling site for the new reader to
such things in 1537.

. 

To me this looks like visionary thinking in trying
to understand the motions of living beings with no actual way of
capturing the image in motion.  There’s also Erhard Schoen who published Unnderweissung der proportzion unnd stellung der possen, liegent und stehent…,which showed that the human form was reducible to connected but discrete Euclidean solids. This must’ve been an intriguing concept in the 16th century, this associate of form and function and the geometry of substance, all wrapped around the still-developing European re-discovery of perspective.  (A post on this subject appeared earlier in this blog here.)

I really just like the red background of the Plastic Durer Man.