JF Ptak Science Books

Beautiful Circles in Science #1: the Astronomy and Cosmology of Fontenelle and the Plurality of Worlds, 1686.

JF Ptak Science Books Post #69

This first lovely image belongs to Entretiens sur la Pluralitie de Mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds), written by the great French philosophe Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle in 1686 (just a year before publication of perhaps the greatest work in the history of science, Newton’s Principia Mathematica). The Plurality was a best-seller by the best-selling Fontenelle. An excellent attempt by a rather restricted writer to engage the population-at-large, writing a high-pop book on what was basically the history of astronomy and cosmology of the preceding century. Copernicus was a major feature of his imaginary conversations with a muse as he wandered through a metaphorical garden of questions, with the observations of Galileo and Cassini also very prominently featured.

Fontenelle’s Pluraltiy was amended, added to, and fattened up for a long time, the author adding material to it constantly for years to come—the book went through at least 33 editions during Fontenelle’s hundred-year-long life (1657-1757). This engraving was meant to be allegorical, illustrating a Copernican planetary system which was surrounded by galactic clouds comprised of other solar systems—prescient and forward thinking, as it wasn’t until the last 15 years or so that a solar system was discovered outside our own. (This until recently was a tremendously difficult feat to accomplish—instrumentation and practices now are advanced, but it is still an extremely difficult task to locate extra-solar system planets and systems.) 

What makes this engraving so particular and attractive to me, and the reason why it is listed first in this series of scientific circles, is because of its beauty and “deep depth”. The artist certainly related the compound nature and depth of the universe, revealed to us from behind drawn curtains. Our solar system is featured prominently, with hosts of other solar systems borne on each puff of extragalactic clouds, reahcing, or descending, "all the way down Or up)".  Fontenelle believed in the infinity of world and the enormous-by-reason possibilities of the universe, as we see in this extra from Plurality:

I shou'd think it very strange, that the Earth shou'd be inhabited as it is; and the other Planets shou'd be so entirely desolate and deserted: For you must not think, that we see all the living Creatures that inhabit the Earth. For there are as many several species and kinds of Animals invisible as there are visible. We see distinctly from the Elephant to the Mite; there our sight is bounded, and there are infinite numbers of living Creatures lesser than a Mite, to whom, a Mite is as big in proportion, as an Elephant is to it. The late invention of Glasses call'd Microscopes, have discover'd thousands of small living Creatures, in certain Liquors, which we cou'd never have imagin'd to have been there. And it may be the different tastes of these Liquors, proceed from these little Animals, who bite, and sting our Tongues and Palates. If you mix certain ingredients in these Liquors, (as Pepper in Water,) and expose 'em to the heat of the Sun, or let 'em putrefie, you shall see other new species or living Creatures. Several Bodies, which appear to be solid, are nothing else but Collections or little heaps of these imperceptible Animals; who find there as much room, as is requisite for them to move in. The leaf of a Tree, is a little World inhabited, by such invisible little Worms: To them this leaf seems of a vast Extent, they find Hills and Valleys upon it: And there is no more Communication between the living Creatures on the one side, and those on the other, than between us and the Antipodes. And I think there is more reason, to believe a Planet (which is so vast a Body) to be inhabited. There has been found in several sorts of very hard Stones, infinite multitudes of little Worms
, lodg'd all over them in insensible varieties; and who are nourish'd upon the Substance of these Stones which they eat. Consider the vast Numbers of these little Animals, and how long a tract of Years they have liv'd upon a grain of Sand. And by this Argument, tho my Moon were nothing but a confus'd heap of Marble Rocks, I wou'd rather make it be devour'd and consum'd by its Inhabitants, than to place none at all in it."

CONTINUE:

Graphical Display of Data—Picturing BIG Numbers, U.S. Aircraft Production in World War II

JF Ptak Science Books  LLC
This widely circulated and published photo appeared in 1942 (particularly in LIFE Magazine in 17 September 1942 and the Illustrated London News in the next month), and showed 4,500 aircraft models suspended from the ceiling of Chicago’s Union Station   It is the result of an inspiration derived from President Franklin Roosevelt’s assertion that America would produce 185,000 war-focused aircraft in 1942 and 1943. 

The planes in this photo were hanging 60-feet above the floor of the station, with wing spans between one foot and four feet (for the bombers).  It was a fantastic, blustery, iconic effort to show what it meant to look at 4500 planes—and these paled in comparison to a drawing (which I unfortunately do not have) that appeared in the Illustrated London News on 21 February 1941, showing the entire production fleet of 185,000 aircraft—a column of planes one mile wide and 117 miles long.

Using this photo then to interpolate that full production figure of 185k, you’d have to piece 48 of these photos together to show full production, or a version of this photo that was 8 inches wide and 32 feet long.  (The second image of Union Station and the planes is by FSA photographer Jack Delano.)

The Nature of Things & the Display of Information: Alhazen and Optics, 1572

JF Ptak Science Books LLC
Alhazen, (pseudonym of Abu Ali Hasan Ibn al-Haitham), born in Basra, Iraq, and who lived from 965-1039, was perhaps the greatest of all the great Muslim physicists, and was also one of the greatest physicists with an interest in optics of all time. Considered to be “the father of modern optics”, he was an original thinker and an historian, an overall scientist,  preserving the ancient, accentuating the modern and creative in his own right.

The woodcut illustration—deceptively complex but rather simple once you focus-- from his book Opticae thesavrvs. Alhazeni Arabis libri septem, nuncprimum editi. Eivsdem liber De crepvscvlis & nubium ascensionibus… demonstrates a number of optical principles--if you look hard enough. (The Opticae by the way was about the only one of his 200 or so books to have survived the destructive powers of time and neglect.)  In the foreground we see tow examples in the field of optics of keen interest to Alhazen. The man standing in the puddle up to his knees in water shows the distortion that occurs due to refraction (an area in which he greatly improved upon Ptolemy’s understanding) The guy to the right of naked knee-distorted man is probably using his mirror to keep an eye out on what was happening behind him (it looks as though the person he’s spying is not him but someone hiding behind the hillock). This small defensive use of the mirror pales in comparison to what was happening as a cause of mirrors directly behind him: the galleons are definitely being set ablaze by the Archimedean-like use of mirrors in the city on the far side of the harbor (like Syracuse), and we can see that one of the ships is already nearly sunken.

 The bridge (with the loitering elephants ?) is set to exhibit the knowledge of perspective, even though this is not the best example of receding background-- it was through Alhazen that a very considerable part of that science found its way into Medieval and Renaissance culture, particularly in the artwork of  Ghiberti, Alberti, Leonardo, and later, Poussin.  Roger Bacon (13^th c), Pole Witelo (Vitellio) and most of the other Medieval Western writers on optics based their optical work primarily on Alhazen’s work. ' (The use and choice of the elephant on the bridge is a mystery to me, particularly since we don’t see one on the other side of the bridge, which would’ve been helpful to illuminate the perspective bit.)  The rainbow in the background is there simply to remind us of the already well-known association of its formation and light. The setting sun might also hint at Alhazen’s discussion of the density of the atmosphere and the relation between it and  height—he would go on to discover that origin and breadth of twilight, the height of the atmosphere, and many other things back there one thousand years ago. This woodcut hints at only a few of his great achievements.

 

 

Beautiful Title Pages 1—Oswald Croll’s Chemistry, 1611

Oswald Croll is a big name in the history of chemistry.  At a time where so many other Big Names were writing books about chemistry as a science, Croll wrote a scientific book of chemistry.  Paracellus, one of the greatest of these big names, wrote rather vaguely and in a sense secretively about his preparations and compositions, as well as their use and applications; Croll on the other hand writes in great and exhaustive detail about just such things that Paracelsus leaves out. 

The title page to his Croll, Oswald. BASILICA CHYMICA. Continens Philosophicam propriam laborum experientiam confirmatam descriptionem et usum Remediorum Chymicorum Selectissimorum e Lumine Gratiae et Naturae desumptorum. In fine libri additus est Auctoris ejusdem Tractatus Novus De Signaturis Rerum Internis, was printed in 1611—probably two years after Croll’s death—and is a gorgeous display of allegorical and historical images. The allegorical parts are a bit out of my range, but the historical figures are easy enough (being identified!), and include Hermes Trismegistrus, Geber, Morienes, (the great) Roger Bacon, (the magnificent) Ramon Lull and Paracelsus.

I like the Croll as the beginning of a series of images of beautiful title pages in the history of science.

Roe v. Doe & Great Anonymous works: Darwin, Newton, Malthus, Paine

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 13

There was a brief point in Charles Darwin’s publishing life when the old (then young) man got stiffed.   Darwin’s magisterial contribution to Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of her Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the years 1S26 and 1836…, (published in 1839) appeared in the third volume,  (by far and away the most important volume), and was issued without his name on the title page, which as it turns out was okay by the standards of the day.  The real oddness turns up in  the publisher’s ads that appeared in the later issues of those volumes in late 1839 for what would be a separately-issued volume of Darwin’s contribution (Journal of Researches into the Geology…), where there was no mention of the author’s name. (Captain Robert Fitz-Roy,  the man whose name adorned those early volumes, was the Captain of the Beagle and a man of high accomplishment and some pioneering meteorological ideas.)  

The history of world literature ancient and modern abounds in silenced or self-silenced authors—there is even a four volume encyclopedia to help you identify the unidentified. . Political and religious work are also particularly heavily laden with unattributed or disguised efforts—the U.S. Constitution and the Federalist Papers are of course both anonymous (and of necessity), as was the most beautiful work of Voltaire.  The Declaration of Independence, on the other hand, and also of necessity, was not.  What is that  they say?  Anonymity is the best defense against the tyranny of the majority”?  It still feels a little Orwellian to see the unattributed source in the newspaper or read an anonymous editorial.   On the other hand Thomas Paine’s On Common Sense may not have made it into print if its author had been required to identify himself. 

Art is perhaps the longest-lived area of anonymous work, the signed canvas being a relatively recent invention.  There are thousands of years of unknown hands and eyes represented in millions of works, but really we only get solid confirmation of the intellectual origin of a work through the invention of the ornament of the signature, and this just within the last 500 years.  And even after this defacement begins to appear there is still a relatively stout history of semi-anonymous works coming from painting studios doing work “in the manner of ____”.  Of course there were other considerations at play here, what with guilds and patrons and all—the artist was one person in a lengthy bureaucratic trail of aesthetic production.

Anonymous seems to come more into play in our present culture via the need for a place holder—when tallying and accounting the death of unknown people, for example, the name “John Doe” or “Jane Roe” is used (in the U.S.) to take up the forever empty space calling for The Departed’s name. (Our most famous “Jane Roe” is Norma McVorvey of Roe v. Wade; I think the Gary Cooper film ("Meet John Doe") still ranks the highest for the male equivalent.)  Something has to go there in that empty space, and so it does--the placeholder name. (The practice of using such names is actually pretty old, and is practiced worldwide. See HERE  for an entertaining look at multi-cross-cultural “John Doe” equivalents.)

And now that I’ve had some time to think about non-Darwin examples from the sciences, I’m a little stumped.  Robert Boyle is a good example, what with more than a dozen of his works (at least according to John Fulton’s bibliography) were published without his name carrying the title page-but these were the philosophical and political works of a scientist, and not scientific.  Same too for Pascal, who wrote his Pensees undercover—and again, not scientific but by a scientist.  Isaac Newton published his  Opticks without his name on the title and in fact only used his initials in the preface as his personal identifiers. 

That leads us to a final example of Thomas Malthus, who really did publish the first printing of his massively important Essay on Population without his name—it would make an appearance soon after, though, in the second edition of this contentious work making the first edition of this great near-scientific work one of the most influential anonymously published  books of the last 250 years.   

An unusual example of "anonymous" was Copernicus, the ultimate anonymous author of a scientific work because he intended not to publish i fearing reprisals for his challenging and revolutionary work. He waited until he was basically nearly dead to have his effort put into print, and so overcame his anonymity issue in print to adopt a biological anonymity enjoyed by the dead, his body loosened from the grip of his name so far as reprisals went.  He was free from fear of all anxiety and moral espionage at this point, and he did see the work brought to public display. with his name very boldly displayed on the title page.