The Power of Images in Early Modern Science

Wolfgang Lefevre, Jiirgen Renn, and Vrs Schoepflin General The origin of this volume is a workshop held has a deeper, more complex structure which in 1997 in Berlin as part of a series of work­ must be assumed if its analysis is only based shops organized in the framework of the on text. In fact, the analysis of the function of Network on Science and the Visual Images images in the early modern period shows that 1500 - 1800 funded by the European Science they mediated not only between science and Foundation and initiated by William Shea. its cultural context, but also between practi­ Meanwhile a selection of contributions was cal knowledge and its theoretical reflection thoroughly revised and prepared for publica­ in scientific theories. tion together with additionally invited papers The analysis of images thus constitutes an for this book. The result is a volume which important branch of the history of science we hope corresponds to the original inten­ that on the one hand is conceived of as part tion of the Network to contribute to a histori­ of a more general history of culture and on cal reconstruction of the role of images in the the other hand as a historical epistemology of history of science, still neglected because of knowledge. This book is not a systematic and the traditional focus of the history of science comprehensive account of scientific images on texts corresponding to a concentration on and the early modern period.

I. Mechanics Between Practical and Theoretical Knowledge and the Mediatory Function of Images.- The Challenging Images of Artillery: Practical Knowledge at the Roots of the Scientific Revolution.- Ships, Science and the Three Traditions of Early Modern Design.- Art and Artifice in the Depiction of Renaissance Machines.- The Limits of Pictures: Cognitive Functions of Images in Practical Mechanics — 1400 to 1600.- Reframing the Language of Inventions: The First Theatre of Machines.- II. Theories of Matter Between Alchemy and Atomism and the Autonomy of Images.- Alchemical Iconography at the Dawn of the Modern Age: The Splendor solis of Salomon Trismosin.- The Invention of Atomist Iconography.- III. The Classification of Life and the Interaction Between Images and Texts.- Image and Text in Natural History, 1500–1700.- Notes on the Function of Early Zoological Imagery.- Elephant, Mammoth, Unicorn, or What?: Notes on the Interrelations of Pictures and Texts in Leibniz.- IV. Depicting the World at Large and the Hidden Potential of Images.- Planetary Diagrams — Descriptions, Models, Theories: From Carolingian Deployments to Copernican Debates.- Images, Models and Symbols in Copernican Propaganda.- Edmond Halley and Visual Representation in Natural Philosophy.- V. Systems of Knowledge and their Representation by Images.- Encyclopaedias and Architecture in the Sixteenth Century.- The Mathematical Sciences in Raphael’s School of Athens.