SCHEMATIZING (49)
By:
December 11, 2024
One in a series of posts via which HILOBROW’S Josh Glenn will attempt to depict the intellectual and emotional highs and lows of developing a semiotic schema.
I mean, wow! The frontispiece to Itinerarium exstaticum quo mundi opificium, by Johann Friedrich Fleischberger, a Nuremberg engraver, thrillingly depicts the act of mapping a vast and complex system whose lines of force and influence can only be revealed through deduction, as a bold adventure — an odyssey into the unknown.
Itinerarium exstaticum is a 1656 work by the imaginative, brilliant Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher. It’s a work of science fantasy in which the angel Cosmiel, the authority (literally) on the cosmos, transports Theodidactus, a fellow who still holds some outdated, Aristotelian views on the nature of the solar system that need to be discarded, from the moon to Venus, Mercury, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and finally, the sphere of the fixed stars.
Via Cosmiel, Kircher advocates for Tycho Brahe’s “new” model of the universe (from 1588; note that Galileo’s still too-controversial Sidereus Nuncius, the first scientific work based on observations made through a telescope, which offered observational confirmation of Copernicus’s non-Aristotelian understanding of nature, had appeared in 1610), and occasionally entertains some heterodox ideas. We encounter here stars of different sizes, accompanied by planets, turning around each other and moving through space. The stars, though described as “fixed,” move in circular orbits — sometimes in systems of binary or multiple stars, with vast distances between them.
The frontispiece of Iter Exstaticum depicts Kircher himself (not Theodidactus) as a schema-maker holding a compass, with the angel Cosmiel next to him, holding a 3D spherical model of the universe and a pilgrim’s staff, gesturing towards a huge 2D schematic diagram of the universe. (Although this is a representation of the Tychonic system, note that while it is marked as moving around the Earth, the Sun is represented as being at the center of the universe. Interesting.)
This is the penultimate SCHEMATIZING installment; the final installment will offer an overview of the entire series. Onward and upward!
MORE FURSHLUGGINER THEORIES BY JOSH GLENN: SCHEMATIZING | IN CAHOOTS | JOSH’S MIDJOURNEY | POPSZTÁR SAMIZDAT | VIRUS VIGILANTE | TAKING THE MICKEY | WE ARE IRON MAN | AND WE LIVED BENEATH THE WAVES | IS IT A CHAMBER POT? | I’D LIKE TO FORCE THE WORLD TO SING | THE ARGONAUT FOLLY | THE PERFECT FLANEUR | THE TWENTIETH DAY OF JANUARY | THE REAL THING | THE YHWH VIRUS | THE SWEETEST HANGOVER | THE ORIGINAL STOOGE | BACK TO UTOPIA | FAKE AUTHENTICITY | CAMP, KITSCH & CHEESE | THE UNCLE HYPOTHESIS | MEET THE SEMIONAUTS | THE ABDUCTIVE METHOD | ORIGIN OF THE POGO | THE BLACK IRON PRISON | BLUE KRISHMA | BIG MAL LIVES | SCHMOOZITSU | YOU DOWN WITH VCP? | CALVIN PEEING MEME | DANIEL CLOWES: AGAINST GROOVY | DEBATING IN A VACUUM | PLUPERFECT PDA | SHOCKING BLOCKING.