The magic of the magic lantern (1660-1700): On analogical demonstration and the visualization of the invisible

British Journal for the History of Science

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 127-159

  Vermeir, Koen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEUVEN   (Belgium)

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EID: 20744456939     PISSN: 00070874     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007087405006709     Document Type: Review

References (148)

1. I am not so much concerned with the technical details of the instrument itself, nor with a general history of the magic lantern (this is studied extensively in the New Magic Lantern Journal, in the publications of the Magic Lantern Society
2. and in Laurent Mannoni's excellent book The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archeology of the Cinema (ed. and tr. R. Crangle), Exeter, 2000). In this paper, I will concentrate on the reactions it evoked and the use people made of it. Furthermore, I will draw some general conclusions about the seventeenth-century use of demonstrations.
3. D. A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film, London, 1996
4. and Mannoni, op. cit. (1)
5. T. L. Hankins and R. J. Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination, Princeton, 1995, Chapter 3;
6. P. Findlen, 'Jokes of nature and jokes of knowledge: the playfulness of scientific discourse in early modern Europe', Renaissance Quarterly (1990), 43, 321 respectively.
7. It is impossible to define such a complex concept as magic here. Some important aspects in the context of my paper are reference to the occult, the rhetoric of veiling and unveiling, associations with superstition, the summoning of apparitions, reference to the demonic, the world image of hidden references and correspondences, the use of symbols, the creation of wondrous effects and the use of extraordinary instruments (the tradition of artificial or mathematical magic).
8. For a good overview of the history of the magic lantern's invention see Mannoni, op. cit. (1), 34-45.
9. The (slightly outdated) chronology and sources given in F. P. Liesegang, Dates and Sources: A Contribution to the History of the Art of Projection and to Cinematography (ed. and tr. H. Hecht), London, 1986, are also still of interest.
10. The magic lantern was 'invented' by Huygens in 1659, but I would argue that it is somewhat anachronistic to pinpoint a 'true' inventor or instrument. From a present-day standpoint, 'hybrids' were created, combinations of camerae obscurae, lanterns, magic lanterns, solar microscopes, projection microscopes, projection mirrors and projection clocks; and making distinctions was not so easy (e.g. the priority claims by Robert Hooke in 'A contrivance to make the picture of any thing appear on a wall', Philosophical Transactions (1668), 38, 741-3;
11. and by Athanasius Kircher in his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, 2nd edn, Amsterdam, 1671, 768).
12. R.J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy 1550-1700: An Interpretation, Oxford, 1979, 44.3.
13. J. Rousset, La Littérature de l'age baroque en France: Circé et le Paon, Paris, 1954, 261-2 and 266-7.
14. J. Loret, La Muze historique (ed. J. Ravenel), Paris, 1857, 193.
15. Loret's remark is valid for projection shows in general, but his poetical letter is of interest for establishing the alleged inventor of the magic lantern. Loret wrote this letter in May 1656, three years before the 'invention' of the magic lantern, in a text over-looked by Mannoni. It must also be noted that, notwithstanding their convincing arguments, Mannoni's (and Wagenaar's) account of the 'invention' of the lantern by Huygens is not yet generally accepted. For their opinion, see W. A. Wagenaar, 'The true inventor of the magic lantern: Kircher, Walgenstein, or Huygens?', Janus (1979), 66, 193-207;
16. and Mannoni, op. cit. (1), 34-5. The matter is further complicated because contemporaries often confused descriptions of camera obscura shows with those of lantern shows. Loret introduces the show he describes as a novelty, which is surprising since there was already a public and permanent camera obscura show in Paris from the 1630s onwards, and one might argue that he was present at an early magic lantern show. But his letter in verse suggests that he saw inverted images, which makes no sense for a lantern show. This suggests that Loret witnessed a camera obscura show after all, which would confirm that the lantern was not yet known in 1656.
17. In Shakespeare's As You Like It (1601), and in other secular plays, time and fate play an important role. For the theatre directed by nature see A. Blair, The Theatre of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science, Princeton, 1997 (see especially Chapter 5 for a discussion of theatrum mundi metaphors). The most famous play in which God is presented as the ultimate director is probably Pedro Caldéron de la Barca's El gran teatro del mundo (1635), in which multiple metaphors connect the creation of a play to the creation of the world. On the importance of the theatre and theatricality for Baroque culture, and Jesuit culture in particular
18. see also J.-M. Valentin, Le Théâtre des Jésuites dans les pays de langue Allemande (1554-1680): Salut des âmes et ordre des cités, 3 vols., Bern, 1978;
19. J.-P. Cavaillé, Descartes: La Fable du monde, Paris, 1991;
20. W. H. MacCabe, An Introduction to the Jesuit Theater, St Louis, 1983;
21. and L. F. Norman, The Theatrical Baroque, Chicago, 2001.
22. For centuries the standard handbook of courtly rituals was Castiglione's Il cortegiano (B. Castiglione, La seconda redazione del Cortegiano di Baldassarre Castiglione (ed. Ghino Ghinassi), Florence, 1968).
23. R. Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes (ed. C. Adam and P. Tannery), 12 vols., Paris, 1897-1913, vii, 22.
24. The standard book on scepticism is R. H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Berkeley, 1979.
25. Rousset, op. cit. (6), 73;
26. and R. Bernheimer, 'Theatrum Mundi', Art Bulletin (1956), 38, 225-47, 243.
27. Pontanus, Progymnasmata latinitatis, 4 vols., Ingolstadt, 1594, i, section 'littera Pythagorae ... ': 'nemo autem cognoscere potest Deum, nisi qui res ab eo conditas intelligentia percepit. Invisibilia enim Dei per ea quae facta sunt intellects conspiciuntur'.
28. See Valentin, op. cit. (8), 183.
29. For the intellectual cohesion of the Jesuit order and the 'Jesuit ideology' applied to the history of science see especially S. Harris, 'Transposing the Merton thesis: apostolic spirituality and the establishment of the Jesuit tradition', Science in Context (1989), 3, 29-65. In general the Jesuits followed Thomist orthodoxy, from which stems the stress on sensual knowledge. For Aristotelianism and Thomism in Jesuit education
30. see A. Simmons, 'Jesuit Aristotelian education: the De anima Commentaries', in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540-1773 (ed. J. O'Malley), Toronto, 1999, 522-37. The stress on contemplating the divine mysteries by means of man's senses is developed at length in
31. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises, the founding tract of the order (Ignatius of Loyola)
32. The Spiritual Exercises, London, 1955).
33. However, for Jesuit deviations from traditional Thomism see R. Feldhay, 'Knowledge and salvation in Jesuit culture', Science in Context (1987), 1, 195-213;
34. and idem, 'The cultural field of Jesuit science' in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540-1773 (ed. J. O'Malley), Toronto, 1999, 107-29, for reflections on the variety of differentiated positions in Jesuit science. O'Malley's edited volume The Jesuits is an interesting recent collection on different aspects of Jesuit culture.
35. Denying the image in se was denying the epiphany and the incarnation. The image was central to Catholic culture.
36. M. Hobson, The Object of Art: The Theory of Illusion in Eighteenth-Century France, Cambridge, 1982, Chapter 2.
37. In the course of the paper I discuss several aspects of the general category 'magic' (cf. note 3); its meaning will change accordingly.
38. E.g. Quintilian, The Institutio Oratoria (ed. and tr. H. Butler), 4 vols., Cambridge, MA, 1986, VIII.6.54.
39. See also Findlen, op. cit. (2).
40. For accounts of its reception see Mannoni, op. cit. (1), especially 10-12, 51 and 59-60.
41. Del Rio, Disquisitionum Magicarum, Lyons, 1608, II, q. 28.
42. Del Rio, op. cit. (19), II, q. 28.
43. On the various meanings of the imagination, and on the currency of concepts like the pneuma, see K. Vermeir, 'The "physical prophet" and the powers of the imagination, part I: a case-study on prophecy, vapours and the imagination (1685-1710)', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2004), 35C (4) (561-91), and the literature cited there.
44. G. Verbeke, L'Evolution de la doctrine du pneuma, du stoïcisme à Saint Augustin, Louvain, 1945, 372: 'Le pneuma fait donc fonction d'un écran sur lequel on peut projeter des images des deux côtés opposés, les objets matériels du monde environnant y projettent les contours de leur forme; d'autre part, chez les démons, les représentations de l'imagination transforment la substance pneumatique d'après des lignes de leur propre figure.
45. Garasse cited in D. Kahn, 'The Rosicrucian Hoax in France (1623-4)', in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe (ed. W. R. Newman and A. Grafton), London, 2001, 235-344, 281: 'il semble en les lisant que la teste de cet homme [Paracelsus] fust comme une vive lanterne remplie d'estranges fantaisies, & d'imaginations frenetiques".
46. A. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 768: 'diversis in Italia principibus venditit, ut proinde jam Romae res poene vulgaris sit'.
47. P. (le Lorrain de) Vallemont, La Physique occulte, Paris, 1693, 402: 'cette machine a bien fait du bruit depuis quelque terns'.
48. Letter of Kircher to Anckel, Rome, 16 July 1659, cited in the unabridged draft of M. J. German's very rich paper 'Between the demonic and the miraculous: Athanasius Kircher and the Baroque culture of machines', at http://www.stanford.edu/group/shl/Eyes/machines/
49. The abridged paper is published in D. Stolzenberg (ed.), The Great Art of Knowing, Stanford, 2001, 59-70.
50. An almost unabridged Italian translation (co-authored with Nick Wilding) can be found in E. Sardo (ed.), Il Museo del Mondo, Rome, 2001, 217-37. In this paper I refer to the online article. For jokes of knowledge and jokes of nature
51. see P. Findlen's excellent article 'Jokes of nature and jokes of knowledge', op. cit. (2).
52. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 769: 'something rare, curious, paradoxical and prodigious'.
53. Rousset, op. cit. (6), 230: 'Je doute qui je suis'; 'Je suis à moi-même déguisé.'
54. For Christina's visit to Hesselin see Hobson, op. cit. (15), 23;
55. and J. Baltrušaitis, Anamorphic Art (tr. W. J. Strachan), New York, 1977, 57-8;
56. for her visit to Kircher see Gorman, op. cit. (26), 20-2;
57. and idem, 'From "the eyes of all" to "useful quarries in philosophy and good literature": consuming Jesuit science, 1600-1665' in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540-1773 (ed. J. O'Malley), Toronto, 1999, 170-89.
58. There were accounts by the Jesuits Eschinardi in 1668, Kircher in 1671, Dechales in 1674, De Sepibus in 1678, Kestler in 1680 and Kirchmaier in 1680.
59. It should be acknowledged that the magic lantern was not essential to the purpose of the Ars Magna, since the book was written when it was not yet invented. But the rigour with which Kircher defended the priority of his idea in 1671 proves that it fitted in rather well (see Kircher, op. cit. (4), 768, see also note 4 above and note 40 below).
60. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 769.
61. See also the catalogues of his museum: G. De Sepibus, Romani collegii Societatis Jesu musaeum celeberrimum, Amsterdam, 1678;
62. and F. Buonanni, Musaeum Kircherianum, Rome, 1709, 311-12. In the history of the Collegio Romano, in which important visits to the college are described, the magic lantern was first mentioned in the description of a visit by the prince of Neuburg in 1676.
63. See R. García Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano dal sua inizio (1551) alla soppressione della Compagnia di Gesù (1773), Analecta Gregoriana 66, Series facultatis historiae ecclesiasticae, sectio A 2, Rome, 1954, 278.
64. See my forthcoming paper 'Athanasius Kircher's magical instruments: an essay on applied metaphysics and the reality of artefacts' for a more elaborate discussion.
65. Kircher, op. cit. (4), preface: and with the boat, made of the thole-pin, 'maria tranavit, ingentes divitias acquisivit'.
66. P. Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley, 1996, 339.
67. Ingrid Rowland describes, in The Ecstatic Journey: Athanasius Kircher in Baroque Rome, Chicago, 2000, 15-17, the function of Harpocrates in Kircher's work. Harpocrates, a figure originating in a misinterpretation of antique sources, was an infant god. Raising his finger to his lips as an injunction to silence, in this way insisting that true wisdom shunned expression of the naked truth, Harpocrates is taken by Rowland as an emblem of Kircher's oeuvre.
68. See especially epichirema 4 and 5. Normally God is identified with the sun. Confusingly, angels are sometimes also symbolized by the sun and man by the moon (and there is also one reference to a divine mirror). This already indicates the shifting metaphors and the slight shifts in meaning throughout the text (e.g. in the descriptions of the emanatio and the recollectio), but the general structure is clear. For Kircher's metaphysics, see also my forthcoming paper, op. cit. (33).
69. It is like Plato's cave, but now one cannot escape. One has to learn to decipher the special shadows, cast by some good higher beings (angels).
70. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 1: 'maxime admirandam essentiam, occultum Universi symbolum, quo summa imis, ima mediis, media denique imis, summisque mira quadam rations connectantur'.
71. It is instructive to read North's chapter on the difficulties of interpretation (aptly called 'Strange devices') in this respect; see J. North, The Ambassadors' Secret: Holbein and the World of the Renaissance, London, 2002, Chapter 5.
72. For the comparison between this instrument and the magic lantern, see Kircher, op. cit. (4), 768. In 1654 the Jesuit mathematician Andreas Tacquet used a similar instrument to demonstrate Martinus Martinius's missionary travels from China to Belgium in a show strongly resembling a magic lantern show.
73. Stories of strange and magical apparitions are ancient. Pliny's Natural History ushered in a tradition of demystification that explained away apparitions by referring to projection instruments, and there existed a whole literary tradition (Chaucer, Marlowe, Cellini) embroidering on this theme; see H. Hecht, 'The history of projecting phantoms, ghosts and apparitions, part 1', New Magic Lantern Journal (1984), 3, 2-6. For the seventeenth-century debate regarding biblical apparitions and the magic lantern
74. see A. van Dale, De oraculis veterum ethnicorum, Amsterdam, 1683;
75. B. Fontenelle, History of Oracles, London, 1688;
76. Vallemont, op. cit. (25), 552-6.
77. Rembrandt's etching Faust (c. 1652) depicts a similar mysterious projection. Many devices for projecting letters in a dark room were constructed by Schwendter and Kircher, amongst others, in the period between 1630 and 1670. The remarkable correspondence between Rembrandt's detailed execution of wondrous apparitions and the effects of optical projection apparatus suggests interesting new perspectives for the current debate on the relationship between optics and art, as incited by David Hockney's and Charles Falco's thesis. I will elaborate on this in another paper.
78. Baltrušaitis, op. cit. (29), gives many images but little interpretation.
79. See J. North, op. cit. (39), for many more meanings that one can find hidden in the painting. North is somewhat disparaging about a memento mori reading (192-6).
80. There was a controversy in France about the moral value of normal and deformed perspective. The Academy of Arts argued, following classical artistic principles, that deformed but recognizable images were morally bad. The religious orders, however, who made most of the anamorphoses, did not agree. If one accepted the Platonist critique on realist images, the possibility of hidden perspectives held the promise of a symbolic and allegoric play with meanings. Seen from this perspective, art could create morally meaningful images instead of empty copies of the world.
81. Such an interpretation of anamorphoses was not often made explicit, but it was clearly stated in a devotional text by Bossuet. In his sermon 'Sur la providence' (1662) he sets out to counter the libertines, 'ces nouveaux Samaritains', who denied all divine providence because of the disorderly state of this world. For them, the unjust distribution of good and bad shows that the world is governed only by fate. Bossuet replies, 'Quand je considère en moi-même la disposition des choses humaines, confuse, inégale, irrégulière, je la compare souvent à certains tableaux, que l'on montre assez ordinairement dans les bibliothèques des curieux comme un jeu de la perspective. La première vue ne vous montre que des traits informes et un mélange confus de couleurs, qui semble être ou l'essai de quelque apprenti, ou le jeu de quelque enfant, plutôt que l'ouvrage d'un main savante. Mais aussitôt que celui sait le secret vous les fait regarder par un certain endroit, aussitôt toutes les lignes inégales venant à se ramasser d'une certaine façon dans votre vue, toute la confusion se démêle, et vous voyez paraître un visage avec ses linéaments et ses proportions où il n'y avait auparavant aucune apparence de forme humaine. C'est, ce me semble, messieurs, une image assez naturelle du monde, de sa confusion apparente et de sa justesse cachée, que nous ne pouvons jamais remarquer qu'en le regardant par un certain point que la foi en Jésus-Christ nous découvre. ... Quelle est la confusion de ce tableau! et ne me semble-t-il pas que ces couleurs aient été jetées au hasard, seulement pour brouiller la toile ou le papier ... . Le libertin inconsidéré s'écrie aussitôt qu'in n'y a point d'ordre ... . Mais arrêtez, malheureux, et ne précipitez pas votre jugement dans une affaire si importante. Peut-être que vous trouverez que ce qui semble confusion est un art caché; et si vous savez rencontrer le point par où il faut regarder les choses, toutes les inégalités se rectifieront, et vous ne verrez que sagesse où vous n'imaginiez que désordre.' J. B. Bossuet, Sermons choisis (ed. A. Rébelliau), Paris, 1901, 243-5 (my emphasis).
82. For the error in the engraving see the discussions in the New Magic Lantern Journal
83. and Mannoni, op. cit. (1), 58. Of course, it can always be argued that these figures are wrong, since mistakes could easily happen in the complex seventeenth-century publishing process, as Adrian Johns has vividly shown
84. (A. Johns, The Nature of the Book : Print and Knowledge in the Making, Chicago, 1998). There is, however, no evidence that in this case any such error occurred and I will account for the unexpected structure of Kircher's instruments below. It follows that every identification of these figures as erroneous should be dismissed as anachronistic because such a judgement is based on our expectations of what a magic lantern should be and how it should be used (see also note 4 above, where I argue that it is also anachronistic to look for an 'original instrument').
85. Nonetheless, W. A. Wagenaar has argued in his paper (op. cit. (7)) that it was the engraver who inserted the wrong images. According to him, Kircher's 'correct' sketches were probably lost between Rome and Amsterdam, so that the engraver had to work with the description of the instrument in the text. In order to save Kircher from making an 'error' and to affirm that Kircher described the 'correct' magic lantern, Wagenaar misconstrues Kircher's text as a function of his argument. He tries to establish that Kircher's description was ambiguous with respect to the placing of the tube (which it is not, because it is clearly a description from one side of the instrument to the other) and does not mention passages like that quoted here in note 50 below. Wagenaar used his discovery that the pictures correspond to a real experimental setting not to challenge the view that the pictures were erroneous but to make plausible his claim that it was the engraver who inserted these particular 'wrong' pictures. According to Wagenaar, this engraver did not trust his own reading (Wagenaar's reading) of Kircher's text for one reason or another, and verified his interpretation experimentally without verifying the other possible interpretations. After some experimenting, Wagenaar suggests, this engraver discovered a plausible point light-source projection, which he drew and inserted in Kircher's text. When we give up the idea of erroneous figures, however, we do not have to construct a detective story about lost and 'wrong' pictures, for which there is no evidence. Nor do we have to imagine engravers experimenting with optical set-ups expensive and sophisticated for the time.
86. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 769: 'Make a wooden box A.B.C.D, with a chimney at L, so that the lamp can emit its smoke through it; put the Lamp K itself in the middle of the box, either suspended by a metal wire or placed on a stand M, opposite to an aperture H, in which a high-quality tube is mounted; and in the beginning I of the tube, mount a lens of a superior brand; in the aperture or the end of the tube H, place a well-polished flat glass, on which you can paint whatever you want with transparent watercolours. In this way, the light from the lamp, as it passes through the glass lens, will exhibit the picture painted on the glass plate H (which has to be drawn in a reversed position on the glass) on a white wall VTSX, in correct position and enlarged, with all the colours as drawn from life.' ('Fiat ex ligno receptaculum A.B.CD. deinde in L caminus, ut Lucerna per illum fumum suum emittere possit, Lucerna vero K in media ponatur vel affixa filo ferreo vel supra fulcrum M e regione foraminis H, intra quod tubus palmaris committatur, in tubi vero principio I. lenticulare vitrum melioris notae inferatur[;] in foramine vero, seu in fine tubi H vitrum planum probe elaboratum ponatur, in quo coloribus aqueis & diaphanis quidquid volueris pingatur; hoc pacto intra cubiculum VTSX in muro candido lumen lucernae vitrum lenticulare transiens imaginem in H vitro plana depictam (quae inverso situ in vitro ponitur) rectam & in muro grandiorem exhibebit, omnibus coloribus ad vivum expressam.') This description fits well with Figures 12a and 12b. The bracketed passage 'quae inverso situ in vitro ponitur' could also be translated as 'which has to be put upside down on the glass'. But Figures 12a and 12b show upright pictures on the slide, which is correct, since Kircher's figures depict a point light-source projection. Therefore I interpret this sentence as: 'which has to be drawn in a reversed position on the glass'. If Kircher really meant 'upside down' instead of 'reversed', he could have referred after all to a Huygens-type magic lantern (with the tube on the outside, see Figure 1), since in such a magic lantern the slides have to be inserted upside down. Kircher indeed considered both designs and he wrote that one must judge for oneself which was the best (cf. note 50 below). The possibility of two different designs may explain some confusion in the text.
87. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 770: 'Nota hoc loco tubulum vel intra vergere posse vel extra, perinde est sed haec judicio boni praedici relinquenda sunt.'
88. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 770: 'Sed haec sat dilucide exposita esse existimo, quare nil restat, nisi ut consectarium ex dictis resultans sequenti figura II pariter explicemus', and 'Sed haec omnia ex praesenti figura II melius intelliges, quant ego pluribus ver bis non explicavero'.
89. There is another possible reason for preferring his design. As we saw, the difference between the two designs of the magic lantern is that Kircher's preferred version does not enlarge as much as Huygens's or 'sGravesande's lantern. In fact, Kircher was more interested in a projection process that did not enlarge the image, because he tried to transmit pictures over a long distance while keeping their size within limits, as we can see in his description of his device for 'mirror projecting' (Figure 7). He wrote, 'The only problem is that the images are enlarged into infinity; e.g. one single letter seems to grow into a tower. ... Thus if someone finds out a method by which he can reduce pictures of things at a large distance to a smaller proportion, and also make them appear with enough clarity, then he will indeed have found out a secret to be proud of.' Kircher, op. cit. (4), 793. ('Solum incommodum illud intervenit, quod species rerum in immensum auctae [?], verbi gratia una litera, successive in turrim crescere videatur. ... Si igitur quis invenerit modum, quo figuras rerum in maxima distantia in minorem proportionem redigat, clareque exhibeat; arcanum, quo gloriari possit, se invenisse laetabitur.') Kircher's figures of the magic lantern are not erroneous. They depict his choice between two possible designs for projecting images in a dark space by means of candlelight. In Kircher's view, it was even an advantage that his magic lantern did not enlarge the image too much. Furthermore, this design was favoured because it conforms to his metaphysical principles, the structure of which permeates his whole work. On the relation between Kircher's artefacts and his metaphysics see my forthcoming paper, op. cit. (33).
90. My interpretation is in line with Hankins and Silverman's (op. cit. (2), 15-33) interpretation of Kircher's sunflower clock. The sunflower clock was a newly invented clock, described by Kircher, allegedly driven by the magnetic power of the sun on a sunflower. Hankins and Silverman show that this clock failed the tests of contemporaries and argued that it was unworkable as an instrument or experiment, but instead demonstrated the hidden divine powers in the cosmos that are expressed in magnetism. I argue that the magic lantern was likewise a symbol of occult powers. What is more, there is in Kircher's texts a connection between the ubiquitous occult and cosmic power of magnets and light. Indeed, both the Magnes and the Ars Magna give a general world view, but from a different perspective (or thole-pin) : in the Magnes it is the occult magnetic power which rules the world; in the Ars Magna it is light. Kircher makes this link explicitly : the Ars Magna is an ars 'magna' in reference to the 'magnet' (Kircher, op. cit. (4), preface: 'Magnam dicimus, ob occultam quandam ad Magnetem allusionem.') and 'light is the number and measure of everything, the celestial magnet-stone, drawing everything to itself.' (Kircher, op. cit. (4), 2: 'Omnium rerum & numerus est, & mensura, Magnes coelestis omnia ad se trahens.') Both magnet and light are interchangeable symbols for divine workings and emanations, and these symbols are displayed in the Baroque rhetoric of Kircher's theatre. On the relation between Kircher's philosophy of light and his philosophy of magnetism, and for a critical discussion of Hankins and Silverman's views, see my forthcoming paper, op. cit (33).
91. See note 37 above. If we take this explanation a little further, we can explain why monsters and demons were a recurrent theme. The projected lantern slides in Kircher's engravings show the iconic personification of Death (Figure 12a) and a man burning in Hell (Figure 12b). If the original light source symbolizes God, if the lens and the slide symbolize an angel and man respectively, the image projected on the screen is furthest away from God, and properly depicts and symbolizes Death, demons and Hell. This might be a step too far, however, because of Kircher's Neoplatonism. In Christian theology, the demons are furthest away from God, but in Neoplatonic philosophy, there is no distinction between angels and devils, and all 'daemons' are superior spiritual beings located higher than man in the scale of being. The proper place of demons is one of the thorny problems in every combination of Christianity and Neoplatonism. Kircher's metaphysics is flexible enough, however, and contains enough ambiguities to make it possible to fit in most natural and artificial objects.
92. This makes clear that Kircher's use of his instruments is not trivial. The use of the artefact has to be interpreted with regard to its context, and we should not discard metaphysical and other uses. From a metaphysical point of view Kircher's instrument would definitely function better than the other version of the magic lantern.
93. I have found editions in Paris (1693, 1696, 1707, 1709), Amsterdam (1693, 1696) and The Hague (1722, 1747), and a German translation (Nuremberg 1694), an unacknowledged plagiarism (Bamberg 1756) and even later editions in 1752 and 1762.
94. He wants to ally himself with the Cartesians, but he regards the differences between Gassendi and Descartes unimportant. His use of astrology, for instance, makes his work an awkward blend.
95. Vallemont, op. cit. (25), 400: 'Le fantôme de l'objet avec toutes ses couleurs.' He illustrates this also with more established demonstrations of this phenomenon
96. (cf. Alhazen, see A. C. Crombie, Science, Optics and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Thought, London, 1990, 191).
97. See G. V. Sutton, Science for a Polite Society: Gender, Culture, and the Demonstration of Enlightenment, Oxford, 1995, 107;
98. and T. McClaughlin, 'Descartes, experiments, and a first generation Cartesian, Jaques Rohault', in Descartes' Natural Philosophy (ed. S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster and J. Sutton), London, 2000, 330-46.
99. Vallemont, op. cit. (25), 401: 'Au defaut d'oeil artificiel dont M. Rohaut enseigne la construction, je vais donner isy la Lanterne magique, qui est admirable pour demonstrer'.
100. See also J. Rohault, Traité de physique, Paris, 1671, 328.
101. E.g. Journal des sçavans, 12 January 1693, 27 April 1693;
102. see also K. Vermeir, 'The "physical prophet" and the powers of the imagination, part II: a case-study on dowsing and the naturalization of the moral (1685-1710)', Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2005), 36C (1), 1-24. A peasant had discovered murderers with a divining rod; for the episode and performed experiments
103. see M. R. Lynn, 'Divining the Enlightenment: public opinion and popular science in old regime France', Isis (2001), 92, 34-54. Other cases of dowsing were well attested by reputable witnesses, experiments were performed and even Boyle had shown interest.
104. See note 38 above.
105. K. Hutchison, 'What happened to occult qualities in the scientific revolution ?', Isis (1982), 73, 233-53.
106. Sutton, op. cit. (59).
107. Newton, for instance, made an analogy between light and sound which guided his research into the nature of light and incited him to formulate new hypotheses. To confirm these hypotheses, he of course did not demonstrate experiments with sound. He tested his hypotheses and scrutinized his analogy by doing experiments on light or by reconsidering the evidence, and if necessary, adjusted and rephrased his original analogy when the evidence compelled him (e.g. in a 1675 letter to Oldenburg, the correspondences between light and sound are different from those in his 1672 letter). For matters of presentation, he could of course use his analogy again. All this did not stop Newton sometimes being misguided in his judgement because of this analogy, as when he divided the spectrum of light from a prism into seven component colours similar to the notes in an octave. See J. North, 'Science and analogy', in On Scientific Discovery (ed. M. D. Grmek, R. S. Cohen and G. Cimino), Dordrecht, 1980, 115-40. On experiment, demonstration and analogy
108. see also W. D. Hackmann, 'Scientific instruments: models of brass and aids to discovery', in The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences (ed. D. Gooding, T. Pinch and S. Schaffer), Cambridge, 1989, 31-65.
109. This is typical in natural magic. I cannot show the different interactions in this essay. One, of course, is that associations with the devilish stayed present in a harmless but exciting way. See also note 72 below.
110. Vallemont, op. cit. (25), 402: 'La lanterne magique est une machine d'Optique, & que l'on nomme Magique, sans doute à cause de ses effets prodigieux, & des spectres, & monstres affreux qu'elle fait voir, & que les personnes qui n'en savent pas le secret, attribuent à la magie.'
111. See Gorman, op. cit. (26), 19; for similar remarks
112. see Vallemont, op. cit (25), 64-5.
113. See Gorman, op. cit. (26), 9-14;
114. and P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, London, 1987.
115. For the use of the term 'magic' in the context of Catholicism see Evans, op. cit. (5), 115-16, Chapters 10 and 11 ;
116. see also his discussion of Kircher's Oedipus Aegyptiacus, ibid., 435-42.
117. Notwithstanding Vallemont's efforts, La Physique occulte was condemned by the Church, but not for theological or metaphysical reasons, rather for moral issues concerning the kind of evidence in the prosecution of murderers. Kircher had also been accused of propounding heretical ideas by M. Corneus, a fellow Jesuit.
118. Kircher, op. cit. (4), 784. I think this solves German's puzzlement about Kircher's commitment to demons in his exposure of the fraudulence of Egyptian priests
119. (Gorman, op. cit. (26), 8).
120. See also Kircher, op. cit. (4), 780: 'Pessimum inter alia est & illud, quod apparitiones spectrorum, non permissioni divinae; sed hominum catoptricis experimentis aliis illudentium sagacitati adscribat: in quo Atheis hujus temporis adstipulari videtur, qui ut omnes non sacrae tantum, sed & prophanae historiae apparitiones una cum Deo, totaque religions aboleant, eas naturae viribus, & ab hominibus sagacibus, & philosophis impostoribus processisse affirmant.' (The worst is also this, that he [Riesler] does not attribute the apparitions of spectres to the Divine consent, but to the cleverness of the people who show illusions to others by means of catoptrical experiments. In this, he seems to resemble all the atheists of this age, who, in order to abolish the apparitions of not only the sacred but also the profane history together with God and the whole religion, maintain that these apparitions are caused by the powers of nature and by ingenious people and philosophers-impostors.)
121. See Vallemont, op. cit. (25), 400 ff. and 552-6.
122. See also van Dale, op. cit. (41), Fontenelle, op. cit. (41).
123. Cartesianism was not forbidden, but Cartesians had to refrain from explaining transubstantiation. R. A. Watson, 'Transubstantiation among the Cartesians', in Problems of Cartesianism (ed. T. Lennon,]. Nicholas and J. Davis), Kingston, 1982, 127-48.
124. Astrology was also an essential part of his explanation. For the use of the term 'magic', see note 70 below.
125. In this way, he provided a subtle metaphorical support of the praesentia realis and the incarnation; one might even say that the magic lantern served as a kind of monstrance, as a demonstration (monstrare) of the Catholic faith.
126. Sutton, op. cit. (59), 124. It is instructive to compare the role of the chameleon with that of the magic lantern.
127. We might speak of three kinds of illusion: first, the delusion; second, the joke or allusion; and third, the elusive illusion, which is akin to the mannerist 'serious joke'. But the last two are similar in that they pre-suppose a critical distance; they get the joke. This distance is characteristic for playing; see J. Huizinga, Homo ludens, Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur, Haarlem, 1951.
128. The hidden analogies represent the elusive aspect, while the demonstration corresponds to the performative aspect of the illusio.
129. The argument of my paper should be read in relation to Hankins and Silverman's (op. cit. (2)) account of the different kinds of demonstration.
130. An analogical demonstration can be defined as a physical (instead of mathematical) demonstration of something invisible, something indemonstrable in a direct way. This indemonstrable quaesitum is visualized by means of an instrument, relying on an a-priori analogy between the quaesitum and a demonstrable datum. Vallemont (op. cit. (25), 143) is positive about the force of his demonstrations: 'J'espère mettre toutes ces choses dans une telle évidence, qu'elles passeront, pour être exactement démonstrées chez ceux qui savent ce que c'est que démonstration en matière de Physique.
131. Of course, notwithstanding the striking similarities, Kircher's demonstrations are not of exactly the same kind as Vallemont's. First of all, they propound radically different philosophical systems. Furthermore, in Kircher's case, the (structure of) the instrument itself is the demonstration, which makes it possible to interpret the instrument as a reification of a metaphysical principle, while in Vallemont's demonstration the magic lantern demonstrates and visualizes a physical principle which is thought to be analogous with the quaesitum.
132. It should be noted, however, that Vallemont's analogies are not totally different from the analogies Descartes used in order to 'visualize the invisible' (or from other uses of analogy in natural philosophy and science), and his demonstrations are not completely alien to the scale models of von Guericke, Cavendish and others, making this conclusion more general than was to be expected. Furthermore, the demonstrations of experiments performed at the Royal Society had theatrical and metaphysical aspects too. Notwithstanding the differences in style in art and science between southern and northern or Catholic and Protestant countries, a comparative study between modes of representation and demonstration in Rome, Prague, Paris, Leiden and London, for instance, which takes theatrical and metaphysical aspects into account, would be particularly significant. For the difference between southern and northern styles see e.g. S. Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, Chicago, 1983.
133. For Descartes's analogies see P. Galison, 'Descartes's comparisons: from the invisible to the visible', Isis (1984), 75, 311-26.
134. For scale models see Hackmann, op. cit. (65).
135. On analogy in science see North, op. cit. (65) ;
136. and M. Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science, Notre Dame, 1966.
137. Kircher's magic lantern is not an emblem in the strict sense, however. The use of symbols and emblems was an important point of debate in the seventeenth century, in which Kircher and his fellow Jesuits played an important role. Kircher's definition of a symbol is better applicable to his use of the magic lantern: 'Strictly speaking the Greeks called "symbol" a visible sign of hidden circumstances; which the Latins explained in these terms: a symbol is a significant mark of some arcane mystery; i.e. the nature of a symbol is to conduct our soul, by means of some likeness or another, to the understanding of some thing which differs much from the things which are presented to the external senses; it has the property of being concealed and hidden under the veil of an obscure formulation.' ('Graeci σνμβoλoν stricte sumptum vocant, Σημεioν φανερoν των πραγματων αφανων quod Latini explicant his verbis: Symbolum est nota alicuius arcanioris mysterii significativa. Id est, natura Symboli est, conducere animum nostrum mediante certa aliqua similitudine ad intelligentiam alicuius rei multum a rebus, quae sensibus offerentur exterioribus, differentis; cuius proprietas est esse coelatum & absconditum sub velo obscuri dicti.') A. Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, 3 tomes in 4 vols., Rome, 1652-4, ii. 1, 6;
138. see Evans, op. cit. (5), 437.
139. This is the branch of magic which was engaged in the invention and use of instruments and mechanical devices. The pyramids, speaking statues and hydraulic pumps were all attributed to mathematical magic.
140. E.g. G. Della Porta, Natural Magick, London, 1658, XVII.vi;
141. See also Hooke, op. cit. (4), 741 : 'had the Heathen Priests of old been acquainted with it, their Oracles and Temples would have been much more famous for the Miracles of their Imaginary Deities. For by such an Art as this, what could they not have represented in their Temples? Apparitions of Angels, or Devils, Inscriptions and Oracles on Walls' (original emphasis);
142. see also Mannoni, op. cit. (1), 53.
143. Findlen, op. cit. (2).
144. E.g. Hooke's 'sincere hand and faithful eye'. See also S. Alpers, op. cit. (83), Chapter 3.
145. Burke, op. cit. (69).
146. Hobson, op. cit. (15), 43.
147. In the seventeenth century Jesuit missionaries showed the lantern as a marvel, but the use of religious images started only in the nineteenth century, and even then they often wondered if it was a morally appropriate way to convert the heathen (see P. Landau, 'The illumination of Christ in the Kalahari Desert', Representations (1994), 45, 26-40).
148. See the epigraph.