To bring William Smith’s revolutionary discoveries as well as the glory of his maps to the wider reading public, The University of Chicago Press has published the first complete presentation of his works in their lavishly illustrated, large format book “Strata; William Smith’s Geological Maps.”
In his new book “Phenomena,” Giles Sparrow, FRAS, presents Johann Doppelmayr’s thirty “Atlas Coelestis” plates in vivid, large format reproductions that are then extensively annotated to provide the modern reader with an understanding of not only what the Atlas conveyed to the readers of its day but also the significance of this information understood from our own modern day perspective.
Nary a moment of such time as I was at liberty within my elementary school’s halls did I not find my way into its abandoned science lab in order to explore its mysteries. I was particularly fond of examining discoveries made in the decaying wet collection under the large stereoscope. And of all the things I spent time peering at through that wonderful old instrument, planaria were my favorites.
One of the many challenges facing those taking up Aristotle’s zoological writings, or more generally even such works as his “Physics,” is that of understanding the very different scope of his explorations and explanations from what such would be were they to have been undertaken by a modern writer. Indeed, even the very word “physics” (from the Greek φύσις) itself had a very different meaning to Aristotle and his contemporaries than how we use the word today.