Date/Time
Date(s) - 3 Dec 2014
6:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location
Columbia University Faculty House
Category(ies) No Categories
Columbia University-Chemical Heritage Foundation
Experimental Reconstruction Network
New York History of Science Lecture Series: MILESTONES IN THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY, 2014-15
December 3, 2014 (Faculty House, Columbia University, 64 Morningside Drive), 6pm
Donna Bilak (Department of History and The Making and Knowing Project, Columbia University)
“The Art of Encryption: Music-Image-Text in Michael Maier’s Alchemical Emblem Book, Atalanta fugiens (1618)”
Published on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War, Michael Maier’s extraordinary alchemical emblem book, Atalanta fugiens (1618) is an allegorical paean to wisdom achieved through alchemical knowledge and praxis. Best known to historians of science for its fifty exquisite engravings of emblems that visually render the hermetic vocabulary, the Atalanta’s emblems are also paired with scored music for three voices – Atalanta, Hippomenes, and the Golden Apple, who represent the elemental triad of Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt. But Maier’s Atalanta is much more than an elegant audio-visual articulation of alchemical theory and practice for producing the philosophers’ stone – the panacea that would restore perfect health and longevity to humankind. It is a virtuoso work of allegorical encryption that fuses poetry, iconography, music, mathematics and Christian cabala to extol hermetic wisdom, while evoking alchemical technologies and laboratory processes. Moreover, Maier’s emblem book functions as a game or puzzle that the erudite reader must solve, decode, play. In exploring the multifaceted nature of the Atalanta fugiens, this talk opens up new dimensions to our understanding of pre-modern scientific practice.
Sponsoring Organizations:
New York University
Gallatin School of Individualized Study
Columbia University
University Seminar in History and Philosophy of Science
City University of New York
Ph.D. Program in History, History of Science Lecture Series
New York Academy of Sciences
Section for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
For additional information please contact Matthew Stanley [email protected] or Pamela Smith [email protected].