The Materialization of Robert Fludd's Alchemical and Theosophical Concepts: A Case Study in the History of Science on the Interaction between Author, Artisans, Artists, and Publishers

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Ute Frietsch
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508112724

Fludd's books are distinguished by their spectacular images and luxurious size, which were produced by Matthäus Merian the Elder and Johann Theodor de Bry on his behalf. The relevance of images and artefacts – e.g. alchemical instruments, automates, and books – for Fludd's natural history and natural philosophy can be explained against the backdrop of “artisanal epistemology” (Pamela Smith), that is, the special relevance of crafts for alchemical scholarship around 1600. The analysis of the practical materialization of Fludd's visual ideas and artefacts is a desideratum of research, since the analysis has focused primarily on their philosophical relevance and little on the process of their production. This project will focus on the production of images and artefacts which was concomitant with Fludd's main work “Utriusque cosmi historia”. To this end, the project will analyze Fludd's communication with his artists and artisans – i.e. his etchers and copperplate engravers, his writing assistants, laboratory helpers, drawing assistants (amanuenses), and publishers. The project's questions will be answered through the autoptical research of source-texts, such as the fortunately surviving Ms. lat. qu. 15, “De technica microcosmi historia” at Frankfurter Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek, which demonstrates concrete processes of negotiation between author and publisher and has been almost entirely overlooked by prior research, and better-known manuscripts and autographs at Bodleian Library (Oxford), British Library (London), Trinity College (Cambridge), Uppsala University, and Stadtbibliothek Lübeck.The close interlinking of text and image and the process of terminologically lettering images demonstrate that Fludd was not only vividly expressing his visual ideas in texts, but was also actively participating in materializing them, for example through pen drawings, which were used by Merian as models for his etchings and copperplate engravings. Fludd's adversaries, such as Kepler, treated these images as scholarly assertions which Fludd was obliged to defend in ensuing controversies. These adversaries, however, did not comprehend the relationship between Fludd's diagrams and the (e.g. astronomical) bodies they ostensibly depicted, which was why they attacked his method of argumentation. Therefore, the project will also reconstruct the relationship between Fludd's images and his instruments, such as the monochord, the Vitrum Calendarium, and his automates by their concrete as well as epistemic dimensions of production.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants