A World of Signs: Baroque Pansemioticism, the Polyhistor and the Early Modern Wunderkammer

Abstract

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Diagrams of the past: How timelines can aid the growth of historical knowledge

“…This timeline brings to history Galileo's suggestion that reality is fundamentally encoded in mathematical regularity. Metaphysically, the assumption is that the world is meaningful, being filled with signs (Westerhoff 2001). In trying to interpret these signs, the timeline exemplifies the search, originating in biblical exegesis, for what were called "great conjunctions" (see Smoller 1994).…”

Unearthing Atlantis and performing the past: Ancient things, alternative histories and the present past in the Baroque world

“…Hieroglyphs are relevant in this context not only because the symbols on the urn have speculatively been associated with hieroglyphs in the museum catalogue but also especially because the ancient Egyptian script illustrates how certain systems of writing were thought to have mystical and spiritual dimensions. Hieroglyphs were not just ordinary linguistic symbols but ‘promised to reveal the most ancient wisdom of Egypt, gave an example of a marvelous language which was believed to convey mystical knowledge in symbolic, iconographical form and, most importantly, described the meaning behind natural objects’ (Westerhoff, 2001: 634). In this respect, hieroglyphs were similar to runes which were also surrounded by mystery regarding their age and origins – even the very word itself denotes a secret or mystery (King, 2005: 194).…”

“…Rudbeck’s discoveries, it must be recognized, were embedded in a concept of knowledge that is different from the one dominating the understanding of the past today. They were not just isolated ‘facts’ or ‘pieces of evidence’ in the modern sense that mattered, but there was a deep ontological dimension to discovering and knowing hidden aspects and relationships between things and phenomena in the Baroque world (Westerhoff, 2001: 644–645). Thus,To know the peacock […] one must know not only what the peacock looks like, but what its name means, in every language; what kind of proverbial associations it has; what it symbolizes to both pagans and Christians; what other animals it has sympathies or affinities with; and any other possible connection it might have with stars, plants, minerals, numbers, coins or whatever.…”

“…Thus,To know the peacock […] one must know not only what the peacock looks like, but what its name means, in every language; what kind of proverbial associations it has; what it symbolizes to both pagans and Christians; what other animals it has sympathies or affinities with; and any other possible connection it might have with stars, plants, minerals, numbers, coins or whatever. (Westerhoff, 2001: 641)Archaeology ultimately came to contribute to the hegemony of the linear understanding of time associated with modernization, but relational thinking was involved in early archaeological thought (see Wood, 2008: 36, 269) and integral to the Renaissance and Baroque understanding of the world in general. ‘The early archaeologist’s reading of an artifact’, as Wood (2008: 260) puts it, ‘did not end with the object at hand.…”

“…To know the peacock […] one must know not only what the peacock looks like, but what its name means, in every language; what kind of proverbial associations it has; what it symbolizes to both pagans and Christians; what other animals it has sympathies or affinities with; and any other possible connection it might have with stars, plants, minerals, numbers, coins or whatever. (Westerhoff, 2001: 641)…”