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“The Quality of Nothing:” Shakespearean Mirrors and Kepler’s Visual Economy of Science

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Science in the Age of Baroque

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Abstract

The gradual dissolution of early modern trust in vision as a source of knowledge of the natural world reached its climax towards the end of the sixteenth century. The outlines of this distrust are poignantly expressed in some of Shakespeare’s major plays. Shakespeare’s protagonists initiate a thorough investigation into what kind of knowledge is possible in a world of apparitions and visual deceptions. In his 1604 treatise on optics Kepler confronts similar doubts, suggesting a new visual economy based on “unsubstantial” shadows “similar to nothing”, artificially produced within a camera obscura. In his short 1611 musings with the six-cornered snowflake, Kepler suggests mathematical ways for the observation, measurement and manipulation of nihil (i.e., Nothing). Confronting this new visual economy and the ensuing epistemological difficulties early modern natural philosophers suggested along with their scientific methods, a new poetics that allows the mind’s eye to intuit a new sort of knowledge founded on a new super-sensory sight.

Shorter versions of this paper were presented on different occasions: Embodying Shakespeare, Univerrsity of Utago, 7–9 February, 2008; Baroque Science Conference, University of Sydney, February 15–17, 2008; Cohn Institute at 25 -Celebration Colloquium, Tel Aviv University, May 11–13, 2008. The final version was written during my stay as a Rosenblum short term fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library during the summer of 2009.

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  1. Science, Technology and Society Graduate Program, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Raz Chen-Morris

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Correspondence to Raz Chen-Morris .

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  1. , Unit for History & Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, 2006, New South Wales, Australia

    Ofer Gal

  2. , Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 52900, Israel

    Raz Chen-Morris

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Chen-Morris, R. (2012). “The Quality of Nothing:” Shakespearean Mirrors and Kepler’s Visual Economy of Science. In: Gal, O., Chen-Morris, R. (eds) Science in the Age of Baroque. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 208. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4807-1_5

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