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Here be woodcuts: science, mysticism & early modern memes

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https://aeon.co/essays/here-be-woodcuts-...dern-memes

EXCERPT: [...] The printed word was the medium for the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, both of which rippled through Europe and beyond. In the 15th century, a few decades before Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama discovered new trade routes around the world, Johannes Gutenberg was perfecting moving type in his workshop in Hof Humbrecht. Before he invented his printing press, there were perhaps 30-50,000 books on the whole continent; less than 50 years later, there were as many as 10 million. By the end of the 16th century, 200 million were in circulation, rising to some 500 million books in Europe by the end of the 17th. And increasingly, they were illustrated.

There is a feverish, nightmarish quality to the visual record of the time, with images that grapple with deep existential uncertainty – with what it meant to be British or European, male or female, even human or animal. As Europeans attempted to impose order at the chaotic fringes of their own knowledge, thresholds of understanding broke down further and further, like the proliferating fractals of mathematical chaos theory. New creatures were captured in ink as quickly as they were pinned down in the wild, but there was no time to grapple with the significance of each discovery. No image or text could possibly describe these unfolding marvels in their totality....

MORE: https://aeon.co/essays/here-be-woodcuts-...dern-memes
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