At the beginning of the seventeenth century, as the new science was gaining ground in Europe, an English physician published a monumental encyclopaedia describing the universe as a single, immense correspondence between heaven and man. It was Robert Fludd's Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia, the "Metaphysical, physical and technical history of both worlds, the greater and the lesser". It is one of the last great attempts to hold all knowledge together under the sign of Hermetism.
The author
Robert Fludd was a physician in London and a member of the College of Physicians. He was a man of wide learning, interested in Paracelsian medicine, Kabbalah, alchemy, music and mechanics. In 1616 he published an Apologia compendiaria in defence of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, whose manifestos had appeared in Germany a few years earlier. Though he never declared himself a member of the Fraternity, Fludd became one of its best-known supporters.
A work in several volumes
The Utriusque cosmi historia was printed in Oppenheim, Germany, by the publisher and engraver Johann Theodor de Bry, from 1617 into the early 1620s. The work, left incomplete with respect to its original plan, is divided into two great sections:
| Section | Subject |
|---|---|
| Macrocosm | creation, the structure of the heavens, the elements, and the human arts that imitate nature |
| Microcosm | man, the body, the soul, the faculties and the divinatory arts |
In the macrocosm section Fludd also deals with subjects we would today consider technical: arithmetic, music, geometry, perspective, the art of war, machines and clocks. For him these disciplines too are "apes of nature", arts that imitate the order of the world.
The images
The work is famous above all for its engravings, produced in de Bry's workshop. Some have become true icons of Western esotericism:
- the great darkness: a completely black square, with the Latin words meaning "and so on to infinity", representing formless matter before creation;
- the cosmic monochord: a string stretched between heaven and earth, tuned by a divine hand, showing the universe as a musical harmony;
- the mirror of nature: a female figure, Nature, chained to God on one side and to the ape, symbol of the human arts, on the other;
- man the microcosm: a human figure inscribed in concentric circles representing the spheres of the cosmos.
These images are not decorations: they are an integral part of the argument. Fludd thinks in figures, and the engravings make visible the relationships the text describes.
The disputes
Fludd's work provoked lively reactions from some of the greatest thinkers of the age.
Kepler
Johannes Kepler, in the appendix to his Harmonices mundi of 1619, criticised the way Fludd handled cosmic harmony. For Kepler harmony had to be grounded in verifiable measurements and mathematical ratios; for Fludd it was a symbol to be contemplated. Fludd replied, and the exchange has become a classic example of the clash between two conceptions of knowledge.
Mersenne and Gassendi
The Minim friar Marin Mersenne and the philosopher Pierre Gassendi also attacked Fludd, accusing him of confusing science, magic and theology. A long controversy followed, in which Fludd defended his Mosaic and Hermetic vision of nature.
Later works
The controversies did not stop Fludd. In the following years he went on publishing writings defending his vision, up to the Philosophia Moysaica, which appeared in Gouda in 1638, shortly after his death. In this work he argued that true natural philosophy must be founded on Scripture, and in particular on the books of Moses, rather than on Aristotle. The title itself sums up his conviction: knowledge of the world and divine revelation are two faces of the same truth.
The meaning of the work
The Utriusque cosmi historia is a precious document of a moment of transition. It shows a conception of knowledge in which theology, physics, medicine, music and technology are parts of a single truth, grounded in the correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. That vision was about to be overtaken by the experimental method, but its symbolic force has remained intact.
Anyone studying it today can appreciate it on several levels:
- as evidence of seventeenth-century Hermetic and Rosicrucian culture;
- as a masterpiece of scientific and symbolic engraving;
- as a reflection on the unity of knowledge and on man's place in the cosmos.
In short
- Robert Fludd's Utriusque cosmi historia was printed in Oppenheim by Johann Theodor de Bry from 1617.
- It is divided into two sections, devoted to the macrocosm and the microcosm.
- Its engravings, such as the great darkness and the cosmic monochord, are famous.
- Fludd publicly defended the Rosicrucians and argued with Kepler, Mersenne and Gassendi.
- The work represents one of the last great attempts at a Hermetic synthesis of knowledge.
