JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I've known about this famous map/curiosity by Jean de Gourmont (ca. 1570) for some time, though I never seem to meet it out there in the world very often. Yesterday though I discovered that there was a fine 19th century reproduction of it in the studio, and so I thought I had a closer look now that I had a good copy in my hands.
And then when I looked the map up I found a number of good descriptions of it that pretty much took care of its description and interpretation. The baseline description is that it is mostly an allegory on the pursuit of knowledge, and of knowing, and thinking about the nature of knowledge--my read is that in the end, only a fool would think that the more they knew the less there was to know. The famous Ortelius map ("Typus Orbis Terrarum") in the face of the jester could represent a gridwork of what we think we know, though across the top of the image is the dictum from Socrates, "Know Thyself" ("Congnois toy ['toi'] toy-meme"), which prepares us for what might be the dry hole in our soul if we spend too much time in the pursuit of knowledge of the world.
One of the most interesting reads on this image can be found in Literature, Mapping, and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain, by Andrew Gordon, Bernhard Klein, where the authors discus the mind-as-a-map, and bring into play a great passage from the immortal great-book-that-is-semi-unreadable Anatomy of Melancholy, by Robert Burton. They refer to the great map set in the motley, order set against "the spirit of disorder" and "the enemy of boundaries", with Burton declaring on the essence of folly.
"S. Hierom out of a strong imagination, being in the wilderness, conceived with himself, that he then saw them dancing in Rome; and if thou shalt either conceive, or clim to see, thou shalt soon perceive that all the world is mad, that it is melancholy, dotes; that it is (which Epichthonius Cosmopolites expressed not many years since in a map) made like a fool's head (with that motto, Caput helleboro dignum) a crazed head, cavea stultorum, a fool's paradise, or as Apollonius, a common prison of gulls, cheaters, flatterers, &c. and needs to be reformed. Strabo in the ninth book of his geography, compares Greece to the picture of a man, which comparison of his, Nic. Gerbelius in his exposition of Sophianus' map, approves; the breast lies open from those Acroceraunian hills in Epirus, to the Sunian promontory in Attica; Pagae and Magaera are the two shoulders; that Isthmus of Corinth the neck; and Peloponnesus the head. If this allusion hold, 'tis sure a mad head; Morea may be Moria; and to speak what I think, the inhabitants of modern Greece swerve as much from reason and true religion at this day, as that Morea doth from the picture of a man. Examine the rest in like sort, and you shall find that kingdoms and provinces are melancholy, cities and families, all creatures, vegetal, sensible, and rational, that all sorts, sects, ages, conditions, are out of tune, as in Cebes' table, omnes errorem bibunt, before they come into the world, they are intoxicated by error's cup, from the highest to the lowest have need of physic, and those particular actions in Seneca, where father and son prove one another mad, may be general; Porcius Latro shall plead against us all. For indeed who is not a fool, melancholy, mad?— Qui nil molitur inepte, who is not brain-sick? Folly, melancholy, madness, are but one disease, Delirium is a common name to all."--Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-h/10800-h.htm
[I should say that I'm mostly fooling around with the Burton/unreadable part--it is my own weakness not being able to read this book. I've certainly read in it, and have found a lot of interesting references and insights, but for me the scholarship is so incredibly deep and rich that the great majority of it escapes me. It is not an easy read for sure--it is not even a difficult read...it is somewhere beyond that.]
I should also point out that Franks Jacobs in his post on this map in The Big Think (http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/480-the-fools-cap-map-of-the-world) provides translations for all of the legends.
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