All posts tagged with gessner

The seventeenth century was a time of great advancement for science, but it also presented a curious juxtaposition between superstition and science. A part of Europe’s Early Modern period and the birth of the Baroque cultural movement, the 1600s also encompassed the early years of the Scientific Revolution, when superstition and religion gave way to scientific reasoning. Furthermore, the Enlightenment, which attempted to replace ideas based on faith or tradition with scientific method, began to take hold later in the century.

Have you ever wanted to browse the stacks of a rare book library? To explore the pages of Gessner’s sixteenth century masterpiece Historiae Animalium and ask an expert why a walrus is illustrated with wing-like appendages? Or study Alexander Wilson’s passenger pigeon illustration and learn from a rare book authority the scientific implications of the depictions of now-extinct species?