Ele Willoughby, PhD

For #SciArtSeptember prompt enchanted: Kepler’s Somnium. This hand-printed linocut illustrates astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler’s science fiction story Somnium, or “The Dream”. Kepler (1571-1630) wrote the strange manuscript in Latin, and circulated it amongst friends, with the intention of eventually publishing it but he died before that could could happen. 🧵1/n

#linocut #suminagashi #printmaking #histsci #sciart #Kepler #MastoArt #moon #astronomy

Sep 20, 2024 at 11:19amWeb
Show threadEle Willoughby, PhDSep 20, 2024
(It also escaped his control and contributed to allegations his mother was a witch). It was later published posthumously by his son. It was a way for Kepler to explain his knowledge of lunar astronomy and to explore some of the ideas creatively, including how the Earth would look viewed from the moon and what lunar life might be like. Some authors like Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have called it one of the earliest examples of science fiction. He sets up a story that he claims to have read 🧵2/n
Show threadEle Willoughby, PhDSep 20, 2024
in a dream of a 14 year old Icelandic boy, with a “wise woman” mother who ends up sailing to Denmark and training with astronomer Tycho Brahe (as Kepler did, so seen as self-insert). He returns home to learn his mother gains astronomical knowledge through a lunar spirit or daemon who can take them to the moon (giving Kepler the chance to both explain all the lunar astronomy he has learned but also to speculate about landscape and life forms). He imagined monstrously large mountains, 🧵3/n
Show threadEle Willoughby, PhDSep 20, 2024
valleys and creatures. On the far side of the moon (Privolva, deprived of Earth, or Volva) there are nomads with legs longer than camels, or wings who take refuge from extremes of temperature in boats or underwater. On the Earth-facing Subvolva, the Earth plays the role the moon does for us. There are giant serpent like creatures with spongy skin and animals like pine cones. 🧵4/5
Show threadEle Willoughby, PhDSep 20, 2024

So this is a scene of the Subvolvan side, with serpent-like and pinecone-like creatures, a canal, tall mountains, and a cave with a boy and daemon observing. In designing the daemon, I was influenced by Kepler’s mother’s surprising horn-like hairdo.

Each Subvolvan serpent is unique on suminagashi marbled paper.
🧵5/5

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1193497633