Sea Monsters, Sensory Distance, And Mapping Nature In Early Modern Europe: Rethinking Epistemic Images

Sea monster images on early modern European maps were visual prototypes intended to generate new knowledge about places that were inaccessible to human bodies and instruments. In places of sensory distance (which included worlds viewed through microscopes and telescopes, as well as ocean depths), nature was expected to operate differently and even to produce monstrous creatures. Drawing on Spanish, Italian, German, French, English, and Dutch sources, this paper casts the map as an epistemic multiplier: an image upon which other images sit in ways that are epistemically consequential. By analyzing how maps and their marine animals functioned as epistemic images composed through a process of forensic imagination, one can build a toolbox for the study of scientific images that are orthogonal to the grand narratives and affective worlds of art and science. This work entails cross-fertilizing history of science with art history, postcolonial studies, literary studies, and history of cartography. Understanding science as a visual pursuit requires that scholars correct for the blind spots generated by their own positionality in place and time vis-à-vis their visual archive.