Abstract

Baroque Uncertainty Principle. Voyages to the Moon in the 17th Century

The moon has always fascinated humankind. In the light of the “new astronomy“ of the 17th century there began a fairly broad discussion in Europe about the relations of the earth and the moon. Now that the lunar companion could be observed with improved telescopes, new representations of the moon became possible. And the possibility of travelling to the moon did not seem to be completely unrealistic anymore. Johannes Kepler, Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac, Francis Godwin, John Wilkins and David Russen (among others) wrote tracts in which they not only fantasized about how to make their way to the moon but in which they also seriously discussed the technical and physical options of going there. Connecting fact and fiction – or the actual and the potential – became constitutive of the moon-tracts of the 17th century. Both the scientific and the fictional supported each other to bring forth a baroque uncertainty principle: Because the moon could be observed better with the telescope it became possible to actually discover lunar civilisations; and the fictional narratives made plausible the scientific observations.