Cosmography & Autopsy

In his essay collection entitled Geography & Vision: Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World, Denis Cosgrove explores the historical linkages between geography and cosmography. Cosmography is the science of mapping the universe and attempts to describe both the heaven and the earth. According to Cosgrove, "Cosmographers mapped spaces well beyond the surface of the earth, recognizing the inseparability of terrestrial and celestial forms and patterns" (34). By the end of the Renaissance, a rise in technologies (e.g. the camera obscura and optical lens) and new empirical ways of viewing the world led to a crisis in cosmology. On one hand, religious critics argued that cosmographers were attempting to raise themselves to the level of the Creator in their ambitious pursuit of knowledge, not unlike the Biblical caution against hubris depicted in Brueghel's Tower of Babel to the left. On the other hand, since certain aspects of cosmography (such as the study of heaven) were based on second rather than firsthand knowledge, cosmography fell outside the range of what was construed to be scientific and verifiable. Cosgrove calls the new eyewitness approach "autopsy." Interestingly, he notes, "those who came closest to achieving such a cosmographic autopsy were not the scholars but the painters" (42).