Understanding
- Question: How did early modern books encourage techne?
- Answer: Early modern diagrams encouraged techne, the practical application of ideas, through diagrams visualizing geometry, geneology, geology and theology.
- Method: Farrell examines print elements of four separate books for signs of reader interactivity.
- Assumptions: Farrell attributes interactivity to basic eye motion, arguing that Euclidean lines are "read". Furthermore, Farrell doesn't distinguish between different kinds of diagrams and the possibly different literacies involved in geneologies and geography.
- Sententiae: "Since the publication of his [Walter Ong's] Ramus: Method and the Decay of Dialogue (1958), nonetheless, nearly every abstract design in an early modern English book has been assigned to the default category 'Ramist diagram' (the others simply dodge comment altogether), a less-than-helpful tribute to the staying power of what is now a 50-year-old thesis." (114)
Overstanding
- Assessment: Farrell's piece is light on the semiotics of charts, save for a secondary source on pop-up books, and similarly light on actual evidence of readerly interactions. The thesis occupies an an uncomfortable mid-point between theory of design and historical bibliography.
- Synthesis: Farrell covers John Day's Elementes of Geometry, which also made an appearance in Evenden and Freeman. But Farrell doesn't engage with the depth of bibliography available regarding Day, and similarly, she doesn't engage with Aston's essay on the tetragammaton while examining the representation of God at the head of a diagrammatic family tree.
- Application: I find more of a challenge in Farrell's subject matter than her methods. How can semiotic/formalist questions about diagrams and meaning engage meaningfully with the bibliographic/historical evidence? This is one of the big questions I'll have to chip away at gradually.
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