Book of Nature

Use in the book

Page 29 calls the great world a divine wonder-book that no person can study to its end. This supports intellectual humility: ignorance is no proof that nobody else knows. Later, pages 141–1422 put natural reading before inherited literature through the figure of the first Philosopher, who had never read bark, tablets, parchment, or paper. Khunrath accordingly grounds his demonstrations in the divine Light of Nature in great and little worlds, together with the agreement of biblical writings. The marginal claim that a free Philosopher must philosophize freely belongs to that release from dependence on merely human authority.

The assembled book on pages 142–1432 gives the metaphor material pressure. Khunrath says he brought it together through travel, labour, expense, and some danger to his life; Nature herself wrote its nearly three hundred letters. A merely highly learned man may struggle even to know them, and one who is no fire-artist will struggle to read them rightly. Harder still is recognizing the ink, what Nature composed it from, and how she decocted it. The passage presents investigation of natural things and their composition as a more fruitful study than many ill-written books. It does not list the letters or explicitly inventory a collection.

Page 154 clarifies the role of fire: the margin calls it God's ordinary professor of physics in the university of the world, expounding the Book of Nature. Reading is therefore not confined to contemplation of surfaces. It includes chymical intervention and attention to what workings reveal. The wider theological uses of the world-book remain inseparable from this practice: Magnesia is said to testify of Christ in it, and knowledge of creation opens onto knowledge of the Creator. Yet the metaphor does not give the lexicon authority to identify the unnamed letters or ink with modern substances.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 29The inexhaustible wonder-book supports the obligation to keep learning.
2. 1599 p. 142The first Philosopher and Khunrath's assembled book of nearly three hundred natural letters join a defence of knowledge beyond paper authorities.
3. 1599 p. 142 · marginThe free Philosopher is enjoined to philosophize freely in the context of natural foundations.
4. 1599 p. 143Reading the natural letters requires the fire-artist, and recognizing their ink is harder than merely knowing the letters.
5. 1599 p. 154 · marginFire is the appointed professor who expounds the Book of Nature.
6. 1599 p. 167The macrocosmic book contributes to certainty before demonstrated transmutation.

Translation in this edition

The edition's modern note identifies the assembled book as a specimen collection. That is a plausible interpretation of the primary conceit, not an explicit inventory or material description by Khunrath. The main text says letters, ink, travelling, collecting, and chymical reading. Its corrected literas follows the author's own Errata; the accusative clarifies the sentence but does not identify its referents.