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61-453: Flammarion may refer to: Camille Flammarion (1842–1925), French astronomer and author Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion (1877–1962), French astronomer, second wife of Camille Flammarion Sylvie Flammarion (1836-1919), French feminist and pacifist, first wife of Camille Flammarion Flammarion engraving by unknown artist; appeared in a book by Camille Flammarion Flammarion (lunar crater) ,

122-576: A burin , a tool used for wood engraving only since the late 18th century. Flammarion had been apprenticed at the age of twelve to an engraver in Paris and it is believed that many of the illustrations for his books were engraved from his own drawings, probably under his supervision. Therefore, it is plausible that Flammarion himself created the image, though the evidence for this remains inconclusive. Like most other illustrations in Flammarion's books,

183-553: A psychedelic experience. In the early 20th century, the scholar Heinz Strauss dated the image to the period 1520–30, while Heinrich Röttinger suggested that it had been made in 1530–60. In 1957, historian of astronomy Ernst Zinner claimed that the image dated to the German Renaissance , but he was unable to find any version published earlier than 1906. The same image was used by psychoanalyst Carl Jung in his 1959 book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in

244-483: A "thought experiment" about what might happen if it did inject various gases into the atmosphere. Sensation-seeking papers chose to quote only the latter part, leading to the widespread misconception that Flammarion actually believed it. On 1 February 1910, Flammarion published an update in the Herald , saying he wished to warn journalists against "accusing me of announcing the end of the world for May 19 next. The end of

305-529: A claim that Pytheas "had arrived at a corner of the sky, and was obliged to stoop down in order not to touch it." The combination of the story of St. Macarius with Le Vayer's remarks seems to be due to Flammarion himself. It also appears in his Les terres du ciel ("The Lands of the Sky"): With respect to the bounds (of the Earth)... some monks of the tenth century of our era, bolder than the rest, say that, in making

366-473: A cosmic version of metempsychosis . In Lumen , a human character meets the soul of an alien, able to cross the universe faster than light, that has been reincarnated on many different worlds, each with its own gallery of organisms and their evolutionary history. Other than that, his writing about other worlds adhered fairly closely to then current ideas in evolutionary theory and astronomy. Among other things, he believed that all planets went through more or less

427-792: A drawing inspired by the Flammarion engraving ( Spiritual Pilgrim ), showing the face of David Bowie near the drawing's right margin where the Sun should be. David Oxtoby's drawing doesn't show the crawling man at left. The Flammarion engraving appeared on the cover of Daniel J. Boorstin 's bestselling history of science The Discoverers , published in 1983. Other books devoted to science that used it as an illustration include The Mathematical Experience (1981) by Philip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh , Matter, Space, and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and Their Sequel (1988) by Richard Sorabji , Paradoxes of Free Will (2002) by Gunther Stent , and Uncentering

488-446: A lunar crater named after Camille Flammarion Flammarion (Martian crater) , a Martian crater named after Camille Flammarion Groupe Flammarion , a French publishing company Camille Flammarion Observatory , the astronomical observatory Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Flammarion . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

549-450: A man, dressed as a pilgrim in a long robe and carrying a walking stick, who has reached a point where the flat Earth meets the firmament . The pilgrim kneels down and passes his head, shoulders, right arm, and the top of the walking stick through an opening in the firmament, which is depicted as covered on the inside by the stars, Sun, and Moon. Behind the sky, the pilgrim finds a marvelous realm of circling clouds, fires and suns. One of

610-447: A network of lines on its surface, which were named "canals" by Schiaparelli. These turned out to be an optical illusion due to the limited observing instruments of the time, as revealed by better telescopes in the 1920s. Camille, a contemporary of Schiaparelli, extensively researched the so-called "canals" during the 1880s and 1890s. Like American astronomer Percival Lowell , he thought the "canals" were artificial in nature and most likely

671-483: A religious system based on the transmigration of souls believed to be reconcilable with both Christianity and pluralism. He was convinced that souls after the physical death pass from planet to planet and progressively improve at each new incarnation. In 1862 he published his first book, The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds , and was dismissed from his position at the Paris Observatory later the same year. It

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732-599: A single gelatinous substance, adds: That good anchorite, who boasted of having been as far as the end of the world, said likewise, that he had been obliged to stoop low, on account of the joining of the sky and earth in that distant region. Le Vayer does not specify who this "anchorite" was, nor does he provide further details about the story or its sources. Le Vayer's comment was expanded upon by Pierre Estève in his Histoire generale et particuliere de l'astronomie ("General and Particular History of Astronomy," 1755), where he interprets Le Vayer's statement (without attribution) as

793-425: A voyage in search of the terrestrial paradise, they had found the point where the heaven and earth touch, and had even been obliged to lower their shoulders! This historian of science Stefano Gattei has argued that the image in the engraving is directly inspired by an argument for the infinitude of space, due to the ancient Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum. Gattei quotes the version of this argument given in

854-419: Is about as reasonable as if a silk-worm took his web for the limits of the universe. The Greek astronomers represented it as formed of a solid crystal substance; and so recently as Copernicus , a large number of astronomers thought it was as solid as plate-glass. The Latin poets placed the divinities of Olympus and the stately mythological court upon this vault, above the planets and the fixed stars. Previous to

915-608: Is hosted on YouTube and produced by Urknall, Weltall, und das Leben , and features Professor Joseph Gaßner as lecturer, a colored Flammarion engraving was selected as a logo, but the man is peering at a background filled with the important equations of physics. More recently in May 2021, an interpretation of the image has featured on a limited edition book release by Yusuf/Cat Stevens . Niklas Åkerblad also known as El Huervo, in October 2021 released an album titled "Flammarion" in which

976-503: Is not at all likely. If the souls of the dead are about us, upon our planet, the invisible population would increase at the rate of 100,000 a day, about 36 millions a year, 3 billions 620 millions in a century, 36 billions in ten centuries, etc.—unless we admit re-incarnations upon the earth itself. How many times do apparitions or manifestations occur? When illusions, auto-suggestions, hallucinations are eliminated what remains? Scarcely anything. Such an exceptional rarity as this pleads against

1037-475: Is not quite clear if these two incidents are related to each other. In Real and Imaginary Worlds (1864) and Lumen (1887), he "describes a range of exotic species, including sentient plants which combine the processes of digestion and respiration. This belief in extraterrestrial life , Flammarion combined with a religious conviction derived, not from the Catholic faith upon which he had been raised, but from

1098-704: The stone tape theory and "exceptionally and rarely the dead do manifest" in hauntings. He was also a member of the Theosophical Society . He was the first to suggest the names Triton and Amalthea for moons of Neptune and Jupiter , respectively, although these names were not officially adopted until many decades later. George Gamow cited Flammarion as having had a significant influence on his childhood interest in science. Named after him Source: "Gallica search results" . Bibliothèque nationale de France . Retrieved 24 February 2022 . Flammarion engraving The illustration depicts

1159-500: The subconscious mind is the explanation and there is no evidence for the spirit hypothesis. Flammarion believed in the survival of the soul after death but wrote that mediumship had not been scientifically proven. Even though Flammarion believed in the survival of the soul after death he did not believe in the spirit hypothesis of Spiritism, instead he believed that Spiritist activities such as ectoplasm and levitations of objects could be explained by an unknown " psychic force " from

1220-531: The "rectification of old rivers aimed at the general distribution of water to the surface of the continents." He assumed the planet was in an advanced stage of its habitability, and the canals were the product of an intelligent species attempting to survive on a dying world. When astronomers announced that the Earth would pass through the tail of Halley's Comet in May 1910, Flammarion was widely reported, in numerous American newspapers, as believing that toxic gases in

1281-667: The Earth: Copernicus and On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (2006) by William T. Vollmann . Some books devoted to mysticism which have also used the engraving include Love and Law (2001) by Ernest Holmes and Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing (2002) by Stephan A. Hoeller . The 1989 Dungeons & Dragons setting Spelljammer was loosely inspired by

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1342-426: The Flammarion engraving at the suggestion of David "Zeb" Cook . The Brazilian writer Olavo de Carvalho reproduced the engraving in his 1995 book O Jardim das Aflições ("The Garden of Afflictions"), offering it as an example of Renaissance views concerning the spiritual world, which he criticized: "the pilgrim evades the mundane 'sphere', abandoning trees and flowers, Sun and Moon, birds and stars, to penetrate

1403-579: The Great Phenomena of Nature," 1872). The correspondence between the text and the illustration is so close that one would appear to be based on the other. Had Flammarion known of the engraving in 1872, it seems unlikely that he would have left it out of that year's edition, which was already heavily illustrated. The more probable conclusion therefore is that Flammarion commissioned the engraving specifically to illustrate this particular text, though this has not been ascertained conclusively. The idea of

1464-538: The Skies . Jung speculated that the image was a Rosicrucian engraving from the 17th century. The eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky also thought that illustration was from the 17th century, while his colleague Ernst Gombrich judged it to be modern. In 1970, Jung's associate Marie-Louise von Franz reproduced and discussed the image in her book Number and Time , where it was captioned "The hole open to eternity,

1525-452: The author's intent in using it as an illustration: Whether the sky be clear or cloudy, it always seems to us to have the shape of an elliptic arch; far from having the form of a circular arch, it always seems flattened and depressed above our heads, and gradually to become farther removed toward the horizon. Our ancestors imagined that this blue vault was really what the eye would lead them to believe it to be; but, as Voltaire remarks, this

1586-506: The commentary on Aristotle 's Physics by Simplicius of Cilicia , written in the 6th century CE: But Archytas, according to Eudemus , put the question in this way: "If I came to be at the edge, for example at the heaven of the fixed stars, could I stretch out my hand or walking stick, or not? It would be absurd that I could not stretch it out; but, if I do stretch it out, what is outside will be either body or place (it makes no difference, as we shall discover). Thus he will always go on in

1647-488: The confusion about the historical origins of the image became possible. According to Bruno Weber and to astronomer Joseph Ashbrook , the depiction of a spherical heavenly vault separating the Earth from an outer realm is similar to an illustration that begins the first chapter of Sebastian Münster 's Cosmographia , first published in 1544, a book which Flammarion, an ardent bibliophile and book collector, might have owned. However, in 2002 Hans Gerhard Senger, an expert on

1708-637: The contact of the Earth with a solid sky is one that repeatedly appears in Flammarion's earlier works. Commentators have suggested various literary passages that might have directly motivated the composition of the image in the Flammarion engraving. These included the Medieval legend of Saint Macarius the Roman, the Letters of François de La Mothe Le Vayer from the 17th century, and the classical argument for

1769-427: The earth and the heavens met, and that he discovered a certain point where they were not joined together, and where, by stooping his shoulders, he passed under the roof of the heavens... The same paragraph had already appeared, without the accompanying engraving, in an earlier edition of the text published under the title of L'atmosphère: description des grands phénomènes de la Nature ("The Atmosphere: Description of

1830-500: The elements of the cosmic machinery resembles traditional pictorial representations of the " wheel in the middle of a wheel " described in the visions of the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel . The wood engraving has often, but erroneously, been referred to as a woodcut . It has been widely used as a metaphorical illustration of either the scientific or the mystical quests for knowledge. More recently, it has also been used as to represent

1891-437: The end of the world, and of having been obliged to stoop his shoulders , on account of the joining of the sky and the earth in that distant place. Flammarion also mentioned the same story, in nearly the same words, in his Histoire du Ciel ("History of the Sky"): "I have in my library," interrupted the deputy, "a very curious work: Levayer's letters. I recall having read there of a good anchorite who bragged of having been 'to

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1952-402: The ends of the earth,' and of having been obliged to stoop his shoulders, because of the union of the sky and of the earth at this extremity." The Letters referred to are a series of short essays by François de La Mothe Le Vayer . In letter 89, Le Vayer, after mentioning Strabo 's scornful opinion of Pytheas 's account of a region in the far north where land, sea, and air seemed to mingle in

2013-400: The engraving carries no attribution. Although sometimes referred to as a forgery or a hoax, Flammarion does not characterize the engraving as a medieval or renaissance woodcut, and the mistaken interpretation of the engraving as an older work did not occur until after Flammarion's death. The decorative border surrounding the engraving is distinctly non-medieval and it was only by cropping it that

2074-484: The image to fit the proportions of the record jacket). The image also appeared in "The Compleat Astrologer" (pg. 25) by Derek and Julia Parker in 1971. In 1994, 'The Secret Language of Birthdays' by Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers was published featuring this image. The image was reproduced on the title page of the score of Brian Ferneyhough 's "Transit: Six Solo Voices and Chamber Orchestra", published by Edition Peters in 1975. British artist David Oxtoby made

2135-405: The infinitude of space attributed to Archytas of Tarentum (a friend of the philosopher Plato ). In his Les mondes imaginaires et les mondes réels ("Imaginary Worlds and Real Worlds", 1864), Flammarion cites a legend of a Christian saint, Macarius the Roman, which he dates to the 6th century. This legend includes the story of three monks (Theophilus, Sergius, and Hyginus) who "wished to discover

2196-582: The knowledge that the earth was moving in space, and that space is everywhere, theologians had installed the Trinity in the empyrean , the glorified body of Jesus, that of the Virgin Mary, the angelic hierarchy , the saints, and all the heavenly host.... A naïve missionary of the Middle Ages even tells us that, in one of his voyages in search of the terrestrial paradise , he reached the horizon where

2257-543: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Flammarion&oldid=1135440160 " Categories : Disambiguation pages Disambiguation pages with surname-holder lists Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Camille Flammarion Nicolas Camille Flammarion FRAS ( French: [nikɔla kamij flamaʁjɔ̃] ; 26 February 1842 – 3 June 1925)

2318-482: The loyalty of mediums. They almost always cheat". However, Flammarion, a believer in psychic phenomena, attended séances with Eusapia Palladino and claimed that some of her phenomena were genuine. He produced in his book alleged levitation photographs of a table and an impression of a face in putty . Joseph McCabe did not find the evidence convincing. He noted that the impressions of faces in putty were always of Palladino's face and could have easily been made, and she

2379-662: The marvelous kingdom of the spirit, which consists of some miserable gear wheels hidden among cloud wisps. Beautiful exchange!" An interpretation of the image was used for the animated sequence about the cosmological vision of Giordano Bruno in the March 9, 2014 premiere of the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey , hosted by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson . In the German-language video series "Von Aristoteles zur Stringtheorie", ("From Aristotle to String Theory"), which

2440-411: The medium. He also believed that telepathy could explain some paranormal phenomena. In his book Mysterious Psychic Forces (1909) he wrote: This is very far from being demonstrated. The innumerable observations which I have collected during more than forty years all prove to me the contrary. No satisfactory identification has been made. The communications obtained have always seemed to proceed from

2501-459: The mentality of the group, or when they are heterogeneous, from spirits of an incomprehensible nature. The being evoked soon vanishes when one insists on pushing him to the wall and having the heart out of his mystery. That souls survive the destruction of the body I have not the shadow of a doubt. But that they manifest themselves by the processes employed in séances the experimental method has not yet given us absolute proof. I add that this hypothesis

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2562-458: The past. He also believed in 1907 that a seven-tailed comet was heading toward Earth. In 1910, for the appearance of Halley's Comet , he was widely but falsely reported as believing the gas from the comet's tail "would impregnate [the Earth’s] atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet". As a young man, Flammarion was exposed to two significant social movements in the western world:

2623-451: The point where the sky and the earth touch" (in Latin: ubi cœlum terræ se conjungit ). After recounting the legend he remarks that "the preceding monks hoped to go to heaven without leaving the earth, to find 'the place where the sky and the earth touch,' and open the mysterious gateway which separates this world from the other. Such is the cosmographical notion of the universe; it is always

2684-535: The psychic force of a living person". The book was reviewed by the magician Harry Houdini who wrote it "fails to supply adequate proof of the veracity of the conglomeration of hearsay it contains; it must, therefore, be a collection of myths." In a presidential address to the Society for Psychical Research in October 1923 Flammarion summarized his views after 60 years of investigating paranormal phenomena . He wrote that he believed in telepathy , etheric doubles ,

2745-463: The reality of apparitions. In the 1920s Flammarion changed some of his beliefs on apparitions and hauntings but still claimed there was no evidence for the spirit hypothesis of mediumship in Spiritism . In his 1924 book Les maisons hantées (Haunted Houses) he came to the conclusion that in some rare cases hauntings are caused by departed souls whilst others are caused by the "remote action of

2806-458: The same stages of development, but at different rates depending on their sizes. The fusion of science, science fiction and the spiritual influenced other readers as well; "With great commercial success he blended scientific speculation with science fiction to propagate modern myths such as the notion that “superior” extraterrestrial species reside on numerous planets, and that the human soul evolves through cosmic reincarnation. Flammarion's influence

2867-539: The same way to the newly chosen limit on each occasion, and ask the same question again. And if there is always something else into which the stick is stretched, it will clearly be also unlimited. The first color version to be published was made by Roberta Weir and distributed by Berkeley's Print Mint in 1970. That color image spawned most of the modern variations that have followed since. Donovan 's 1973 LP, Cosmic Wheels , used an extended black and white version on its inner sleeve (an artist added elements extending

2928-528: The spiritual pilgrim discovering another world". Von Franz suggested that the image might be a 19th-century woodcut. The image was traced to Flammarion's book by Arthur Beer , an astrophysicist and historian of German science at Cambridge and, independently, by Bruno Weber, the curator of rare books at the Zürich central library. Weber argued that the work was a composite of images characteristic of different historical periods, and that it had been made with

2989-519: The tail might "snuff out all life on the planet". In fact, he said no such thing. In an article in the New York Herald in November 1909, responding to such claims by others, he stated that "The poisoning of humanity by deleterious gases is improbable", and correctly stated that the matter in the comet's tail is so tenuous that it would have no noticeable effect. However, he also indulged in

3050-500: The tail of Halley's Comet would be poisonous for earth life. Camille was a brother of Ernest Flammarion and Berthe Martin-Flammarion, and uncle of a woman named Zelinda. His first wife was Sylvie Petiaux-Hugo Flammarion , and his second wife was Gabrielle Renaudot Flammarion , also a noted astronomer. Beginning with Giovanni Schiaparelli 's 1877 observations, 19th-century astronomers observing Mars believed they saw

3111-538: The terrestrial valley crowned by the canopy of the heavens." In the legend of St. Macarius, the monks do not in fact find the place where Earth and sky touch. In Les mondes imaginaires Flammarion recounts another story: This fact reminds us of the tale which Le Vayer recounts in his Letters . It appears that an anchorite , probably a relative of the Desert Fathers of the East, boasted of having been as far as

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3172-444: The thoughts and ideas of Darwin and Lamarck and the rising popularity of spiritism with spiritualist churches and organizations appearing all over Europe. He has been described as an "astronomer, mystic and storyteller" who was "obsessed by life after death, and on other worlds, and [who] seemed to see no distinction between the two". He was influenced by Jean Reynaud (1806–1863) and his Terre et ciel (1854), which described

3233-522: The two merged, making L’Astronomie its bulletin. The 1895 volume of the combined journal was numbered 9, to preserve the BSAF volume numbering, but this had the consequence that volumes 9 to 13 of L'Astronomie can each refer to two different publications five years apart. The " Flammarion engraving " first appeared in Flammarion's 1888 edition of L’Atmosphère . In 1907, he wrote that he believed that dwellers on Mars had tried to communicate with Earth in

3294-496: The viewpoint of the scientific method , writing, "It is by the scientific method alone that we may make progress in the search for truth. Religious belief must not take the place of impartial analysis. We must be constantly on our guard against illusions." He was very close to the French author Allan Kardec , who founded Spiritism . Flammarion had studied mediumship and wrote, "It is infinitely to be regretted that we cannot trust

3355-429: The works of Nicholas of Cusa , argued against the image having been first created by Flammarion. In Flammarion's L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire , the image is accompanied by a caption in French, which translates as: A missionary of the Middle Ages tells that he had found the point where the sky and the Earth touch... The illustration refers to the text on the facing page (p. 162), which also clarifies

3416-409: The world will not occur on May 19 next." He could not have made his position any clearer, yet many papers ignored this rebuttal, and continued a campaign of misquoting and fabrication for the sake of sensational headlines. Flammarion was, in fact, the victim of a deliberate character assassination, in order to sell papers. Flammarion approached spiritism , psychical research and reincarnation from

3477-467: The writings of Jean Reynaud and their emphasis upon the transmigration of souls. Man he considered to be a “citizen of the sky,” other worlds “studios of human work, schools where the expanding soul progressively learns and develops, assimilating gradually the knowledge to which its aspirations tend, approaching thus evermore the end of its destiny.” His psychical studies also influenced some of his science fiction , where he would write about his beliefs in

3538-517: Was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and works on psychical research and related topics. He also published the magazine L'Astronomie , starting in 1882. He maintained a private observatory at Juvisy-sur-Orge , France. Camille Flammarion was born in Montigny-le-Roi , Haute-Marne , France. He

3599-460: Was great, not just on the popular thought of his day, but also on later writers with similar interests and convictions." In the English translation of Lumen , Brian Stableford argues that both Olaf Stapledon and William Hope Hodgson have likely been influenced by Flammarion. Arthur Conan Doyle 's The Poison Belt , published 1913, also has a lot in common with Flammarion's supposed worries that

3660-451: Was not entirely clear from the table in the levitation photographs. His book The Unknown (1900) received a negative review from the psychologist Joseph Jastrow who wrote "the work's fundamental faults are a lack of critical judgment in the estimation of evidence, and of an appreciation of the nature of the logical conditions which the study of these problems presents." After two years investigation into automatic writing he wrote that

3721-600: Was the brother of Ernest Flammarion (1846–1936), the founder of the Groupe Flammarion publishing house. In 1858 he became a professional at computery at the Paris Observatory . He was a founder and the first president of the Société astronomique de France , which originally had its own independent journal, BSAF ( Bulletin de la Société astronomique de France ) , which was first published in 1887. In January 1895, after 13 volumes of L'Astronomie and 8 of BSAF ,

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