Enabled by the prosperity of printing technology and motivated by a “newly invigorated info-lust,” early modern artists, scientists, and theologians produced numerous images that used diagrammatic and pictorial strategies to condense theories or practices into easily digestible graphic forms. The resulting visual works were tools of transforming information into knowledge. They spatialized relationships, creating worlds in which physical and conceptual proximity were one and the same. They were instruments of pedagogy, championed by scholars such as Petrus Ramus and Johann Amos Comenius, who argued that comprehension could be better achieved and retained when the studied information was manifested spatially. Print designers, both renowned and unknown, found many ways of organizing these spatialized relationships, modeling them after trees or wheels, and applying them to diverse genres from politics to theology. Bold lines, textheavy chains or trodden footpaths – the map-like skeletons of schematic prints – guide beholders through these complex images, inviting them to traverse imaginatively the pictorial space as if it were real, perhaps by tracing their chosen routes with their fingers, feeling the subtle topographic ridge of ink on the printed page.

Despite their diversity and abundance, early modern single-page schemata, which exist somewhere between text and image, have long skirted the attentions of art historians. That they largely remain footnotes of visual culture can be attributed in part to their dry and convoluted nature, which has made them objects of study better suited to the histories of mathematics or science, who, however, focus primarily on the information represented rather than the manner of its representation.

Introduction

The treatise De humani corporis fabrica by Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) was a landmark atlas of human anatomy that provided readers in early modern Europe with a new standard in medical illustration and instruction from the moment that it was published in Basel in 1543. The book represented an epistemic shift from a tradition that privileged the literary canon of medical texts, centered on the writings of the second-century Greek physician Galen, to a practice that depended on the author’s purportedly direct observation of dissected cadavers. From an early moment in the book’s history, contemporary readers saw Vesalius’s anatomy as a mutable font of knowledge ready to be folded into an ever-growing mass of information in text and image about the human body.

In 1556, the Spanish physician Juan Valverde de Amusco (1525–1587) published in Rome Historia de la composición del cuerpo humano, a Spanish commentary on and translation of the Latin Fabrica. With the support of his patron, Spanish cardinal Juan Álvarez de Toledo (1488–1557), who was called to Rome in 1553 to serve as inquisitor general, Valverde contracted with the reputable publishers Antoine Lafréry (1512–1577) and Antonio Salamanca (1478–1562) to print the engravings, and papal printer Antonio Blado (1490–1567) to print the text.

Enigmas make for compelling puzzles because they inspire hope that fresh insights may be found through revisiting an enduring problem from a unique angle or engaging with diverse perspectives. This introduction briefly discusses the theme of 'enigmas' and their prominence across different disciplines and throughout time. Enigmas resonate with the processes and methodologies of research practices across the arts, sciences, and humanities, as is clear from the range of topics covered in the volume's eight chapters. Each of the chapters then receives a short introduction detailing the author's topic and main argument. Although some enigmas can, at first glance, seem to pose insurmountable challenges to humanity, the overall impression provided by this volume is one of hope. Even problems which initially appear overwhelming can be scrutinised, interpreted, and ultimately resolved.

At the heart of humankind is the paradox that we share the molecules of life with a hundred billion species, but we are also unique. The question of what makes us special, or even whether we are exceptional, has preoccupied our species for thousands of years. Although the idea of a single location for humanity’s origin is antithetical to the evidence, the complex picture of human evolution is often publicly conveyed through simple linear narratives. This chapter instead communicates the beautiful complexities and intricacies of the story of our evolutionary trajectory. It considers archaeological evidence for the development of the human mind before focusing on two aspects of human uniqueness (or otherwise). Tool use and the use of fire are of especial significance to the evolution of the 'full package' of human behavioural modernity, but are we as extraordinary in employing these actions as we may think? Examples from animals such as sponging dolphins, savannah chimpanzees, and 'firehawks' provide a way of unpicking enigmatic elements of our exceptionality.

The defining feature of the medieval manuscript, the book that was used across Europe before the introduction of printing, is that its contents have been written by hand. A compelling feature of written text from the medieval period is that it produces two kinds of meaning: the meaning of the words themselves, the primary reason for consulting a manuscript, then and now; and more concealed meaning hidden within the shape of the letters. As medieval scribes copied a text, they included information about themselves and their surroundings in their handwriting. How the individual letters were formed depended, for example, on the location and moment of the book’s production, the institution in which the scribe was trained, and even with how much care a text was copied. This is the enigma of the medieval manuscript, that a wealth of historical information is embedded in the appearance of letters – if the code can be deciphered. What methods are available to untangle this enigma? What knowledge hidden in plain sight can be gleaned if we are successful? Why is looking at an old book as useful as reading it?

Earth's geological history is punctuated by episodes of unusually protracted and large-scale volcanic activity, during which huge volumes of igneous rock are added to Earth's surface and crust. Humans have not witnessed this type of large-scale volcanic activity, known as large igneous province volcanism, but it is often temporally associated with profound environmental and climatic changes, such as mass extinction events. In order to understand what triggers these global changes, we need to consider the fluxes of particles and gas emitted by large igneous province-scale volcanic activity and match our projections with the signals left in the geological record. This is a challenging endeavour and this chapter discusses how evidence from today's active volcanoes can teach us not just about the present-day impact of volcanism, but also about these much larger volcanic eruptions that happened tens to hundreds of millions of years ago. The author argues that by peering into volcanoes, we can shed new light on enigmas surrounding the evolution of Earth's environment and biology over its deep geological history.

This chapter guides the reader through three related enigmas of modern physics. The first is a mystery of quantum mechanics. Important aspects of quantum mechanics are still not truly understood, although competing theories have been proposed, including the Many-Worlds approach. The second enigma is the emergence of spacetime, and especially the way it interacts with gravity. Rather than following the traditional methodology of ‘quantising’ classical theories, the author proposes an alternative approach and instead seeks gravity within quantum mechanics. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the mystery of the arrow of time: what distinguishes the past from the future. Together, these three mysteries of modern physics serve as an important reminder of the endurance of enigmas in the very foundations of scholarly fields. Re-examining founding principles can provide a constructive alternative means of investigating mysteries, not only in modern science but also across other disciplines.

The efforts to decode the mystery of the Antikythera mechanism, a unique machine surviving from around 70–60 BC, extend more than a century since its discovery in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of a Greek island. Although the first experts who looked at the device were baffled by its gear mechanisms, dating, and purpose, this chapter explains how many of these inscrutable aspects slowly came to be clarified and deciphered. The author illustrates the immense efforts it can take to ‘solve’ an enigma: in this case, the combined work of historians, epigraphers, radiographers, X-ray machines, mechanics, filmmakers, and multinational technology companies. The chapter also displays the valuable insights which can come from such endeavours. Decoding the Antikythera mechanism challenged common assumptions about technological skill and astronomical knowledge in antiquity, but it also encouraged innovations in modern technology and revealed something of humanity’s search to understand the cosmos.

We live in an age where emotional literacy and legibility is highly desirable, and where so-called Emotion Detection technologies lead us to believe that, with enough data, we might crack the enigma of other people’s emotions. This chapter begins from a different proposition: what is it to want to remain emotionally inscrutable? Beginning with Darwin’s 1872 observation that studying other peoples’ emotions is ‘difficult’, the chapter then argues that ambivalence and illegibility is part of the nature of emotion itself. It then moves to consider a series of moments when people have deliberately used emotional inscrutability as a form of self-defence and defiance, including in ‘camp’ retorts by early twentieth century cross-dressers, and in Audre Lorde’s refusal to emotionally engage with white women about race because it came at such a high psychological cost to her. In this way, this chapter shines a light on those moments when emotional inscrutability becomes a powerful political tool.

Focusing on human capacity to design, the volume's final chapter draws attention to the fascinating role imagination can play in human life. The relationship between human consciousness and the evolution of the species continues to captivate and puzzle scholars. By revisiting the dialogue between consciousness and evolution, the authors demonstrate how enigmas often necessitate dynamic collaboration between sciences, arts, and humanities. Archaeology provides evidence that the drive for diverse conscious experiences is no new phenomenon, while neuroscience illuminates the ways in which altered states of consciousness can enhance the variety of mental experience. Art, design, and cognitive technologies can build on this picture by providing innovative ways of exploring conscious experience. Inspired by insights from a range of academic disciplines and reflecting on personal experience, this chapter proposes the role of ‘harmony’ as another enigmatic angle of research with potential to shed further light on the functioning both of human society and of the human mind.

Puzzles and codes have multifaceted uses in practices of concealment, especially for militaristic purposes, corporate secrecy, or national security.The term ‘Enigma’ is perhaps most recognisable in modern history and contemporary culture as the name of a cipher device used by the German military to send messages during World War II. This chapter moves to the historical context of the twentieth century and shows how humans sometimes deliberately engineer enigmas to serve their own purposes. The author focuses on the mathematics underpinning the story of the Enigma Machine, setting out the process both of the code’s creation and of its decryption. Following the story of Alan Turing, a mathematician and one of the code breakers at Bletchley Park, the chapter emphasises both the necessity of collaborative labours to solve challenging problems and the importance of individual research and investigation to resolve crucial pieces of a much larger puzzle.