Micrographia nova: sive nova & curiosa variorum minutorum corporum singularis cujusdam & noviter

A decorative headpiece ornament consisting of a central circle flanked by floral motifs.

they did not weigh them on the scales of truth, and because of this, they strayed immensely in the right interpretation of physical phenomena. For since natural things are subjected to the human intellect only according to this ordinary path, following the axiom pronounced not only by philosophers but also by the tripod of Apollo the oracle at Delphi and Truth: "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses," an Aristotelian/Scholastic principle namely through expressed and impressed species referring to the philosophical concept of sensory perception. For this reason, I have spent the course of so many years investigating the effects of the senses and their more refined perfection; in particular, I have devised various aids for the noblest of the senses, namely sight and the eyes (for I shall release the perfection of touch and the other senses to the prisons of the press in my future booklets), to be placed into three main classes.

The first class is supplied by telescopes equipped with many lenses, by the aid of which the most remote and invisible things are rendered clearly visible and are brought before our eyes. The second is adorned by perspectives a term used here for specialized optical instruments (forgive me if I do not produce Ciceronian Latin, you shades of Cicero!) dedicated to the stars, by which the bright stars and their motions, previously unknown stars, and the planets' ma-