Visible Writings: Cultures, Forms, Readings

Mathematics for "Just Plain Folks": Allegories of Quantitative and Qualitative Information in the Habsburg Sphere

9.1, following page spread. “Military Power of Various Countries on Land and on Sea in 1904,” in Šareni svjetski koledar for 1904. National and University Library of Croatia, NSB 156.815. Mathematics for “Just Plain Folks” 151 Russia by itself could, in the case of war, send some 3,700,000 to the battlefield today, with military training and fully equipped, which could, together with the civilian uprising be increased by another one million. Would you, dear reader, to get at least some notion about that great military mass, imagine how the whole Russian army in war readiness might be lined along a road, the infantry units in four-row alignment, and cavalry in two-row alignment, cannons and mobile units one after another: and then let that enormity pass in front of you. Do you know how long that would last? Eighteen days and eighteen nights, without stopping!1 This verbal calculus echoes a visual display that appears in the 1904 issue of an almanac published by the J. Steinbrener firm. The visual diagram (figure 9.1) and the accompanying text explore mathematical meanings, yet without mathematical symbols.2 Both are anchored in the social world of the central European readers of these almanacs, which were widely circulated throughout the Habsburg Empire at the time when the interests of competing nations had given rise to an arms race. In response to this political environment, the diagram image and narration point to complementary modes of understanding, raising the question of how the verbalizations amplify visualizations, and how the images support verbalizations. From this specific example it would appear that meaning-by-degrees and meaning-by-kind are inextricable. Although the primary semiosis of the images is topological (meaningby -degrees) and that of the natural language is typological (meaningby -kind), both natural language and figurative representations transcend and extend their reach.3 Thus, both the texts and the verbalizations use kind-and-degree reasoning. But how does this “visible writing” express the mathematical relatedness of time, people, and the Marija Dalbello MATHEMATICS FOR “JUST PLAIN FOLKS” Allegories of Quantitative and Qualitative Information in the Habsburg Sphere popular political self that is anchored in the balance-of-power system at the turn of the century? This specialized text-image system appears in a genre of print specializing in practical knowledge and popular science and is itself a liminal text at the threshold of literacy and orality. By extension, the residual orality in the verbalizations and visual organization of quantities are central to the culture of the book represented by the almanacs. Their material form and representations offer insights into the incommensurable nature of the visual and the verbal as well as points of translatability. The graphical practice that borders on cartoons (figure 9.1) combines reasoning made visible on the printed page, with oral storytelling techniques in the verbalizations accompanying the visualizations. Thus, both the visual and the ver154 Marija Dalbello 9.2a–b. (a) Völkertafel-Steiermark, frühes 18. Jh. “Kurze Beschreibung der in Europa befintlichen Völckern und Ihren Aigenschaften ”; (b) National Traits on Dimensions from Kurze Beschreibung der In Europa befintlichen Völckern und Ihren Aigenschaften (A Short Description of the Peoples Residing in Europe and Their Characteristics), translated from the German by Anselm Spoerri, transcription from Franz K. Stanzel, Europ äer, 14. (a) Öl auf Lw. 104 x 126 cm., Österreichisches Museum für Volkskunde , Wien. bal are rooted in traditions of hyperbolic narrative and visual typologies , and this text-image is an information artifact embedded in multiple historical traditions and cultural texts.4 The visualizations from the almanacs can be linked to a much older European tradition of stereotyping in artifacts known as the Völkertafel (Table of Nations) (figure 9.2).5 The verbalizations belong to the tradition of invasion literature widely used for state propaganda and wildly popular between 1871 and 1914.6 The almanacs are reminiscent of contemporary futuristic fantasies from the late 1890s that mirror turn-of-the-century skepticism toward progress and the statistical representations found in popular science magazines, illustrated gazetteers, and handbooks from the period.7 A political discourse that embodies influences from these sources (possibly Mathematics for “Just Plain Folks” 155 Spaniard Frenchman Wallisch (Italian) German Englishman Swede Polack Unger Muscovite Turk or Greek Manners Arrogant Foolish Underhanded Open-hearted Cuts good figure Strong and big Peasant-like Unfaithful Malicious Like...