COFFEE TABLE
+IT ALL ADDS UP: A photogram of the sun, one of 144 objects that, taken together, convey the sum of scientiic knowledge.
RENATE HEYNE AND FLORIS NEUSÜSS; HATJE CANTZ
WE STILL LIVE in the shadow of the Age of Enlightenment and its desire to organize and catalog the world. This was the era of rationalism, which gave birth to René Descartes, Denis Diderot—and the German philosopher-scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. His central desire was to connect objects and ideas, an impulse that also provided a starting point for the German artists Floris Neusüss and Renate Heyne. Their aim? To collect a series of objects that, taken together, would convey all of the world’s current scientiic knowledge. They worked for 17 years choosing the objects and making images of them—now published in Leibniz’ Storehouse.