Sylva

The metaphor of the ‘sylva’ or forest is significant. A forest is not ordered according to clear binary disjunctions; instead it is a labyrinth. The labyrinth is explicitly mentioned in the preface to the ‘Instauratio Magna (1620): “But the universe to the eye of the human understanding is framed like a labyrinth; presenting as it does on every side of many ambiguities of way, so many deceitful resemblances of objects and signs, natures so irregular in their lines, and so knotted and entangled”) to the contemplating intellect, the edifice of the universe manifests itself as a labyrinth, with a maze of ambiguous routes, of deceptive appearances of things and signs, of winding and complicated nodes and spirals -- and we will see eventually, apropos of the rhizomic nature of an encyclopedia, how truly prophetic this vision of “Obliquae et implexae naturarum spirae et nodi” (Windows and complex nature of coils, and node) would prove to be. ~ Page 37