JF Ptak Science Books Post 1669
People have been worrying about the end of the world for as long as they have realized that the world could have an end. The more-modern concerns for world-ending collisions with asteroids is relatively recent and does have a lot of truth to it; likewise the ending of large lifeforms on the planet via nuclear holocaust, which came very close to being in a number of situations over the last 55 years or so. Less convincing arguments have been made through biblical interpretations and resurrections of ancient myths about the coming end-of-times because of of confluence of floating numbers which are after all is said and done just numbers and not actually attached to very much. There have been untold numbers of predictions and world-end scares, but reality was not at all accommodated. (An interesting end of the world date prediction timeline appears here.)
One of the earliest printed menaces scaring people into believing that the world was coming to an end appeared in 1524, when a conjunction of the planets in the constellation Pisces was supposed to be similar to that which appeared in the times of Noah and in the sign of Aquarius. The conjunction plus the bits about Pisces and Aquarius evidently lead to the belief among some that there would be a great flood. There were over one hundred pamphlets published on this topic in the early 1520's, though to be fair the bit about Noaic deluge was evidently an outrigger--most of them it seems (at least to Lynn Thorndike) were argumentative over one principle or another of astrologic practice.
Of the many people who addressed this topic--including Machiavelli, Luther, Apian, Rabelais and Vives, among many others--was Tommaso Gianotti (Rangoni) (1497-1577), who gave his predictions this fantastic woodblock visual life in his work De vera diluvii prognostications (and printed in 1522). It was 16 pages long, and was one of many such slim pamphlets--his, though, did have this marvelous illustration. I think the blank sky helps set the sunken world and the collapsing boat of mankind into stark contrast on what lay ahead. (Gianotti led a long and distinguished career teaching logic (Padua) and astronomy (under the direction of Pope Leo X) as well as astrology (Bologna), and managed to outlive his many dire predicitons by half a century.)
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