For three decades my interwoven practice of making, curating, and writing, has explored the impact on modern art history by four earlier centuries of upheaval in science knowledge.

My current studio series, called “Knowledge Works,” is based on science, philosophy, and science-vs-religion books from the 17th to early 20th centuries — books that represent that epoch’s remarkable story of reevaluation in human thought and understanding.  The resulting artworks employ analog as well as digital processes: acrylic paint, ink, historic books’ pages, scattered and appropriated imagery — that are photographed or scanned, layered, and combined via digital tooling to create small to large limited-edition works on paper.

The series is meant to be an abstract dialogue across time between myself, a book from the past, and the intervening years’ ironies, by creating marginalia — in my case, visual marginalia — added to scanned title pages found within a book’s covers.

Because the series’ books are old and rare and often buried in library collections, they’re not readily accessible nor their content widely recognized for its resonance in the present. Together they represent that era’s burgeoning awareness and creeping realization that much of the past’s knowledge of the world, and of humans in it, might only have been placeholders — that some of its eternal absolutes were only seemingly so and could crumble. Their voices are from a time before the four-hundred years of discovery and knowledge we now look back upon. Yet resurrected, they speak from their moment, as if to our own.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/Thomas Burnet,” 2025
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Frontispiece from:

“The Sacred Theory of the Earth: Containing an Account of the Origin of the Earth, and of All the General Changes which it Hath already Undergone or Is To Undergo till the Consummation of All Things. The Two First Books concerning The Deluge and concerning Paradise,” 1684.

By Thomas Burnet, (1635-1715).

London : printed by R. Norton, for Walter Kettilby, at the Bishop’s Head in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1684. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Thomas Burnet was an English theologian and writer on cosmogony. Burnet’s best-known work is his “Sacred Theory of the Earth.” It was a speculative cosmogony, in which Burnet suggested a hollow Earth with most of the water inside until Noah’s Flood, at which time mountains and oceans appeared. The book attempted, as was prevalent in the 17th/18th centuries, to reconcile religion’s mythological explanations for the world with the disruptive truths science was discovering.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/Ernst Haeckel,” 2025
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“The Wonders of Life, A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy,” 1905.

By Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919)

London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1905. Book source: George Ellery Hale Library, Mount Wilson Observatory.

Ernst Haeckel was a German zoologist, naturalist, and artist whose work bridged the separations between science, religion, and art. He was influenced by Alexander von Humboldt’s “Cosmos” (1845), which presented an integrated vision of nature as a unified, harmonious whole. Haeckel is known for his studies and exquisite renderings of Radiolaria, single-celled marine plankton with intricate silica skeletons. He was a champion of Charles Darwin’s evolution theories but misapplied its principles in support of later-debunked eugenics. Ten years after his death, the Nazi Party adopted Haeckel’s eugenic theories as scientific justification for their racist atrocities, even as they banned his books in Germany for being too un-Christian.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/Louisa Starr Canziani,” 2026
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“The Spirit of Purity in At, and its Influence on the Well-Being of Nations,” 1899.

By Louisa Starr Canziani, (1845-1909)

London: 1899. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Louisa Starr Canziani was an accomplished British painter and the first woman awarded a gold medal by the Royal Academy. She pursued her artistic goals in spite of resistance from her parents, applied to colleges using a gender-neutral name, and was forbidden to attend life classes. Canziani was a supporter of women’s rights, campaigned for dress reform, and against cruelty to animals. While independent and progressive in her leanings, in her “Spirit of Purity in Art” booklet, which was a speech delivered to the Women’s International Congress, London 1899, she warned against the “evils” of the era’s avant-garde artists and art-for-art’s-sake.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/John Hollis,” 2025
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“Sober and serious Reasons for Scepticism as it concerns Revealed Religion, in a Letter to a Friend,” 1796

By, John Hollis,  (1742–1824)

London: Printed for J. Johnson in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1796. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

John Hollis was an English Enlightenment deist, freethinker, and philanthropist who came to prominence in the late 18th century for his radical critiques of orthodox Christianity. Born into an opulent and influential English dissenting family, his inherited wealth granted him financial independence and insulation from the legal penalties typically leveled against religious skeptics of his era. Despite his controversial publications, he was highly respected by local contemporaries for his sharp intellect, integrity, and deep moral conviction.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/Carolina Herschel,” 2026
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“Catalogue of Stars: Taken from Mr Flamsteed’s Observations contained in the second volume of the Historia Coelestis, and not inserted in the British Catalogue. . .” 1798

By Carolina Herschel, (1750 – 1848)

London: Sold by Peter Elmsly, Printer to the Royal Society, 1798. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Carolina Herschel was a German astronomer, whose contributions were the discoveries of several comets, nebulae, and star clusters, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet. At the age of ten, typhus fever so stunted her growth that she never grew to more than 4 feet 3 inches. She also lost vision in her right eye as a result of the illness. Her family assumed she would never marry and her mother thought it better that she train to be a house servant. However, her father and brother, astronomer William Herschel, tutored her. She eventually moved to England with her brother, where she was the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and the first woman to hold a government position, plus the first woman to publish scientific findings in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and to be awarded a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/William Ralph Inge,” 2025-26
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm 

Book Title Page:

“God and The Astronomers,” 1933

by William Ralph Inge, (1860 – 1954)

London: Longmans Green and Co., 1933. Book source: George Ellery Hale Library, Mount Wilson Observatory.

William Ralph Inge was an English author, Anglican priest, professor of divinity at Cambridge, and dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times. Inge argued for a “religion of the spirit” based on personal mystical experience rather than external, coercive authority or supernatural signs. Inge’s ultimate goal was to move Christianity away from a “geographical” or “historical” map of heaven and toward a philosophical understanding of God as the source of eternal values like Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/Edwin Dwight Babbit,” 2025
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“The Principles of Light and Color : including among others things the harmonic laws of the universe . . .” 1896

By Edwin Dwight Babbitt, (1828–1905)

New York: Babbit and Company, Science Hall, 141 Eighth Street, 19878. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Edwin Dwight Babbitt was an American physician and author known for his extensive work on chromotherapy (color therapy) and the “philosophy of fine forces.” His work explored the notion that physical and psychological ailments could be healed through exposure to specific colors and light frequencies. While his theories are classified as medical pseudoscience today, his notion of color corresponding to the “harmonic laws of the universe” echoes the philosophical and spiritual expressions by artists struggling to describe the ineffable qualities of what they do.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/John Smeaton,” 2025.
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“Experimental Enquiry Concerning the Natural Powers of Wind and Water to turn Mills and Other Machines depending on a Circular Motion and an Experimental Examination of the Quantity and Proportion of Mechanic Power necessary to be employed in giving different degrees of Velocity to Heavy Bodies from a State of Rest. Also New Fundamental Experiments upon the Collision of Bodies with Five Plates of Machines,” 1794.

By John Smeaton, (1724–1792).

London: Printed for I. and J. Taylor, No. 56, High-Holborn, 1794. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

John Smeaton was an eminent English engineer who is widely regarded as the “father of civil engineering”. He was the very first person to formally call himself a “civil engineer” to distinguish his work on public infrastructure from military engineering projects. Working during the height of the Industrial Revolution, Smeaton was a prolific designer, scholar, and researcher. He transformed engineering from an ad-hoc trade into a rigorous, scientifically backed profession.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson,” 2026.
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“On Growth and Form,” 1917.

By D’Arcy Wentwoth Thompson, (1860 – 1948).

Cambridge: at the University Press, 1917. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson was a Scottish biologist, mathematician and classics scholar. He was a pioneer of mathematical and theoretical biology, and Professor of Natural History at University College, Dundee for 32 years. He was the author of the 1917 book “On Growth and Form,” which led the way for the scientific explanation of morphogenesis, the process by which patterns and body structures are formed in plants and animals. He originated the description of form in nature, as a “diagram of forces.”

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/Thomas Paine,” 2026.
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“The Age of Reason: Part the First; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology,” 1795.

By Thomas Paine, (1737 – 1809).

London: Printed for H.D. Symonds, No. 20, Paternoster-Row, 1795. Book source: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father and political philosopher, who presented a passionate defense of Deism combined with a fierce critique of organized religion and institutionalized Christian theology. In “The Age of Reason,” Paine rejected the Bible, the Torah, and the Quran as divinely inspired texts, viewing them as human-made mythology and history. Embracing a Newtonian worldview, he believed the universe is governed by immutable natural laws, and dismissed biblical miracles and prophecies as scientifically impossible fabrications. He argued that the only uncorruptible “Word of God” is the natural world, which humans must study using scientific reasoning and intellect.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/John Tyndall,” 2026.
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“Lectures on Light Delivered in the United States, In 1872-’73”

By John Tyndall, (1820 – 1893).

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 549 and 551 Broadway, 1873. Book source: George Ellery Hale Library, Mount Wilson Observatory.

John Tyndall was an influential 19th-century Irish physicist. In his Lectures on Light, Tyndall traced the history of optics and openly critiqued the Middle Ages, describing this period of intense religious dominance as a time of intellectual “sterility” for science. In the conclusion of his American tour, Tyndall warned American society about the dangers of prioritizing wealth, industrial utility, or religious tradition over pure, unadulterated scientific research. He invoked religious phrasing to make a secular point, asserting that the “man of science cannot serve two masters; he cannot serve science and mammon”. For Tyndall, the pursuit of scientific truth was a supreme, near-spiritual duty that could not bow to church or commerce.

Marginalia: Knowledge Works/Hermann Müller,” 2026.
Scanned mixed media, archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper

32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm

Book Title Page:

“The Fertilisation of Flowers,” 1883

By Herman Müller, (1829–1883).

Translated and Edited by D’Arcy W. Thompson,

Preface by Charles Darwin

London: MacMillan & Co, 1883. Book source: George Ellery Hale Library, Mount Wilson Observatory.

Hermann Müller was a German botanist and pioneering researcher in the relationship between insects and plant reproduction. His book, “The Fertilisation of Flowers,” provided extensive evidence for Charles Darwin’s theories on evolutionary botany and insect pollination. While working as a science teacher in Lippstadt, conservative and Catholic political factions attacked him for corrupting students by including Darwinian evolution into his biology curriculum. Because of his secular pedagogy, Müller was labeled the personification of anti-Christian teachings in Prussian schools, and the controversy went all the way to the Prussian Assembly in 1879. Despite intense religious backlash, Müller refused to compromise his scientific worldview, and the Prussian state ultimately allowed him to keep his teaching post.

“Knowledge Works” at 32.5 x 20in / 82.55 x 50.8cm, Chapel Studio, Altadena, California

“Knowledge Works” at  65 x 40in /  165.1 x 101.6cm, Chapel Studio, Altadena, California

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https://stephennowlin.com/

All images copyright and courtesy of Stephen Nowlin

Art, Creativity, Imagination, Science