Book excerpt: In the early 19th century, the translation of nature observations into quantified records often intended to convey both epistemologically and aesthetically determined forms of experience. Diverse fields of knowledge such as literature, philosophy, and art as well as natural history, cartography, and microscopy accomplished this demand in a process of mutual exchange and gradual assimilation of ideas and practices. The book investigates the intriguing complexity of this osmotic dynamics, in which various positions on the significance of inner and outer world were continuously exchanged.