How entertaining and enlightening it can be to approach human images and historical scientific constellations through the lens of knowledge figures from the animal and plant world has been demonstrated by Benjamin Bühler and Stefan Rieger in "Vom Übertier" and "Das Wuchern der Pflanzen." They traced how innocent little peas found themselves caught in the crossfire of Darwinists, Catholics, and Stalinist research politicians, and how the virtual Mickey Mouse managed to mingle with real flesh-and-blood animals in the mid-20th century. With "Machinarium" and "Lapidarium," they now complete their history of knowledge regarding epistemic things. In richly illustrated vignettes about hamster wheels and automobiles, about ear stones and liquid crystals, they draw connections from the experiments conducted by psychoanalyst Josef Breuer to equilibrium.