This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder.Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.We would like to acknowledge the generous financial support of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge (CRASSH), which was instrumental for this book project coming into being. This publication is part of the project Deceiving stuff: histories, functions, techniques, and effects of material mimesis (with project number 275-54-001) which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). We would like to thank Liesbeth Hugenholtz, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, and the SIAM editorial board for their support for this project and the anonymous press reviewer for helpful comments.