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VISUALIZATION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN NATURAL SCIENCES IN RENAISSANCE PAINTING // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 263-272

The “philosophical horizon” of modern European science was not formed exclusively by the efforts of the scientific community. The ground for the scientific revolution of the modern era was also prepared by the art of Alberti, Leonardo and other masters of the Renaissance. The Renaissance art theory and practice testify to the visual elaboration of the philosophical and conceptual guidelines which were later to become the basis of modern European science. This also includes such principles as geometrization of nature and science, overcoming of the Aristotelian and scholastic gap between physics and mathematics, between the natural and the artificial, between the superlunar and sublunar worlds. Renaissance artists fitted the celestial and the terrestrial into geometric shapes such as pyramids, triangles, etc. The theory and practice of Renaissance painting recognized geometry as a universal law valid both for the superlunar and sublunar worlds. The mathematical principles of nature were developed by Renaissance masters in the form of the theory of perspective and the theory of proportions. It should be noted that the Renaissance mathematical perspective did not derive from comprehending phenomena, but was brought into the real world as a compositional basis. This implies that Renaissance artists started from the a priori assumption of the mathematical order of nature and then tried to confirm this thesis at the visual level through representation of the corporeal world using the mathematical law of perspective and the theory of proportions. Renaissance artists realized that things made with men’s hands and those created by God are to the same extent subject to the same natural laws. The drawings of Leonardo can be interpreted as the visualization of engineering thinking which extends not only to mechanisms but also to natural objects and the human body structure. Leonardo’s anatomical studies can be regarded as engineering drawings which visually demonstrate the structure of the represented object. In this regard, the drawings of Leonardo foreshadowed the formulation of the mechanistic principle which turned to be one of the most important ones in modern European science, and which asserted the absence of a fundamental difference between the natural and the mechanical. The example of Renaissance painting demonstrates that fundamental philosophical conceptions as well as ideological shifts, transition to new fundamental ideas concerning space, time and the place of man in the universe, are simultaneously expressed in more than one way. In particular, they can be represented in visual images, in a sign-and-symbol form, in scientific conceptions, in philosophy, literature and art of a certain period. There are constant exchanges between different cultural practices as, for example, between philosophy, science and art: communication, exchange of information, translation from a sign and symbol language into a figurative one and vice versa, visualization of non-image information.

Keywords: visual, modern European science, Renaissance painting, theory of perspective, theory of proportions

MAIN APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF VISUAL THINKING // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 256-272

Studies of visual thinking represent one of the trends expanding our views on the principles and mechanisms of human thinking. The present paper outlines three main approaches to the study of visual thinking. The psychological approach has been set apart based on the analysis of works by Rudolf Arnheim who demonstrated that visual thinking might be understood in terms of the psychology of thinking. Arnheim presented visual thinking as a mode of thinking that allows singling out the essential – common for the whole class – properties of the observed objects. The legitimacy and relevance of the psychological approach can be circumstantially proved by a large number of visual intuitions in philosophical epistemology. The neuroaesthetic approach has been singled out based on the analysis of works by Semir Zeki and V. S. Ramachandran. The founders of neuroaesthetics came to the conclusion that visual perception is not the reflection of an object by the eye, but an active brain activity aiming at completion or modelling of an object in accordance with certain laws such as the peak shift principle, the law of isolation, the law of symmetry, etc. Developing the ideas of neuroaesthetics, we can note that these laws of visual perception are suitable for describing the procedures of abstraction and idealization. A broader interpretation of the laws of visual perception and their application to intellectual procedures seem to be a promising perspective. The gnoseological approach has been examined on the example of the notion of “point of view”, which refers both to visual and abstract thinking. Johann Martin Chladenius used this notion in the methodology of historical knowledge, treating the latter as a vision of the past under a certain angle. Another way of developing the “point of view” is presented in Frank Ankersmit’s conception. Being a representative of the narrative philosophy of history, Ankersmit interprets the “point of view” as a narrative substance which allows integrating separate utterances into a single historical narrative. The notion of “point of view” demonstrates that historical knowledge is treated as a certain vision of the past and that historical research is interpreted in terms of visual thinking. All the three mentioned approaches point out a strong link between the visual and the abstract and thus open up a particular perspective on the study of human thinking, which may, for instance, be of interest in the study of artificial intelligence.

Keywords: visual thinking, neuroaesthetics, “point of view”, Rudolf Arnheim, V. S. Ramachandran, Semir Zeki, Frank Ankersmit