Die Erfindung der Zentralperspektive und die Entstehung der neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft.

The main thesis of this book argues that the genesis of modern science has its origin in a media-revolution: it is the result of the reflection on the representational structure of pictures constructed in central perspective. These pictures differ basically from those of the Middle-Ages because they can be judged without recourse of non-optical information in their relation of the represented. The criterion for this judgement (according to the claim of such pictures) is the eyes` failure to distinguish between the represented and its representation. This new power of vision (the historically unprecedented autonomy of visual perception, proclaimed and explored by Renaissance Fine Art) leads to a transformation of the theory of perception, and in consequence to a radical restructuring of the process of scientific research and communication of knowledge. Chapter one is a reconstruction of the invention of central perspective by Brunelleschi (early 15th century). This invention is explained not as an event within the history of painting (not as a consequence of the use of linear perspective during the 13th and 14th centuries), but as a result of Brunelleschi`s archeological attempts to reconstruct antique Rome. The second chapter is an analysis of the historical reflection on the new representational structure, especially by Alberti and Leonardo; it develops the thesis, that this reflexion led to the formulation of the concepts of experience and natural law, which are the basic notions of modern science. Chapter three and four examine the role played by astronomy in the process of transposition of the new representational structure into a new method of research and a new scientific discourse. The genesis of the Copernican Revolution, it is argued, is the result of the use of the new techniques of painting (especially with anamorphosis), which allow for a new type of modelling the movement of the sky. Chapter four analyses the "reaction" to this process in the theory of visual perception, which is, in the writings of Kepler, modelled after the techniques of astronomical observation. The fifth (and last) chapter deals with the cartesian foundation of the new science. Also this foundation is due to (Descartes`) occupation with the new pictorial techniques (and with Keplers theory of visual perception). It marks a turning point in the development of early modern science, for it opens the way for a new and autonomous scientific discourse (no longer deficient in respect to the ontological questions of traditional theory).