The Heritage of Giotto's Geometry: Art and Science on the Eve of the Scientific Revolution

by Samuel Y. Edgerton Jr.

This ambitious book explores the relationship between the Western "scientific revolution" that began with Galileo in the early seventeenth century and the Renaissance "artistic revolution" inaugurated by Giotto three hundred years earlier. The fruit of many years of thought and research, it demonstrates the crucial role that Italian Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture played in what we call "modern science." Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., shows that rather than being symptomatic in nature, the arts served as a catalyst for the transformation in perception which occurred in the West in the fourteenth century. According to Edgerton, the new way in which "reality" was represented, through the use of the unique Renaissance tools of perspective and chiaroscuro, set the stage for modern scientific practice.

Genres: History, Art History, History Of Science

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1991

Reviews

[Richard]

Cited in this fascinating long-form essay: Radical dimensions: Relativity says we live in four dimensions. String theory says it’s 10. What are ‘dimensions’ and how do they affect reality?

The reference to The Heritage Of Giotto’s Geometry is that it was the artists who first pushed the transition of our perception of reality into three dimensions. The mathematicians and philosophers found it slow going, trying to overcome the great Aristotle’s conclusion, but the painters didn’t care about Aristotle and did an end-run in their effort to portray reality in new and revelatory ways in their work.

(I’ve tagged it in my academic-mathematics because it just might help motivate my “artistic” students to rethink their distaste for mathematics. Maybe? But, of course, I really should first find time to read it myself.)

Oh: reviewed in Renaissance Quarterly here.