Synergistic Relations Between Theories of Visual Perception and Iconoclasm

该奖项支持科学与宗教交界处的科学史研究。这项研究探索了视觉科学、图像科学和西方文明关键时刻图像的光学心理学实践之间的关系。具体地说，它侧重于对光学的理解与发生在早期现代时期的暴力的欧洲宗教偶像分裂之间的关系。研究人员将展示关于视觉和视觉心理工作方式的共同信念，以及艺术家和神学家对这些知识的不同使用，将宗教艺术与对图像的宗教改革理解相撞。这项研究将揭示科学、宗教和社会之间的联系，这将有助于在自然科学、社会科学、视觉艺术和人文科学的几个领域之间进行学术交流。这项研究的结果将纳入本科生和研究生的课程发展，并将在专业期刊和会议上传播。最后，将举行一次会议，以扩展这项研究的主要研究路线的轨迹。这项研究的首要研究问题是，视觉科学可以教会我们什么关于打破传统的暴力。研究人员将从事这项研究，首先阐述这一时期不同社会阶层对光学的理解，然后比较拉丁语和白话宗教文本中的文本证据以及艺术家的视觉和文本证据。今天的科学理解认为，视觉、感知和记忆存储是对大脑产生暂时和长期变化的物理过程。早期的科学家也认识到视觉的力量，特别是当专注于图像时，可以改变身体上的思维。那些紧急呼吁立即销毁宗教形象的人一再指出，这位虔诚的信徒混淆了物质形象和所描绘的圣人形象，并将物质对象视为活的。正如改革者指出的那样，日常冥想图像的光学习惯，特别是对看起来活生生的图像，导致图像成为人的记忆的物理部分，并塑造了人的身份。破坏偶像的人认为，他们的形象破坏是在破坏个人根深蒂固的心理部分，这被认为是宗教危险的。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports history of science research at the interface of science and religion. The research explores the relationships between the science of vision, images, and the optical-psychological practices with images at a critical juncture of western civilization. Specifically, it focuses on relationships between understandings of optics and violent European religious iconoclasms that occurred during the early modern period. The researcher will show that common beliefs about the ways vision and visual psychology worked, and the different uses of that knowledge by artists on the one hand and theologians on the other, set religious art on a collision course with the Reformation understandings of the image. The connections between science, religion, and society that are to be revealed in this study will serve to create scholarly exchanges among those in the natural sciences, social sciences, visual arts, and several fields within the humanities. The results of this study will be integrated into curricular development at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and they will be disseminated in professional journals and conferences. Finally, there will be a conference to extend the trajectories of the main lines of inquiry of this research.The overarching research question of this study addresses what the science of vision can teach us about iconoclastic violence. The researcher will engage in this study first setting out the understandings of optics in this period among different levels of society, then comparing textual evidence in Latin and vernacular religious texts alongside visual and text evidence from the artists. Scientific understandings today recognize vision, perception, and memory storage as physical processes that create both temporary and long-term changes to the brain. Early scientists also recognized the power of vision, especially when focused on images, to alter the mind physically. Those who urgently called for immediate destruction of religious images repeatedly point to the fact that the devout had confused the material image with the holy figure portrayed, and were treating the material object as though it were alive. As the Reformers point out, the optical habits of daily meditation on images, especially on images that appeared alive, caused the images to become physically part of the person's memory, and shaped the person's identity. The iconoclasts understood their image destruction to be destroying a deeply ingrained psychological part of the individual that was considered religiously pernicious.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.