Degree
Master of Arts
Program
Theory and Criticism
Supervisor
Călin-Andrei Mihăilescu
Abstract
This study is an examination of the epistemological history of the image. Its first strands are to be found in the Christian concept of profanity, in the difference of the world to the divine. The highest form of intelligibility profanity could have, second only to theology, was mathematics. Derived from the problems surrounding this concept are the techniques of inquiry that eventually resulted in the development of analytic geometry by Descartes. The latter marked a new sensibility regarding the physical universe and its constitution, one that is coterminous with the development of exact procedures in science. Being that exactitude regards the specificity of observed material as paramount, one of the results of the above series of processes was method of reasoning that allowed earthly ephemera, mental and material, to be recorded. The image is but one product of this history.
Recommended Citation
Pozdniakov, Mikhail, "Epistemology of the Cartesian Image" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2436.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2436