A New Kind of Renaissance

--- ## Falsifier’s Review of the Claim **1. “Invention” is too strong** A falsifier immediately asks: * Were Renaissance artists really the *first* to depict convincing depth? * Or did they formalize and standardize techniques that already existed? Archaeology shows that Roman Second Style wall painting (Pompeii, etc.) already used sophisticated perspectival constructions to create “windows” into architectural and urban scenes, with multiple vanishing directions and strong depth illusions.([Smarthistory][2]) So: if depth illusion = perspective, then *no*, the Renaissance did not invent it from scratch. --- **2. “Central perspective” as a very specific choice** What does seem new in early 15th-century Italy is: * a **rule-based, geometric method** (Brunelleschi’s demonstrations, Alberti’s *Della Pittura*) for constructing images from a single station point using a precise vanishing system;([Perspective Research Centre][1]) * the elevation of this method to a **norm** for serious painting, architecture, and later science illustration in the Latin West. That is: the specialty is not “seeing in depth” but **codifying central perspective as a universal method**. --- **3. The West was not alone in inventing “perspective”** A falsifier also checks the Euro-centric bias: * Chinese, Islamic and other traditions developed **alternative projection systems** — multiview, axonometric, “floating” or shifting perspectives, often *without* a single vanishing point.([jaas.science-line.com][3]) * These systems were not “primitive failures” to reach Renaissance perspective, but **different solutions** optimized for other values (continuous narration, spiritual space, legible architecture, etc.). So the claim that “the” perspective was invented in the Renaissance silently erases a whole ecology of other spatial logics. --- **4. Perspective as a symbolic choice, not just a technique** Art historians have pointed out that linear/central perspective is also a **symbolic form**: * It ties the world to a **single, sovereign eye**. * Space is organized *around* that eye; infinite space is contained in one viewpoint. * This matches a humanist and later scientific imagination: a rational observer surveying an ordered world.([glass-bead.org][4]) A falsifier notes: if we change the symbolic order (who/what gets to be “the eye”), central perspective may no longer be the obvious default. --- ## Reframing the Claim Instead of: > “The Renaissance invented central perspective.” a more defensible claim is: > The Renaissance **mathematized and canonized** central perspective as the dominant way of representing space in Western art and technical drawing, even though convincing depth and other perspective systems existed before and elsewhere. This keeps what is genuinely special: * the **explicit geometry**, * the **standardization in treatises and workshops**,([handprint.com][5]) * and the way this projection becomes **tightly coupled** to a particular view of the human subject and of rational space. --- ## Toward a *New* Kind of Renaissance If the *old* Renaissance is organized around **one eye / one vanishing point**, a *new* kind of renaissance might be organized around **many eyes / many projections**: * Instead of one central projection, we accept **multiple perspective systems** as first-class: linear, axonometric, network diagrams, topic maps, code visualizations, Living in Rulial Space, etc. * Instead of one sovereign observer, we have **many observers** — humans, collectives, algorithms — each with their own “optics”. * Instead of hiding the projection, we **surface it as part of the argument**: every view declares its projection choices. In that sense, a “new kind of renaissance” could mean: > Learning to *compose and navigate between* different perspectives, rather than letting a single central perspective silently define what counts as real, rational, or visible. --- ## Questions for Further Pages * How do digital tools (simulations, topic maps, versioned neighborhoods in federated wiki) extend or replace central perspective? * What are useful *non-central* perspectives for: * complex systems, * social networks, * codebases, * knowledge commons? * How can fedwiki lineups and neighborhoods act as **perspective machines** rather than as a single correct view? Suggested follow-up pages: * Central Perspective as Symbolic Form * Many-Perspective Drawing for Programmers * Perspective, Topic Maps, and Rulial Space [1]: https://perspectiveresearchcentre.com/linear-perspective/ "Central Perspective" [2]: https://smarthistory.org/roman-wall-painting-styles/ "Roman wall painting styles" [3]: https://jaas.science-line.com/attachments/article/11/J%20Art%20Arch%20Stud.%202%281%29%2035-38.pdf "PICTORIAL SPACE CONCEPT IN ISLAMIC ART" [4]: https://www.glass-bead.org/research-platform/the-perspectival-eye/ "The Perspectival Eye - Glass Bead" [5]: https://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/tech10.html "Elements of Perspective"

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