Image, Imagination, and Cognition : Medieval and Early Modern Theory and Practice

How were the relations among image, imagination and cognition characterized in the period 1500 – 1800? The authors of this volume argue that in those three centuries, a thoroughgoing transformation affected the following issues: (i) what it meant to understand phenomena in the natural world (cognition); (ii) how such phenomena were visualized or pictured (images, including novel types of diagrams, structural models, maps, etc.); and (iii) what role was attributed to the faculty of the imagination (psychology, creativity). The essays collected in this volume examine the new conceptions that were advanced and the novel ways of comprehending and expressing the relations among image, imagination, and cognition. They also shed light, from a variety of perspectives, on the elusive nexus of conceptions and practices.

Christoph Lüthy is professor in the history of philosophy and science at Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). He has mainly published on issues and key personalities in the history of matter theories. He is particularly interested in the visual aspect of such theories, which he has examined in essays and books on Giordano Bruno, René Descartes, David Gorlaeus and the history of atomism.

Claudia Swan is professor of Art History at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL (USA). She has published extensively on northern European visual culture 1400-1700, art and science, the history of collecting, and the history of the imagination. Her forthcoming book is on Encounters with the Exotic in Early Modern Holland.

Paul J.J.M. Bakker is professor of medieval and Renaissance philosophy at Radboud University, Nijmegen. His research focuses on the commentary tradition on Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy, from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. He edited John Buridan’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (books I–II and III–IV) (Brill 2015 & 2016).

Claus Zittel teaches German literature and philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart (Germany), and Olsztyn (Poland), and is Deputy Director of the Stuttgart Research Center for Text Studies. He has published monographs, translations and many articles on Early Modern Philosophy, including Theatrum Philosophicum. Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (Akademie 2009).