The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

244 The experience of space and timeviewpoint, the voyages of discovery produced an astounding flow ofknowledge about a wider world that had somehow to be absorbedand represented. They indicated a globe that was finite and potentiallyknowable. Geographical knowledge became a valued commodity in asociety that was becoming more and more profit-conscious. Theaccumulation of wealth, power, and capital became linked to personalizedknowledge of, and individual command over, space. By thesame token, each place became vulnerable to the direct influence ofthat wider world through trade, intra-territorial competition, militaryaction, the inflow of new commodities, of bullion, and the like. Butby virtue of the piecemeal development of the processes shaping it,the revolution in conceptions of space and time was slow to unfold.Fundamental rules of perspective - rules that broke radically withthe practices of mediaeval art and architecture, and which were todominate until the beginning of the twentieth century - were elaboratedin mid-fifteenth-century Florence by Brunelleschi andAlberti. This was a fundamental achievement of the Renaissance; itshaped ways of seeing for four centuries. The fixed viewpoint ofperspective maps and paintings 'is elevated and distant, completelyout of plastic or sensory reach.' It generates a 'coldly geometrical'and 'systematic' sense of space which nevertheless gives 'a sense ofharmony with natural law, thereby underscoring man's moral responsibilitywithin God's geometrically ordered universe' (Edgerton,1976, 114). A conception of infinite space allowed the globe to begrasped as a finite totality without challenging, at least in theory, theinfinite wisdom of the deity. 'Infinite space is endowed with infinitequality,' wrote Giordano Bruno at the end of the Renaissance, 'andin the infinite quality is lauded the infinite act of existence' (cited inKostof, 1985, 537). The chronometer, which gave strength and measureto the idea of time's arrow, was likewise rendered theoreticallycompatible with God's infinite wisdom by attributing infinite qualitiesto time analogous to those which attached to space. The attachmentwas of immense importance. It meant that the idea of time as 'becoming'- a very human sense of time which is also contained in theidea of time's arrow - was separated from the analytical and 'scientific'sense of time which rested on a conception of infinity that waspreferred (though not by the authorities in Rome) broad I y for religiousreasons. The Renaissance separated scientific and supposedly factualsenses of time and space from the more fluid conceptions that mightarise experientially.Giordano Bruno's conceptions, which prefigured those of Galileoand Newton, were in practice so pantheistic that Rome burned himat the stake as a threat to centralized authority and dogma. In soTime and space of the Enlightenment project 245doing, the Church was recognizing a rather significant challenge thatinfinite time and space posed to hierarchically conceived systems ofauthority and power based in a particular place (Rome).Perspectivism conceives of the world from the standpoint of the'seeing eye' of the individual. It emphasizes the science of optics andthe ability of the individual to represent what he or she sees as insome sense 'truthful,' compared to superimposed truths of mythologyor religion. The connection between individualism and perspectivismis important. It provided an effective material foundation for theCartesian principles of rationality that became integrated into theEnlightenment project. It signalled a break in artistic and architecturalpractice from artisan and vernacular traditions towards intellectualactivity and the 'aura' of the artist, scientist, or entrepreneur as acreative individual. There is also some evidence to connect the formulationof perspectivist rules with the rationalizing practices emergingin commerce, banking, book-keeping, trade, and agriculturalproduction under centralized land management (Kostof, 1985,403-10).The story of Renaissance maps, which took on entirely new qualitiesof objectivity, practicality, and functionality, is particularly revealing(see plate 3.4). Objectivity in spatial representation became avalued attribute because accuracy of navigation, the determination ofproperty rights in land (as opposed to the confused system of legalrights and obligations that characterized feudalism), political boundaries,rights of passage and of transportation, and the like, becameeconomically as well as politically imperative. Many special-purposemap representations, such as the portolan charts used by navigatorsand estate maps used by landowners, already existed, of course, butthe importation of the Ptolemaic map from Alexandria to Florencearound 1400 appears to have played a crucial role in the Renaissancediscovery and use of perspectivism:The portolans did not furnish a geometrical framework forcomprehending the whole world. The Ptolemaic grid, on theother hand, posed an immediate mathematical unity. The mostfar-flung places could all be precisely fixed in relation to oneanother by unchanging coordinates so that their proportionatedistance, as well as their directional relationships, would beapparent . ... The Ptolemaic system gave the Florentines a perfect,expandable cartographic tool for collecting, collating, andcorrecting geographical knowledge. Above all, it supplied togeography the same aesthetic principles of geometrical harmonywhich Florentines demanded of all their art. (Edgerton, 1976)