Thinking and Imagination: Between Science and Art

Panelists:Giovanna Borradori (Vassar College) and Achille Varzi (Columbia Uni.)

“Thinking and Imagination” makes a fundamental contribution to the understanding of the image as a new cultural environment and as the place where the knowledge of late-modern life is shaped. Developing critically Goethe’s notion of morphology, the image is interpreted as both a knot of relations and the unavoidable presupposition and catalyst of concepts. The image is not the pure mirroring of data, but is form, a way of structuring chaos in order to give meaning to the world and events not only in the field of visual perception but also in art and science.

Federico Vercellone is full professor of Aesthetics at the University of Turin. His works deal with the relationship between aesthetics and contemporary hermeneutics, the history of nihilism in European thought, and the tradition of German Romanticism. His most recent research focuses on the notion of morphology in order to provide a multidisciplinary approach to the concept of form, image, and phenomenon. Recent publications include Morfologie del moderno. Saggi di ermeneutica dell’immagine (2006); Oltre la bellezza (2008); Pensare per immagini (2010), with Olaf Breidbach; new German edition, 2011); and Le ragioni della forma (2011).

Free, reservation requested.

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