“[I]f texts are unified by a central logic of argument, then their pictorial illustrations are integral to the ensemble, not pretty little trifles included only for aesthetic or commercial value. Primates are visual animals, and (particularly in science) illustration has a language and set of conventions all its own.”

— Stephen Jay Gould , book Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle

Source: Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987), p. 18

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[I]f texts are unified by a central logic of argument, then their pictorial illustrations are integral to the ensemble,…" by Stephen Jay Gould?

Stephen Jay Gould 274

American evolutionary biologist 1941–2002

Related quotes

“[Walter even gave the tortoises a mock-biological name, Machina speculatrix] because they illustrate particularly the exploratory, speculative behaviour that is so characteristic of most animals.”

William Grey Walter (1910–1977) American-born British neuroscientist and roboticist

Source: An imitation of life (1950), p. 43 as cited in: Owen Holland (2003) " The ﬁrst biologically inspired robots http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/holland02first.pdf"

“But this logic has also worked to exclude the decorative — the decorative insofar as it functions solely as decoration. It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on "absolute" or "autonomous" art: thus on visual art — including even architecture — that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not. Decoration is asked to be "merely" pleasing, "merely" embellishing, and the "functional" logic of Modernism leaves no room, apparently, for such "mereness."”

Robert Morgan (1943) American art historian

This is part of the pity of Modernism, one of the sacrifices it enjoins...
Clement Greenberg, Robert C. Morgan in: Clement Greenberg, Late Writings in Detached Observations http://books.google.co.in/books?id=8wFNAAAAYAAJ, University of Minnesota Press, 30 January 2007, p. 70

“The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 136

“I strive to make my art bear the same relation to painting that polyphony bears to music. Illustrative music is a thing of the past: it has become abstract and purely aesthetic, dependent for its effect upon rhythm and form.”

Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890–1973) American artist

Quoted in Bryant American Pictures And Their Painters (1917), p. 302

“Purity" of and in art — any art, including music and dance — is an illusory notion, of course. It may be remotely conceivable or imaginable, but it can't be realized because it can't be recognized any more than a "pure" human being or a "pure" (or, for that matter, gratuitous) act can be. All the same, for Western art in its Modernist phase "purity" has been a useful idea and ideal, with a kind of logic to it that has worked, and still works, to generate aesthetic value and maintain aesthetic standards as nothing else in our specializing culture has over the last hundred-odd years.But this logic has also worked to exclude the decorative — the decorative insofar as it functions solely as decoration. It's as though aesthetic value, quality, could be preserved only by concentrating on "absolute" or "autonomous" art: thus on visual art — including even architecture — that held and moved and stirred the beholder as sheer decoration could not. Decoration is asked to be "merely" pleasing, "merely" embellishing, and the "functional" logic of Modernism leaves no room, apparently, for such "mereness.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

This is part of the pity of Modernism, one of the sacrifices it enjoins....
"Detached Observations" http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/detached.html, Arts Magazine (December 1976)
1970s

“A witty illustration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument.”

Chauncey Depew (1834–1928) American politician

My Memories of Eighty Years (1922), p. 318

“Science does not speak of the world in the language of words alone, and in many cases it simply cannot do so. The natural language of science is a synergistic integration of words, diagrams, pictures, graphs, maps, equations, tables, charts, and other forms of visual and mathematical expression… [Science thus consists of] the languages of visual representation, the languages of mathematical symbolism, and the languages of experimental operations.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Jay Lemke (2003), "Teaching all the languages of science: Words , symbols, images and actions," p. 3; as cited in: Scott, Phil, Hilary Asoko, and John Leach. "Student conceptions and conceptual learning in science." Handbook of research on science education (2007): 31-56.

“Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context – which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from Richter's letter to Jean-Christophe Ammann, February 1973; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1970's

“Each line is now the actual experience with its own innate history. It does not illustrate — it is the sensation of its own realization.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

a written art note by Twombly on a painting he created in 1957
Quote of Twombly in 'Writings', Flash Art International, Laura Cherubini, October 2008 (translation from Italian: Beatrice Barbareschi)
1950 - 1960

“The world of the Greeks illustrates why visual appearances cannot interest people before the interiorization of alphabetic technology.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 61

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Stephen Jay Gould 274

Related quotes

Related topics