PERSPECTIVE POWER

Desargues was a French mathematician, engineer and architect who lived at the beginning of the 17th Century.  In the 1640s, he stated that perspective theory was seen as a tool to help moderate between the idea of the building and the building itself.

In the Renaissance, the perspective was seen as a new and very powerful tool.  In fact, Desargues stated that due to the power of the perspective, the expertise of the hand and the wisdom of the craftsman would then loose all importance.  Sound familiar?  Hard to believe given how the perspective has been completely incorporated into our culture.  When we use perspective projection today, we are simply not concerned about how dehumanizing the process will be.  Yet Desargues’ statement conveys the power that was felt when first confronted with the enormous ordering system of the perspective in the early 17th Century.

How similar these concerns sound when compared with our angst when faced with the digital juggernaut in today’s world.  It would seem that when there is a new way of looking at and understanding the world, be that the perspective in the Renaissance or the computer today, we seem to have the same human concerns.

Still, it is difficult to imagine our world without the perspective.  Without it, we would have less of an ability to understand our own specific position in the world.  With the perspective, the world now becomes predictive rather than amorphous.   Indeed, the perspective was one of the founding tenants of the modern world.