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Оглавление3. Science in architecture
The Jonas Salk Biological Sciences Research Institute, La Jolla, California, designed by Louis Kahn between 1959 and 1965
Airports, nuclear plants and space stations are some of the twentieth-century architectural creations designed not merely to fulfill their functions, but as emblems of the age. A journalist once wrote about Kahn: “When architecture reaches the summit of its expression, it arouses a very peculiar thrill, a cool bliss which suddenly invests everything, and through which consciousness of a supremely formulated technical wisdom engages in a conflict with mystical tranquility.”
The unity of art and science
The mastery of fire was man’s chief prehistoric accomplishment. As the hearth became a place for social gatherings, cooking stimulated interest in the variety of plant and animal life used for paint, poisons and medicines. Fire led to the making of hard clay objects and tools. With the crudest of implements, beautiful sculptures were carved and stunning images produced.
La Dame de Brassempoy, c. 25,000 B.C.
Ivory, height: 13⁄8 in. (3.65 cm)
Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Astronomy, the mother of science, had its roots in prehistoric times, too. It was practiced by early hunters and gatherers: notches carved in artefacts suggest that Stone Age people detected patterns in the motions of the stars.
Astronomy and architecture were linked very early on and would remain so for thousands of years. By definition, architecture is an applied art with functional, technical and aesthetic requirements. It is also a major art in contrast to other applied arts which are generally considered minor.
At the dawn of civilization, people were already conceptualizing in art and science and designing their places of worship to reflect their ideas about the structure of the universe.
Incised bone record, c. 28,000 B.C., interpretation by Alexander Marshack
Long considered as decorations or records of successful hunts, these notches are now believed to constitute a calendar of lunar cycles.
Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
The transformation of society during the Stone Age marked a major cultural and technical upheaval. Agriculture and the way of life that it imposed called for the fixing of boundaries, which perhaps occurred independently in the Middle East, the Far East and other regions. Stone monuments were the architectural response.
In Europe, thousands of megalithic “card houses” were scattered across the continent. Long regarded as simple constructions consisting of one colossal flat stone resting on two rough pillars, such structures are now believed to have been the skeletons of richly decorated monuments.
Stonehenge, for example, was built and rebuilt over 1,000 years, with huge and heavy materials that had to be hauled over long distances in ways we still cannot fully understand. In its oldest known medieval reproduction, the circular complex—poetically supposed to have been master-minded by Merlin—is represented as a flat rectangle with all its triliths complete.
During the Renaissance, scholars thought that Stonehenge was the work of the Romans, for presumably they alone had the required technology.
The monument’s compass-like design suggests that it was an open-air observatory. Stones were aligned with celestial events such as the setting sun on the solstices and various phases of the moonrise. Sites like this must have had an important ritual function which historians have interpreted differently, in accordance with the ideas of their own time.
The temple of Stonehenge, United Kingdom, built between 2750 and 1500 B.C.
Plan of Stonehenge
This ancient structure is called the “Neolithic computer” because the fundamentals of astronomy are incorporated into its architectural design.
In the Middle East, more than 3000 years B.C., urban development was well under way. Large settlements called for specialized labor to produce goods and services. Luxury materials used for decoration—marble, flint and alabaster—were actively traded. In one of the largest cities commerce was based on obsidian, a hard volcanic “glassy” material used for cutting tools.
Babylonian map of fields and canals, Nippur, c. 1500 B.C.
Geometry was mastered by early Middle-Eastern civilizations. Units of weight and length were legally fixed. Maps were made for tax purposes; this one resembles modern abstract art.
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia; Object B 13885
Sophisticated building techniques were in use. Hand-molded mud-brick and mortar, sun-dried walls and floors, would soon be covered with colored plaster and water-resistant tile-like materials.
Although rarely used, columnar pillars were known. Mesopotamian ziggurats, ladder-type buildings—several rectangular stories painted in different colors—were so monumental that archaeologists who discovered them in the nineteenth century mistook them for industrial complexes.
The construction of the Mesopotamian city-states was carried out by a practical, well-organized society in which writing, calculation, sophisticated medicine and astronomy were commonly practiced. Although the fragile soil of Mesopotamia caused constructions to eventually collapse, many architectural and other inventions were passed on to the Egyptians.
Liver made of clay inscribed with Babylonian characters, nineteenth or eighteenth century B.C.
This sculpted liver is inscribed with signs, which, when correlated to the movements of the stars, were interpreted by priests for the purpose of divination. Astrology and medicine were also closely linked in Etruscan and Chinese cultures.
British Museum, London
Along the Nile, geometry and planning were used for standardizing buildings and for dividing fields. Since the Nile—the major highway—was the source of life, water management was mastered at an early stage. The step pyramid at Saqqara (c. 2650 B.C.), the world’s oldest stone structure, was probably designed on the basis of canal-building experience. Its central monument, which was changed several times, was a technological and an artistic marvel.
The complex of stone and rubble had a facing of limestone slabs and was richly decorated. Blocks were molded in imitation of natural materials such as wood pillars and bundles of reeds, which suggested earlier sophisticated wooden constructions. Saqqara’s designer, Imhotep, was the first architect ever to have his name recorded and the first in an impressive series of builder-scientists. A celebrated astronomer and healer, Imhotep was deified during his lifetime as the god of learning and medicine.
Soon after, the great pyramids were built at Giza with astonishing precision. Their bases form almost perfect squares, with the greatest deviation from a right angle being only half a percent. The orientation of the sides is exactly north-south and east-west. They were completed within a few decades by methods that are still not entirely known to us. The core probably rose together with the ramp, yet wheeled vehicles were not used to transport materials. Was granite quarried first, or later on the spot? How were the stones cut to fit with jeweler’s precision?
Cosmic rays revealing the interior of the Great Pyramid
Cosmic rays from space were used by physicists and archaeologists to understand the design and content of the Pharaoh’s presumed burial chamber—and the false passages perhaps intended to discourage grave robbers.
Computer model of the Sphinx, Mark Lehner
Originally brightly colored, the Sphinx had cheeks that bore traces of ancient red paint until recently. This computer-generated model is one of many attempts to reconstruct the monument as it looked when it was first built. It is based on close study of a life-size statue of Pharaoh Chephren, who possibly ordered the construction of the Sphinx.
The pyramids had an outer casing of stone, and their tops were covered with a layer of reflective material. At sunrise they were illuminated before anything else around. To the Ancient Egyptians, they may have looked like solar energy stations, similar in concept to contemporary cybernetic sculptures.
To the Ancient Greeks, the pyramids were symbols of geometrical beauty. Later, the Arab traveler Muhammad Ibn Batuta (1304–1377) said: “[God Thoth], having ascertained from the appearance of the stars that the deluge would take place, built the pyramids to contain books of science and other matters worth preserving from oblivion and ruin.”
The interpretation of works of art in scientific terms is not peculiar to our time. Links between astronomy and the construction of temples were found through the ages in distant civilizations. Watching the sky and relating cosmic observations to buildings, and in some cultures to the human body, was the expression of a broad conceptual system.
Chrysippe, drawing of an antique sculpture Édouard Manet, c. 1862
Egyptian monuments contain traces of the grid that guided the sculptor at work. The Egyptian canon consisted of precise formal prescriptions that remained unchanged for some 2,200 years. Medieval art had its own canons (this word comes from the craftsman’s cane). The technique of plotting drawings on a grid is still in use.
Musée du Louvre, Paris
Egyptians, whom we tend to admire mainly for the magnificence of their tombs, also made valuable contributions to medicine and astronomy. Like the Babylonians, they used a calendar year of 360 days (and later added 51⁄4 days) and divided it into 12 months, corresponding to the signs of the zodiac.
The eye of Horus
The first sequences of the mathematical progression 1⁄2, 1⁄4, 1⁄8, 1⁄16, 1⁄32, 1⁄64 are each represented by a hieroglyph—the combination of which represents the eye of Horus, the god with a falcon face.
Modern medical prescription symbol
This symbol, still used by physicians to signify a recipe, strangely resembles the eye of Horus. Ancient Egyptians knew a great deal about pigments, cosmetics and embalming. They were knowledgeable about diet, massage, hypnosis and contraceptives, and had a pharmacopoeia of hundreds of drugs. In the West, mummy powder would long be considered as a cure for many ills.
Egyptians systematically incorporated that science into their architecture. For example, 160 feet (63 m) inside the Abu Simbel temple, the statue of Ramses II (c. 1304–1237 B.C.) was bathed by sunlight twice yearly on precise calendar days.
Extended knowledge of astronomy prevailed throughout the region. The Talmud relates that, in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the rays of the sun during the equinox lit the altar by passing through a metal disk in the door. Egyptian monumental relief sculpture, whose design was strictly codified, enhanced the architectural beauty, while assuming its part in the ritual.
Besides their aesthetic appeal, obelisks served as sundials. The most famous of them, Cleopatra’s Needle, was used to calculate the time, seasons and solstices.
Observation and reasoning
Across the Mediterranean Basin, an amalgam of ideas from Mesopotamia and Egypt were transcribed using the Semitic alphabet. Commerce with regions as remote as the Baltic resulted in an unprecedented cross-cultural fertilization. Brightly painted Egyptian buildings must have influenced the surrounding architecture in many ways.
The Cretans (c. 2500–1100 B.C.) were energized by the arrival of metal working, pottery and the textile industry. They inherited their neighbors’ traditions, but interpreted them in their own way.
Egyptian tomb decorations were thought by the Greeks to be painted inventories of objects for daily use. Homer even described the Egyptians as “a race of druggists.” Whereas the latter had concentrated on death, the Greeks used science to serve health, developing the art of living to a high degree. They had houses with several rooms and tiled roofs, running water and luxurious bathrooms.
Despite their condescension towards the Egyptians, the Greeks are believed to have adopted Imhotep as their god of medicine. They gave him the name Asklepius, and his daughter-wife Hygeia was the goddess of health. The practice of medicine extended by Hippocrates (c. 460–377 B.C.) became an art based on technical recipes.
Before the Ancient Greeks, science was a loose collection of observations used for practical applications. The Greeks, who developed a keen awareness of space—probably through their navigational skills—were responsible for the birth of science, and even of science for the sake of science.
Plan of the antique city of Miletus
The Greeks learned mathematics from the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians, and used it in their urban and architectural plans. A map of Manhattan would not look very different.
Thales of Miletus, regarded as the founder of natural philosophy (c. 625–547 B.C.), studied astronomy in Mesopotamia and stunned all who knew about it by correctly predicting a solar eclipse. In Egypt, he learned land surveying from which he deduced geometry.
According to Thales, the universe was made of a physical substance, water. From his time on, philosophers sought to understand the basic mechanisms of nature by the use of analogy and reasoning. They introduced a systematic approach in all avenues of creation.
The great philosophical awakening was accompanied by a formidable architectural movement. The Egyptians used the grid as an aid in architectural design, but the Greeks extended orthogonal planning to the layout of entire cities. Tapered columns, angle contraction and other design tricks used for visual effect were current in the Middle East; the Greeks adapted them to a system of “ideal” proportions based on the Golden Section. This became fundamental to architecture in a unique way.
The Golden Section
The Greeks were fascinated by the Golden Section—a line or a rectangle divided into segments in such a way that the smaller one has the same ratio to the largest, as the largest has to the whole. They were not the first and would not be the last to exploit its beauty. The Golden Section is found in the Great Pyramid and Chartres Cathedral, as well as in plant growth patterns.
The idea of the union of body and spirit inspired architectural forms related to human anatomy and was typical of the Ancient Greeks. Builders were capable of transforming mathematical concepts into architectural delights to please the senses. They created art for the sake of art, so to speak.
The three Greek architectural orders
The Greeks used three orders as modules: Doric, based on early Eastern models, Ionic, and later Corinthian, which defined the proportions of the whole building. Concerning the strict rules of the Doric order the Roman architect Vitruvius said: “Of whatever thickness they made the base of the shaft, they raised it along with the capital to six times as much in its height. So the column began to furnish the proportions of a man’s body strength, and grace.”
Early Greek temples were like shrines containing a statue. The cult of human-looking gods institutionalized by the Olympic Games (ninth century B.C.) spawned a new form of architecture. The typical Greek construction, supported by stylish columns, became a place of public worship. Its wide porches and brightly painted friezes encircling the building beckoned from all sides.
Stone blocks were shaped with exacting precision and fitted together without mortar. No classical Greek architectural plan has been found, but it is evident that temple design based on ideal proportions was standardized. Only small variations were accepted in the overall scheme.
Ideal proportions, rather than the simple grid as used in Egypt, played a key role in determining the appearance of sculptures and buildings in Ancient Greece, as well as shaping theories. Plato (427–347 B.C.), who was interested in the intrinsic beauty of forms rather than in fashionable design, believed that geometry provided the key to the mysteries of nature, science and art.
Convergence of the Parthenon columns, Philippe Comar
The Parthenon’s forty-six columns theoretically converge at a point 6,500 feet (2,000 m) high (which would be situated at infinity if the columns were parallel). The Greek builders were aware of the illusion which makes a bright object appear bigger than a dark one. To offset this effect, columns viewed against dark walls are thinner than the corner columns, which are seen against the sky.
Making the world intelligible in mathematical terms was one of the great advances of human thought, bringing abstraction into play. Order, hierarchy, ethics and aesthetics were intricately interwoven. Plato, who had a special interest in education, advocated: “Let your children’s lessons take the form of a game. Learning through play is linked with sympathy, and conformity with beauty and reason.”
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) thought that facts should prevail over elegant concepts. His pupil, Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.), took geographers and engineers along on his military campaigns and sent back plant and animal specimens from wherever he traveled. (Legend has it that the great empire-builder was an amateur naturalist and had a special glass vessel built to facilitate his underwater observations.)
Alexander’s collection—in which every creature was believed to have a function in the Great Design—prompted Aristotle to compile an encyclopedia that was to contain all knowledge. Thereby he stimulated the switch from speculative to empirical thinking. In addition, he provided a framework for the discussion of philosophy and disciplines such as logic and physics. One of his many noteworthy achievements was to prove formally that the earth is round.
Some early thinkers even precisely calculated the earth’s circumference (just 15 percent greater than the actual measurement), and others went so far as to oppose Aristotle’s geocentric view by asserting that the sun is the center of what we now know as the solar system. Unfortunately this theory was quickly forgotten.
The Platonic Bodies
A theory of solids was based on aesthetic considerations. Philosophers enamored with the concept of symmetry supported the argument that there had to be a continent on the other side of the earth to maintain its equilibrium. Almost 2,000 years later, James Cook, while searching for it, found Australia!
Greek scientists created and followed trends, just as artists do today. Some believed that the four elements (earth, water, fire, air), thought to constitute the universe, could be altered by forces such as love or strife. The elements, themselves a subdivision of the general cosmogony, were viewed as the constituents of the human body.
Natural philosophers made analogies to transformative processes in crafts, such as pottery and metallurgy, to explain the functioning of the body and the formation of the earth. The fundamentals of Western alchemy were established by these observations.
A vast amount of information was generated, and learning eventually entailed organized study in schools. New architectural concepts emerged: stoas, buildings with colonnades where students could talk and walk, lycea and academies. The Museum of Alexandria was a teaching center that attracted scholars of all types, and employed about a hundred state-paid professors.
Empirical methods in science found echoes in art’s new freedom and naturalism. Realistic sculptures decorated multi-story buildings. At the same time, pragmatic inventors, forerunners of today’s engineers, Archimedes of Sicily (c. 287–212 B.C.), Philon of Byzantium (c. third century B.C.) and Heron of Alexandria (first century A.D.), invented mechanical devices used for stage scenery as well as for military purposes. Improved weapons with high-velocity projectiles also influenced architectural design.
Meanwhile, in Rome, networks of paved roads were being built. Across the expanding empire a large-scale uniform construction program was carried out—as Rome had a monopoly over natural materials such as marble and travertine.
The Romans exploited mines in England, imported silk and spices from the East and cereals from Russia. In the south of France, mills produced enough flour to meet the year-round needs of almost 100,000 people; most of it was exported to feed the troops.
The Romans, whose strengths were essentially administrative and organizational, made two major contributions to architecture: they developed the potential of concrete—a light-weight, fire-resistant material composed of rubble, water and mud, produced on building sites; and they extended the use of the arch which enabled them to create the biggest interior spaces made until that time.
The Ancient Greeks used arches on a small scale and found them unappealing. Under the Romans, arches became ubiquitous, used in new classes of buildings and in improved versions of traditional ones. Basilicas for gatherings, hospitals for soldiers, amphitheaters and hippodromes, and public baths decorated like contemporary art galleries, sprang up. Mega-projects such as dams, aqueducts, canals and tunnels, some of which are still in use, were built throughout the empire.
In Rome, the Colosseum (c. first century A.D.) accommodating more than 50,000 people, remained the world’s largest amphitheater until 1914 (the year of the construction of the Yale Bowl). Similarly, the capital’s crowning monument, the Pantheon (c. 30–126 A.D.) remained the largest dome for centuries. Nine-tenths of it was built of concrete, a material that had been upgraded and refined over a period of two hundred years. Over its cement core, the Pantheon (the symbolic home of all the gods, as its name indicates) was faced with luxurious materials. Egyptian porphyry, granite and the finest Greek marble covered the massive building.
Porch of the Maidens, Erechtheum, the Acropolis, 421–405 B.C.
Sculpture was an integral part of this structure, which reflected human proportions. Tinted wax was used to color the hair, lips and costumes of the figures.
Digital reconstruction of the Pharos of Alexandria
Constructed in the third century B.C., this lighthouse was one of the tallest structures in the ancient world. After being damaged in several earthquakes, it was finally reduced to a ruin in the fourteenth century. In 1994, marine archaeologists discovered several stone blocks from the lighthouse in the harbor of Alexandria.
Vitruvius (first century A.D.), a Roman engineer who admired the Ancient Greeks but failed to appreciate the building talents of his peers, is the author of a text that was to become the construction bible of the Renaissance. He gave the first account of architectural acoustics and explained that sound is caused by the vibration of air. Vitruvius, who also theorized on astronomy and waterwheels, wrote: The architect “must be educated, skillful with the pencil, instructed in geometry, know much history, have followed the philosophers with attention, understand music, have knowledge of medicine, know the opinion of the jurist, and be acquainted with astronomy and the theory of the heavens.” A tall order!
Roman scientists also took their cues from the Greeks. The astronomer Ptolemy (second century A.D.) drew maps of various countries presented in his Geographica and charted over 1,000 stars in his Almagest (Al Majisti as the Arabs respectfully named it). Their given positions would go unquestioned until late in the Renaissance.
Naval Games, Serge Strosberg, 1998
The Romans built an aqueduct to supply a large artificial lake for mock naval battles. They flooded amphitheaters such as the Colosseum. Its circular, richly decorated structure—each story designed according to one of the Greek orders—admitted and disgorged audiences through miles of interior stairways leading to seats around the arena.
Galen (second century A.D.), a famous Greek physician, was particularly interested in art and made reference to the canon of human proportions developed by the sculptor Polykleitos: “Beauty arises not in the commensurability of the elements, but in that of the parts, such as the finger to the finger, and of all the fingers to the palm and the wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and in fact from everything to everything else.”
From his dissections of monkeys and pigs, Galen extrapolated information on human anatomy that remained unchallenged until findings based on the dissection of human corpses were published over 1,000 years later. The Romans did a fine job of disseminating knowledge passed down from the Ancient Greeks, but they adopted their content without using the Greeks’ methodology. Despite their many achievements, the Romans are remembered as craftsmen and experts in technology. Their culture never attained the brilliance of the Ancient Greeks and Italians of the Renaissance who cultivated art and science with equal zeal.
Copy of a page of a botanical treatise, tenth century
Discorides, a physician of Greek origin who served in Nero’s army, described several hundred plants and their medicinal virtues. His work would be much discussed by Arab scholars.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
Model of a hospital for Roman troops
Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn
Faith transcending architectural logic
As the power of Rome declined, the pursuit of most forms of knowledge ground to a halt. Architecture, however, advanced as the rituals of the Christian Church required large gathering spaces. The emphasis was on the interior space, spiritually and architecturally. In Constantinople, which became the Christian capital, Hagia Sophia (sixth century) rose even higher than the Pantheon in Rome, yet it seemed weightless inside. Its construction was a brilliant feat, since the techniques of building with concrete had been lost.
An immense celestial sphere was tiled with scintillating mosaics which astounded visitors: “Without external sunshine … the rays of the sun emerged from inside.” The challenge of placing this dome over the world’s largest square building was entrusted to Anthemius of Tralles, a well-known author of treatises on geometry. Like the scientist-astronomer, Imhotep, Anthemius created a watershed in the history of architecture.
Interior of the Pantheon in Rome, Giovanni Paolo Pannini, c. 1734
The Pantheon in Rome, which served as an astronomical observatory, became the primary model for Christian and Islamic architecture. The construction was made by use of stacked concrete compartments, which permitted drying of huge volumes of material needed to sustain the ceiling; lighter material was used near the circular opening at the top. In the Paris Panthéon, built in the eighteenth century on the Roman model, Léon Foucault gave the first material demonstration of the rotation of the earth.
Oil on canvas, 503⁄8 × 39 in. (128 × 99 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.24
Plan of the monastery of St. Gall, c. 825
This detailed medieval architectural drawing was made for a large beer-producing monastery which was never built. Monks were active as copyists, book illustrators and binders, experimenters in oil, enamel, glass and ceramics. Silk and carpet weaving and metal-casting were other monastery industries.
Red ink on parchment
Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen, Switzerland; Cod. San. 1092
During the ninth century, Charlemagne’s taste for Roman splendor led to the development of the Romanesque style. Across his western empire, he blended the refinement of the Byzantine church with the architectural logic of Antiquity into a hybrid form that combined Roman arches and Greek columns.
Characterized by impressive masonry, Romanesque constructions rose up along pilgrimage roads between the ninth and twelfth centuries. Monasteries ran prosperous craft workshops and were successful in livestock-breeding, farming and forestry. Technical progress resulted in improved productivity. The horse collar made traction easier (placing the strain on the shoulders instead of the neck), and a more sophisticated plough lightened the farmer’s burden. During this agricultural transformation, 5,000 watermills were listed in the Domesday Book—an unprecedented large-scale census conducted in 1086 in England, at the request of William the Conqueror.
Romanesque style
Gothic style
Comparison of Romanesque and Gothic nave elevations, Mikiko Noguchi
The pointed arch, vaulted nave and flying buttress enabled architects to realize their boldest visions. It is said that between 1170 and 1270, a quarter of the gross national product was spent in labor and material for some eighty Gothic cathedrals in France.
In France, the Cistercians were one of the most technologically advanced religious communities. At Cluny, the Benedictine order was the cultural as well as the economic leader. At the height of its power, several hundred monasteries across Europe belonged to Cluny’s network.
One of Cluny’s anonymous architects believed that the visual arts revealed a link between music and the harmony of the universe. Liturgical music developed along with architecture. Monastic building also reflected the ongoing rediscovery of art and science.
Characterized by multiple arches and crowded polychromic sculpture, architecture often followed geometrical patterns. Audacious experimentation was taking place. In medieval buildings, the weight of the stone vault rested directly on the supporting lateral walls, thus limiting ceiling height and wall openings. Attempts were made to build churches with higher and more expansive ceilings, but walls and arches were rarely straight, and the structures often collapsed. New construction methods were needed.
The great Gothic awakening started with the use of the ribbed vault over a multi-story nave. This type of vault, with small triangular sections to fill, was easier to build than a unitary mass. What is more, the pointed arch could display angle variation as round arches could not. The flying buttress became yet another tool in the conquest of verticality, providing lateral support. Possibilities arose for the creation of huge interiors that could reach new heights by the skillful distribution of weight.
The powerful abbot Suger (1080–1151) directed the construction of St. Denis, where the kings of France are buried. He was guided by his belief in harmonious proportions, and by a personal interest in the symbolism of light. Suger fully integrated various techniques which he observed as he traveled; he was also, incidentally, a collector of gemstones and colored glass.
His greatest feat was to combine all the diverse visual and structural elements of what came to be known, centuries later, as the Gothic style, into a unified and spiritually expressive whole that was also structurally sound. Word of Suger’s achievement spread and, within a hundred years, examples of the Gothic style could be found all over Europe.
During the nineteenth century, the French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, advocating the neo-Gothic style, described Gothic as an engineer’s art that drew inspiration from practical utility: “Nature has not found the unfindable, the absurd … it proceeds as we would, adjusting bodies to functions … an example we should follow, when we pretend to create using our intelligence.”
Nowadays, scholars are no longer convinced of the rationale of Gothic structures. The quest to turn churches into containers of divine light and space suggests that art had gained supremacy.
The same techniques accelerated the development of secular Gothic art in a rapidly expanding Europe. Excited by innovation, a wealthy middle class financed research in alchemy, mining and metal-working. Flourishing trade accelerated urbanization, which gave rise to new forms of architecture, such as storage depots, shops and town halls.
New standards of comfort were reflected in interior decoration: embroidered cloth, wood panelling and carving. One of the most celebrated examples is the Bayeux Tapestry, celebrating the Norman victory over England (in which the comet is the same as the one described 500 years later by Edmond Halley, the English astronomer: its passage would confirm Newton’s theory of universal gravitation).
Both art and science were ostentatiously sponsored by patrons who wanted to be remembered. Thus, symbols of power and high technology, such as mechanical clocks, were incorporated in major cathedrals. Time, until then conceived as cyclical and determined by the positions of the sun and the moon, became a continuum, tracked by a scientific device.
This innovation heralded a profound spiritual change, gradually replacing a qualitative perception of the world with a quantitative one. But, before this took place, Europe lost about one-third of its population to the plague, leaving wealthy survivors aspiring to build a different future.
Computer-generated image of the abbey of Cluny, 1993
The lavishly decorated abbey of Cluny was destroyed following the French Revolution in 1789, and Napoleon’s edict in 1810. Three-dimensional computer images have been generated from the work of the architect Conant, who spent decades deciphering the plans.
God the Geometer, thirteenth century
Medieval architecture was deeply steeped in antique symbolism. The desired harmony—a perfect relationship of different parts in terms of ratios—was the source of beauty according to which “the divine reason ordered the universe.”
Miniature from a picture Bible
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna; Ms. 2554, fol. 1v
The astronomical clock of Strasbourg Cathedral, fifteenth century
In medieval monasteries, work and prayer were regulated by the ringing of bells; days were divided into periods based on the total time elapsed between sunrise and sunset, but this duration varied from day to day. The necessity for telling time became widespread, and common standards were established. The day was divided into twenty-four equal segments—the hours—shared by all. In today’s industrialized world, clocks controlled by atomic vibrations are accurate to within a millionth of a second.
Distances and encounters
While the West was about to take a new direction, other societies in various parts of the world lived according to elaborate models. In the Americas, successive civilizations flourished for over 2,000 years (beginning around 1000 B.C.). They conducted immense building projects: road networks tens of thousands of kilometers long crossed the formidable terrain of the Andes mountains.
Masonry blocks weighing 100 tons were used to build monumental structures which functioned as giant platforms for ritual practices. They were carefully aligned with the stars, and in close proximity to the heavens. Pre-Columbian pyramids bear resemblance to their Ancient Egyptian counterparts. There are similarities in the understanding of mathematics and astronomy attained by these distant cultures. Incidentally, the dry air of the Andes, like that of Egypt, also favored rites of mummification.
In the Americas, fundamental technologies such as wheeled vehicles and the use of iron were unknown; so were horses as beasts of burden. When conquistadores invaded the continent on horseback carrying gunpowder and metal weapons—and illnesses to which the local people had no immunity—the result was near extinction.
One must admire the Americas’ early inhabitants who conceived a universe 100,000 years old. The Mayas even concluded that time had no beginning—a strikingly abstract notion. Western scientists, including Newtonian thinkers, believed until well into the eighteenth century that the world had been created in 4004 B.C., during the great flood described in the Bible.
Indian statuette, South America
Deformed faces testify to the interest shown by South American Indians in medicine.
Museum für Völkerkunde, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Nazca lines depicting a whale, Peru, c. 500 A.D.
Dark stones were removed over tens of kilometers, uncovering the lighter color of the earth. These drawings representing animals or geometric shapes—recognizable only from the air—must have required measuring skills. Maria Reiche, fascinated by mathematics, studied the astronomical references apparently contained in these figures which were possibly used to predict the outcome of crops. Pre-Columbian Indians grew numerous species of plants. More than half of the food we eat is derived from their products and methods.
It is now common knowledge that societies in Africa and the South Pacific had art schools with masters, and an art story of their own. Yet, although their works are widely appreciated in the West for their aesthetic power, the meaning of these objects is shrouded in mystery.
Mask, Ivory Coast
Some masks show faces with signs of leprosy, mycosis or parasitosis. African statuary greatly inspired Western artists.
Specialists are trying to piece the puzzle together, tracing stylistic affinities and material components back to their sources. But colonialism has wiped out most traditions, rites and ceremonies for which staffs and figurines served as accessories. The same is true of medicinal potions and practices. Interest has been kindled in the traditional science of these lands. One of the direct results is the burgeoning discipline of ethnopharmacology, which is bringing to light potent drugs and antidotes to various poisons.
Fetish from Central Africa, Sankuru-Huana
Figurines representing healers carrying medicine bags, dolls, herbs and utensils reveal the deep link between medicine and artistic representation.
Museum für Völkerkunde, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Ancestral know-how may be of use in a number of other areas, not the least of which are agriculture and environmental practices. Ironically, hi-tech computer analysis is now employed to record whatever remains of this body of knowledge.
Célèbes, Max Ernst, 1921
The contribution of African art to modern Western art movements such as Fauvism, Cubism and Surrealism is immense. Picasso considered the link between modern and tribal art, discovered at the dawn of the twentieth century, to be comparable to that between the Renaissance and Antiquity. Max Ernst seems to have been inspired by a granary shape when he painted this elephant.
Tate Modern, London
African granary
Less than one century after the death of Muhammad (570–632), the Arabs conquered a great expanse of land from central Asia to Spain, passing through North Africa. In this way, they brought about a synthesis of Eastern and Greek culture. The works of authors such as Euclid and Ptolemy were abundantly translated by the Arabs, who also studied Indian mathematics.
In Spain, the Cordoba Mosque and the Alhambra Palace were masterpieces of geometrical harmony that had a strong influence on Christian architects: the reverse had occurred in Constantinople years earlier, when the Hagia Sophia church had become the model for builders of mosques.
Fragment of Euclid’s Elements, Latin translation based on an Arab version
European languages are sprinkled with words that have Arabic roots: zero, cipher, hazard, almanac, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, etc. Arabic numerals allowed for written calculations which were impossible with the Roman system. Euclidean geometry was translated by the Arabs and formed the basis of one-point perspective. The Elements became almost as well known as the Bible.
Arab palaces were surrounded by magnificent gardens. Plant motifs were used in decoration containing flowers, fruit trees and medicinal herbs—botanical textbooks were plentiful. The Arabs designed precision instruments, glass mirrors and lenses, and excelled in astronomy. They began structured chemical studies as distinct from alchemy; they knew the principles of distillation and experimented with acids and oil paint. Pharmacology was becoming a field in its own right, related to but separate from medicine. (In Baghdad, for example, there were over 1,000 licensed physicians practicing around the tenth century.)
Persian miniature, fifteenth century
These physicians are shown having a clinical consultation; they carry a small book of diagnostic information on a belt around the waist. Taught in Salerno, Montpellier and Padua, medicine was the cornerstone of some of the early and most prestigious universities.
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna
Mezquita, Cordoba, Maurits Cornelis Escher
Forbidden by their religion to represent the human figure, the Arabs developed an alternative art form based on mathematics. In the Cordoba Mosque, arches are aligned in a captivating manner as in Romanesque architecture. Around the twelfth century, there were more than 100 mosques in Cordoba.
Muslims, Christians and Jews co-habited more or less harmoniously for hundreds of years. When Christians reconquered Spain, the fall of cities such as Toledo (1085) with its huge library, contributed enormously to the cultural revival of the West. It was Ancient Greek knowledge, transmitted by the Arabs, that persuaded philosophers such as the Jew Maimonides (1135–1204) and the Christian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) to reconcile their faith with Aristotelian logic. This bold and potentially heretical step was the first to allow the separation of the religious and secular realms. Science has established itself ever since as an integral part of cultural values.
The Arabs probably learned much from the Far East, although how much, and by what means, is difficult to determine. In many areas, the Chinese were centuries ahead of the rest of the world. Agricultural inventions, the mining of coal and the development of materials such as iron, were evident in China long before they became known in Europe.
Huge wooden constructions were built thanks to hard metal tools. The Chinese designed metal bridges and excavated underground wells 1,000 meters deep. They even knew of natural gas and oil as combustible and lighting materials.
Why were some of their inventions never adopted by the Arabs? Why did it take so long to pass them on to Europe? Which ones were reinvented ex nihilo? And, in particular, why weren’t they used more to stimulate development of Chinese society itself?
One answer, among others, is that Asian philosophy emphasized meditation rather than interrogation, which is familiar in Western thinking. Chinese innovations tended to be isolated events rather than catalysts for a chain reaction. Deeply impregnated by Confucian thinking—which dated back to the sixth century B.C. and commanded respect for ancient values—the Chinese took pride in continuity, an attitude reflected both in their science and their art.
Bronze seismograph, copy of a second-century Chinese original
This artistic masterpiece is a scientific instrument. Vibration causes a bronze ball to fall from the dragon’s teeth into the toad’s mouth beneath. A deep sound is produced at the slightest earth tremor. Even a distant earthquake is registered and the direction of its epicenter is also indicated.
Science Museum, London
Architectural canons were fixed at an early stage and buildings were reconstructed in a similar style every couple of decades. Thus construction did not evolve substantially either. Nevertheless, across Asia independent styles flourished.
Art of all kinds was formally codified, leaving little room for subjective expression. Still, within its tight framework, it announced itself subtly and—judging from the impulsive nature of that untidy concept called “creativity”—probably ineluctably.
Far Eastern inventions rarely found widespread applications as they were created for the rulers’ amusement. As imagined by the Italian writer Italo Calvino in Invisible Cities, the Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan (1215–1294), who founded the capital of Beijing, says: “I have neither desires nor fears and my dreams are composed either by mind or by chance.”
Marco Polo (1254–1324), again according to Calvino, replies: “Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city’s Seven Wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.”
Meanwhile, curiosity about the material world and its place in the cosmos impelled the West to move at a faster speed. The persistent questions of merchants, discoverers, inventors, scientists and artists brought about the Renaissance.
Irrigation map of the ruins at Angkor, Cambodia, Mikiko Noguchi
This gigantic Khmer complex built between the ninth and thirteenth centuries comprises many temples—a number of which, buried in the jungle, were found by means of satellite. Little survives of the residential splendor, but remaining reservoirs and temples indicate that it must have been one of the largest cities of the ancient world. Angkor Wat, the main building, is aligned with the sunrise at the spring equinox and its dimensions correspond to astronomical cycles. Containing emblems of fertility, it was conceived as a microcosm of the universe.
In ancient times, knowledge was acquired directly through perception. In the West, the earth was seen as the center of all things, with the sun and the stars, the planets and the moon circling around it in fixed orbits. The common scheme was envisaged as spherical, and thought to have been set in motion by a primary force.
Over time, the number of heavenly bodies became a subject of debate, and in the Middle Ages it was concluded that the earth was flat. In general, the ancient earth-centered cosmogony endured until the Renaissance. The earth itself was pictured as three continents surrounding a landlocked sea, the Mediterranean. Naturally, Jerusalem was its geographical center.
Around 1400, a copy of Ptolemy’s long forgotten Geographica was brought back to Venice from Constantinople. It caused quite a sensation, because it included unknown regions such as the Canary Islands, Ceylon and the Indian Ocean. It even suggested the existence of a territory situated in the Far East. Although Ptolemy’s maps later proved to be far from accurate, they spurred interest in cartography and instrument-making.
As such, in Columbus’s search for Asia (1492) the earth’s circumference was vastly underestimated; had it been accurately calculated (as the Ancient Greeks had done), Columbus’s voyage would not have been financed!
World map, Abraham Ortelius, sixteenth century
A new science was born: geography. The Flemish cartographer Gerhard Mercator published maps based on his projection system adapted from Antiquity. This method solved the problem of representing a sphere on a flat plane (like an unrolled cylinder). The meridians of longitude are equally spaced lines uniting at the poles, and the latitudes are perpendicular to the meridians. This map suggests that all continents were once united, a theory that was to be confirmed in the twentieth century.
British Library, London; Map C.2.d.7.1–2
The astrolabe (known since Antiquity), the needle compass invented by the Chinese, and Renaissance navigational charts were the tools that redesigned the world. These scientific objects, which we consider to be works of art, stimulated advances in ship design. Large, three-masted ships that were easier to maneuver in high winds, replaced the medieval cogs. Precious shipments could be therefore transported more safely.
More changes were at hand, however, as material and spiritual concerns tended to coincide. Jerusalem was taken by the Muslims and the Christian world found itself without a center. This disorienting experience cast doubts on many beliefs and marked the beginning of modern Western history.
Plan of slave ship
With advances in ship construction, all the oceans would prove to be connected and no reasonable person could doubt that the earth was anything but round. Yet, science and humanitarian progress were not synonymous … since over 10 million people were deported as slaves from Africa to the Americas.
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Astrolabe, Gualterius Arsenius, 1567
Until the Renaissance, navigation largely remained coastal. The sea astrolabe would give a rough estimate of latitude based on the position of the stars. The magnetic compass would especially help mariners to determine their locations. New instruments for measuring time and distance were developed in emerging disciplines. Navigation, cartography, architecture and engineering demanded apprentices grounded in the principles of perspective.
Musée des Arts et Métiers–CNAM, Paris
Scientific architecture
The age of exploration was literally expanding horizons with each new expedition. Westerners established great confidence in their capacity to change the course of events and developed a new attitude towards knowledge. The center of the world progressively moved from the Mediterranean region to northwestern of Europe.
Meanwhile, science contributed to an architectural milestone of the same period: the dome of Florence Cathedral, symbol of the “New Athens.” It was the work of Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), the developer of one-point perspective, an architect and painter who started his career as a sculptor. He had lost an earlier competition for the cathedral baptistry doors to the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378–1455), and went to Rome to study ancient monuments.
Rome at the time looked like a vast open-air museum whose antique objects were beginning to be appreciated for their aesthetic value (as well as for the commercial value of marble!). Brunelleschi may well have discovered the technique of perspective drawing while trying to accurately record the appearance of antique architecture.
Brunelleschi’s experiment, Philippe Comar
Renaissance architecture began with Brunelleschi, whose development of one-point perspective, for architectural purposes, revolutionized art. Linear perspective assumes that parallel lines, receding from our eyes, converge at a point on the horizon, and that the diminution in size of objects is directly proportional to their distance from us. To demonstrate his method, he set up a mirror facing a building, then painted the reverse mirror image on a flat wooden panel. He made a hole in the center of the painting. When viewers looked through the hole, the real building could be seen and compared with its image painted in perspective.
