Visual Technologies, Cosmographies, And Our Sense Of Place In The Universe

This paper was published in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science in 2002, and a version of the paper was delivered at the forty-eighth annual conference of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science, “Human Meaning in a Technological Culture,” held on Star Island, New Hampshire, 28 July–4 August 2001.

This paper argues that developments in visual technologies since the European Renaissance have radically changed our sense of place in the universe. Telescopes, microscopes, and new technologies for printing and displaying images have profoundly altered the visual and conceptual environment in which we conduct our lives. Both the world we see with our eyes open as we navigate through our daily lives and the universe we imagine around us, based on imagery from scientific research and popular culture, bear little resemblance to the visual worlds of the past. This changed visual landscape, both actual and imagined, presents a distinctive set of artistic and spiritual challenges for our time. I contend in this paper that one crucial component of the disorientation and alienation so characteristic of the modern age is visual in origin. Unresolved issues of “cosmography,” the visual representation of the cosmos and our place within it, make the integration of science into broader aesthetic and religious cultures very difficult. Our ability to feel “at home” in the modern scientific universe is hindered by an incomplete and disorienting revolution in how and what we see.

The full paper can be found here.