home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
pc
/
mcluhan.dxr
/
08364_Field_TCGG T129.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-04-10
|
950b
|
16 lines
More important still, with the bounding line of a cartoon,
as with a cave painting, we tend to be in an area of the
interplay of the senses, and hence of strongly haptic or tactile
character. That is to say, the art of the draughtsman and the
celator alike is a strongly tactile and tangible art. And even
Euclidean geometry is by modern standards very tactile.
This is a matter discussed by William Ivins, Jr., in Art and
Geometry: A Study in Space Intuitions . He explains the
unverbalized assumptions of Greek space awareness: “The
Greeks never mentioned among the axioms and postulates of
their geometry their basic assumption of congruence, and yet. . .
it is among the most fundamental things in Greek geometry,
and plays a determining role in its form, its power, and its
limitations.” (p. x) Congruence was a new and exciting visual
dimension, unknown to audile-tactile cultures. As Ivins says in