ernst gombrich a little history of the world

In my own field, the History of Art, it was Alois Riegl who, at the turn of the century, worked out his own translation of the Hegelian system into psychological terms.They could trace the history of the reform of Parliament, of Anglo-Irish relations, without explicit reference to an all-embracing philosophy of history. His colleagues working on political or economic history had at least a criterion of relevance in their restricted subject matter. In this respect the cultural historian was much worse off than any other historian. The point is rather that all of them felt, consciously or unconsciously, that if they let go of the magnet that created the pattern, the atoms of past cultures would again fall back into random dust-heaps.In teaching us to see the visible world afresh, he gives us the illusion of looking into the invisible realms of the mind - if only we know, as Philostratus says, how to use our eyes. It is that under the hands of a great master the image becomes translucent.

The true miracle of the language of art is not that it enables the artist to create the illusion of reality.Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.Images apparently occupy a curious position somewhere between the statements of language, which are intended to convey a meaning, and the things of nature, to which we only can give a meaning.

Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. Gombrich (1962), quoted in: Robert Maxwell Young. The artist, no less than the writer, needs a vocabulary before he can embark on a 'copy' of reality.

Like art, science is born of itself, not of nature.

15) cited in: Paul Smith, ‎Carolyn Wilde (2008).

1.4 A Little History of the World (2005).

1.2 In Search of Cultural History (1969).

Ernst gombrich a little history of the world