What differentiates Descartes the most clearly from his predecessors is
the juxtaposition of his philosophy with experimental method rooted in
geometry. His approach resembles ibn al-Haytham’s interest in reaffirming
the atomistic interiority of the divine while supporting his analysis of optics
with extensive experimentation rooted in the independence of the obser-
ver, one of the primary hallmarks of modern empiricism. Yet rather than
recasting paternity of scientific method from Descartes to ibn al-Haytham,
a more accurate approach would recognize experimentalism as emerging
from intertwined discursive, historical, and religious frameworks. For the
search for origins is always interested; it always comes from a specific place
that defines truth through its own position and, in doing so, defines the
alterity between‘us,’positioned correctly in relation to the picture plane of
history, and‘them,’defined by the degree to which their subjectivity is
askew. Like the attribution of the origins of perspective to the name
Brunelleschi, the attribution of modern reason to the name of Descartes
offers a clear patrimony for the modern Western tradition. Its ideological
force tempers its historical inaccuracies.
The mythology of perspectivalism makes the West appear like the sole
natural outcome of history, despite the distortions through which we view
it. What does it mean to look at history through a lens that can only be
corrected through our awareness of its inversion? What happens if we look
instead from a tradition rooted in an infinite network of focal points
corresponding to an equal plurality of subjectivities? If the centered,
individual subjectivity that we identify as‘Western’corresponds to the
subject as constituted through the perspectival representation of space,
how can we describe the subjectivity that corresponds to the Islamic
engagement with the same mathematical precepts? The“private way of
looking”Necipoğlu proposes precludes the single-point perspective from
the epistemological structure constructed through Western perspectival
thought. We may not be able to put‘the Islamic’in focus because that
notion of focus is itself an illusion of perspective; but this intrinsic con-
ceptual multiplicity has no less of a hold on reality. What might it mean to
look at the world out of perspective? What happens if we replace the
perspectival metaphor at the heart of art history with one based on the
decentered subjectivity of polyhedral isometric geometry?
Perspectives on Perspective 325