Mary Carruthers (New York University; University of Oxford): „The Geometry of Creativity: Using Diagrams in the Middle Ages“

This lecture will explore the close relationships in medieval creative practice among geometric shapes, meditation, and the human ability to create original works. Focused on materials crafted in the twelfth century chiefly on the basis of Biblical texts, and then disseminated widely during the thirteenth century, I will investigate the fundamental cognitive insight of medieval diagram makers, that shape and pattern not only envision what we already know, but invite us to discover surprising logical relationships that can provoke our thinking in new ways.