Title: Thinking and Imagination Authors: Olaf Breidbach and Federico Vercellone Translator: Wilton Kaiser Series: Thinking European Worlds Imprint: The Davies Group, Publishers 170 pp. soft cover USD 24.00 ISBN 978-1934542347 Pub date:  June 10, 2014 Thinking and Imagination argues that mechanical objectivity is insufficient to deal with the complex of thinking and imagination. A picture is not simply a documentation of something being seen. The image is seen as condensation of a process, summing up representations, expectations and dispositions. Regarded in this way, pictures form a gateway to our understanding of a world only partially analyzed. It is not just documentation we have to deal with in image sciences, but imagination. Only in that way will we gain new perspectives to handle experiences and their representations. Table of Contents Preface Chapter One Perspective on the Morphology 1.1 Initial Premises 1.2 Metamorphosis of the Morphology 1.3 History as Orientation 1.4 The Measures and Principles of Vision 1.5 From Art to Science 1.6 Nihilism and New Knowledge Chapter Two The Flight to the Internal. On the Tragedy of the Aesthetic (and of Morphology) around 1900 2.1 The Renunciation of Knowledge and the Tragedy of the Aesthetic: Nietzsche and D’Annunzio 2.2 The Aesthetic as Rhetoric. Croce and the Loss of the Image 2.3 The Crisis of Morphology 2.4 The Path towards Exteriority: Riegl, Haeckel and Beyond 2.5 The Mathematicization of Forms: D’Arcy Thompson 2.6 Iconology: Warburg and Panofsky 2.7 From Nietzsche to Heidegger 2.8 The Rediscovery of Form: The Iconic Turn Chapter 3 Being as Image 3.1 Image as Object 3.2 Image as Intuition 3.3 Image as Representation 3.4 Image as Model 3.5 Image as Social Space 3.6 Image as Frame 3.7 Image as Image 3.8 Image as Process 3.9 Image as Form Chapter 4. Conceptualizing Intuition, Thinking the Image 4.1 Morphology 4.2 Forecast and Foreshadow: What Is Vague in Intuition 4.3 Are We Speaking of the Prediscursive? 4.4 Presentiment, or the Image as Reproduction of What Has Not Yet Become Familiar 4.5 The Image as Concept and Its Organization 4.6 Models Conclusions: Once Again on Art, Science, Knowledge Notes Bibliography Index of Names “ Thinking   and   Imagination    makes   a   fundamental   contribution   to   the   understanding   of   the   image   as   a   new   cultural   environment   and   as   the   place   where   the knowledge   of   late-modern   life   is   shaped.   It   does   so   from   an   historical   and   theoretical   standpoint,   relying   on   visual   studies    as   well   as   by   revisiting   Goethe’s morphology. Thus the authors propose the idea of a unified science that recognizes the image and intuition as the sources of its coming into being.”  —Gianni Vattimo “ Thinking   and   Imagination   makes   an   original   contribution   to   the   debate   on   the   Iconic   Turn.   Developing   critically   Goethe’s   notion   of   morphology,   the   image   is interpreted   as   both   a   knot   of   relations   and   the   unavoidable   presupposition   and   catalyst   of   concepts.   The   image   is   not   the   pure   mirroring   of   data,   but   is   form,   a way of structuring chaos in order to give meaning to the world and events not only in the field of visual perception but also in art and science.”  —Remo Bodei Authors: Olaf Breidbach taught history of science at the University of Jena and was director of the Institute for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology and the Ernst-Haeckel-Haus Museum. Recent books included Goethes Naturverständnis (2011), Radikale Historisierung. Kulturelle Selbstversicherung im Postdarwinismus  (2011) and Anschauung denken (2011). Federico Vercellone (Professor of Aesthetics, University of Turin). Recent publications include Morfologie del moderno. Saggi di ermeneutica dell’immagine (2006); Oltre la bellezza (2008); Pensare per immagini (2010), with Olaf Breidbach; new German edition, 2011); and Le ragioni della forma (2011).