Art-Historical Empiricism and Digital Visualization of Cultural Heritage
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Date
2025-03-12
Authors
Bulvas Stejskal, Jakub
ORCID
0000-0003-3202-8553Advisor
Referee
Mark
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Springer Nature
Altmetrics
Abstract
Digital visualizations of cultural heritage (DVCs) are typically used to re-create or re-imagine artworks in their original state. Their apparent efficiency raises questions about their relation to the historical artefacts: What is the visualizations’ status vis vis the originals? Can they replace them? And if so, in what capacity? This paper explores these questions from the point of view of the DVCs’ potential epistemic yield. It argues that the knowledge they are supposed to provide amounts to mediating past experiences the artefacts they model occasioned and that in this role they serve an agenda with a long pedigree labelled ‘art-historical empiricism’ (AHE). However, historicism about perception can saw doubt into the AHE enterprise, including the use of DVCs. The paper maintains that if AHE is to justify or guide the DVCs’ proliferation in museums and historical scholarship, its proponents better be equipped with means of assuaging the doubt. The paper closes by discussing a general strategy of testing the soundness of epistemic uses of DVCs.
Description
Citation
SYNTHESE. 2025, vol. 205, issue 3, p. 1-20.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-025-04959-y
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-025-04959-y
Document type
Peer-reviewed
Document version
Published version
Date of access to the full text
Language of document
en