Baroquian Folds: Leibniz on Folded Fabrics and the Disruption of Geometry
The fold in Leibniz’s philosophy – considered as an image of thought – has received considerable attention during recent decades, mainly because of the work of Gilles Deleuze. For Leibniz the fold often stands for continuous transformation and change, but
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Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Folded Drapery: Between Geometry and Its Subversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Before the Baroque: The Geometrization of Folded Drapery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Folds of the Baroque: Disruption of and Deviation from the Geometrical Space . . . . . . . . . . . Leibniz on Folding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Abstract The fold in Leibniz’s philosophy – considered as an image of thought – has received considerable attention during recent decades, mainly because of the work of Gilles Deleuze. For Leibniz the fold often stands for continuous transformation and change, but it is also often mentioned together with references to folded fabrics. But did the folds of fabric prompt new conceptions of geometry in Leibniz’s thought? How does Leibniz’s account on the fall of folds stand in relation to how folded fabrics were drawn in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Baroque paintings? This chapter will inspect these questions in detail by examining Baroquian painting and specifically what may be termed the Baroquian fold which may be considered as almost un-mathematizable, on the one hand, and Leibniz’ thought on folding, on the other hand. I aim to show that just as the Leibnizian fold resists being reduced to constant, well-defined units, so does the Baroquian fold operate, as it prompts a disruption of geometrization of space.
M. Friedman () Excellence Cluster Matters of Activity, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 B. Sriraman (ed.), Handbook of the Mathematics of the Arts and Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70658-0_93-1
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Keywords Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · Mathematization of folding · Drapery in baroque painting · El Greco · Johann Paul Schor · Samuel van Hoogstraten
Introduction Leibniz, 1676, Pacidius to Philalethes: “The division of the continuum must not be considered to be like the division of sand into grains, but like that of a sheet of paper or tunic into folds. And so although there occur some folds smaller than others infinite in number, a body is never thereby dissolved into points or minima. [ . . . ] It is just as if we suppose a tunic to be scored with folds multiplied to infinity in such a way that there is no fold so small that it is not subdivided by a new fold [ . . . ]. And the tunic cannot be said to be resolved all the way down into points; instead, although some folds are smaller than oth
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