The heritage of Giotto's geometry: art and science on the eve of the scientific revolution

This ambitious book explores the relationship between the Western revolution that began with Galileo in the early seventeenth century and the Renaissance artistic revolution inaugurated by Giotto three hundred years earlier. The fruit of many years of thought and research, it demonstrates the crucial role that Italian Renaissance painting, sculpture, and architecture played in what we call science. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., shows that rather than being symptomatic in nature, the arts served as a catalyst for the transformation in perception which occurred in the West in the fourteenth century. According to Edgerton, the new way in which reality was represented, through the use of the unique Renaissance tools of perspective and chiaroscuro, set the stage for modern scientific practice.