Vision and Space

Based on Genesis, in the tradition of Augustinian thought, matter – opaque and inert – was compressed into spatial form by the containing creative energy of God operating through light. For Augustine, space was the most immaterial of physical substances and represented that which organised reality into a hierarchy of perfections, with the divine energy of a supreme value at the top radiating down through levels of reality. The chain of being, or axis mundi, represented a structure of rank and degree that organised the cosmological orders and surpassed the value and space of human beings. It was also, however, according to the axis mundi that orders were referred back to the most intimately known place – the microcosm of the human body, which housed the powers of the sensitive soul. From Avicenna's De anima came the theory that man's soul had two faces: the virtus contemplativa or comprensiva that looked up, contemplating the superior order of being extending upwards above and beyond it (divine authority); and the virtus activa or motiva that looked down to rule its kingdoms (the body and social order) (Harvey 1975: 42; Smalley 1981: 117–20). The assignment of order in society (space, hierarchy, physical movement, control) was a conceptual sphere, organised from above, but also the domain of the senses, meaningfully constituted and perceived by those inhabiting that space.

According to Avicenna, layers of varying complexity and abstraction were apprehended and processed by humans through their outer senses (tactus, gustus, olfactus, auditus, and visus) and inner senses (sensus communis / fantasia, imaginatio, imaginativa / cogitativa, extimativa, and memorialis), which were linked (Harvey 1975: 41; Tascioglu & Tascioglu 2005: 60).