Paintings and their implicit presuppositions: High Renaissance and Mannerism

All art historians who are interested in questions of "styles" or "schools" agree in identifying a High Renaissance school of Italian painting. There is, however, a disagreement, which has seemed nonterminating, regarding Mannerism: Is it another distinct school or is it merely a late development of the Renaissance school? We believe that this disagreement can be terminated by distinguishing questions of fact about paintings from questions about the definitions of schools. To this end we have had two representative subsets of paintings--one earlier, one later--rated on four of the dimensions of implicit presuppositions that we have introduced in other Working Papers. When the paintings are scaled in this way a very distinct profile emerges for the earlier, or Renaissance, paintings. In contrast, the later, or Mannerist, paintings are so heterogeneous that we conclude that they are best described as deviations from the Renaissance profile, rather than a separate school. These results are not unimportant--at least for art historians. But they are more important methodologically inasmuch as the procedures applied here can be used in classifying and distinguishing from one another all kind of cultural products

Paintings and their implicit presuppositions : a preliminary report

In a series of earlier papers (Social Science Working Papers 350, 355. 357) we have studied the ways in which differences in "implicit presupposi tions" (i. e •• differences in world views) cause scientists and historians to reach differing conclusions from a consideration of the same evidence. In this paper we show that paintings are characterized by implicit presuppositions similar to those that characterize the written materials -- essays, letters, scientific papers -- we have already studied

Some Implicit Presuppositions of Typical Writings in the Field of American Intellectual History

This paper reports a study made of some of the implicit presuppositions contained in the following materials: The Federalist, papers 10 and 51 by Madison, selections from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America; Emerson's "The American Scholar"; Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener"; "Washington as Commander in Chief” in Bancroft's History of the United States; and "A Small Group of Men Hold in their hands the Business of this Country," a Senate speech by Robert M. LaFollette, Fifteen students at the Claremont Graduate School, who had taken a course in which these materials were studied, rated them on seven scales, or "dimensions, " each of which represents one of a contrasting pair of implicit presuppositions which we have identified and defined. At 19 of the 42 choice points at which decisions had to be made (six selections on seven dimensions) the ratings proved to be significant at p < .05 level. These results thus expand the "scope" of our set of implicit presuppositions to include new materials not previously investigated. In short, it has been shown that readers who are guided by our definitions are able to agree on some of the implicit assumptions contained in a representative sample of writings in the field of American intellectual history

Some Implicit Presuppositions Involved in the Disagreement over the DNA Guidelines

This paper is one of a series reporting studies we have made of differences in implicit presuppositions and of how such differences affect the ways people reason. In the study reported here 26 students (14 at Caltech; 12 at Claremont) read and rated four letters which had appeared in the correspondence columns of Science. Two of the letters defended the guidelines governing DNA research; two criticized them. The students rated the letters on six scales, or "dimensions," each of which represents a contrasting pair of implicit presuppositions, which we have identified and defined. For two of the six dimensions all four of the letters were rated in the predicted direction, and all are statistically significant. On a third dimension all four of the letters were rated in the predicted direction, but only three of the four are statistically significant. For the other three dimensions there was no consistent pattern, though some of the results on some of the dimensions were in the predicted direction and are statistically significant. Thus this study shows that in certain important respects the presuppositions of the proponents and the presupposition of the opponents of the guidelines are not only different but diametrically opposed

Implicit presuppositions: an exercise in multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering

This working paper, like Humanities Working Papers 66 and 75, of which it is a further development, has two main aims. The first of these is to resolve a particular problem in art history. For this purpose the data already studied in Working Papers 66 and 75 are reanalyzed by means of multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering procedures, with results that support our earlier conclusion that sixteenth century Mannerism is best understood as an exaggeration of the High Renaissance style rather than as a distinct school. Our second aim, which in this paper takes precedence over the first, is to demonstrate to humanists that the quantitative methods of the social sciences can be used effectively to deal with some of the problems with which humanists are characteristically concerned, by replacing unresolved difference of opinion by judgments based on public procedures. Though this is a joint paper, the text is chiefly the responsibility of a psychologist and an anthropologist; the explanatory comments and Discussion section are chiefly the responsibility of a philosopher. Thus the authorship of the paper reflects the kind of cooperation between social scientists and humanists that we are recommending

Some Implicit Presuppositions of Typical Writings in the Field of American Intellectual History

This paper reports a study made of some of the implicit presuppositions contained in the following materials: The Federalist, papers 10 and 51 by Madison, selections from de Tocqueville's Democracy in America; Emerson's "The American Scholar"; Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener"; "Washington as Commander in Chief” in Bancroft's History of the United States; and "A Small Group of Men Hold in their hands the Business of this Country," a Senate speech by Robert M. LaFollette, Fifteen students at the Claremont Graduate School, who had taken a course in which these materials were studied, rated them on seven scales, or "dimensions, " each of which represents one of a contrasting pair of implicit presuppositions which we have identified and defined. At 19 of the 42 choice points at which decisions had to be made (six selections on seven dimensions) the ratings proved to be significant at p < .05 level. These results thus expand the "scope" of our set of implicit presuppositions to include new materials not previously investigated. In short, it has been shown that readers who are guided by our definitions are able to agree on some of the implicit assumptions contained in a representative sample of writings in the field of American intellectual history

Nonterminating Disagreements and Implicit Presuppositions: B. F. Skinner and Carl R. Rogers

In this paper it is argued that nonterminating disagreements (such as those that Skinner and Rogers represent within the field of psychology) are likely to be associated with contrasting patterns of "implicit presuppositions." Nineteen subjects rated each of two essays, one by Skinner and the other by Rogers, on eleven bipolar presuppositions. There was consensus among raters that the Skinnerian and Rogerian positions contained significantly different presuppositions. An interpretation of disagreements between these two schools of psychology is offered in terms of the contrasting patterns of presuppositions that were identified

Some Implicit Presuppositions Involved in the Disagreement over the DNA Guidelines

This paper is one of a series reporting studies we have made of differences in implicit presuppositions and of how such differences affect the ways people reason. In the study reported here 26 students (14 at Caltech; 12 at Claremont) read and rated four letters which had appeared in the correspondence columns of Science. Two of the letters defended the guidelines governing DNA research; two criticized them. The students rated the letters on six scales, or "dimensions," each of which represents a contrasting pair of implicit presuppositions, which we have identified and defined. For two of the six dimensions all four of the letters were rated in the predicted direction, and all are statistically significant. On a third dimension all four of the letters were rated in the predicted direction, but only three of the four are statistically significant. For the other three dimensions there was no consistent pattern, though some of the results on some of the dimensions were in the predicted direction and are statistically significant. Thus this study shows that in certain important respects the presuppositions of the proponents and the presupposition of the opponents of the guidelines are not only different but diametrically opposed

From Urban Terrain Models to Visible Cities

We are now faced with the possibility and in some cases the results of acquiring accurate digital representations of our cities. But these cities will not be capable of interactive visualization unless we meet some fundamental challenges. The first challenge is to take data from multiple sources, which are often accurate in themselves but incomplete, and weave them together into comprehensive models. Because of the size and extent of the data that can now be obtained, this modeling task is daunting and must be accomplished in a semi-automated manner. Once we have comprehensive models, and especially if we can build them rapidly and extend them at will, the next question is what to do with them. Thus the second challenge is to make the models visible. In particular they must be made interactively visible so they can be explored, inspected, and analyzed. In this article, we discuss the nature of the acquired urban data and how we are beginning to meet the challenges and produce visually navigable models. These models provide the basis for building virtual environments for a variety of applications

Organization and Simplification of High-Resolution 3D City Facades

This paper describes an approach for the organization and simplification of high-resolution geometry and imagery data for 3D buildings for interactive city navigation. At the highest level of organization, building data are inserted into a global hierarchy that supports the large-scale storage of cities around the world. This structure also provides fast access to the data suitable for interactive visualization. At this level the structure and simplification algorithms deal with city blocks. An associated latitude and longitude coordinate for each block is used to place it in the hierarchy. Each block is decomposed into building facades. A facade is a texture-mapped polygonal mesh representing one side of a city block. Therefore, a block typically contains four facades, but it may contain more. The facades are partitioned into relatively flat surfaces called faces. A texture-mapped polygonal mesh represents the building facades. By simplifying the faces first instead of the facades, the dominant characteristics of the building geometry are maintained. At the lowest level of detail, each face is simplified into a single texture-mapped polygon. An algorithm is presented for the simplification transition between the high- and low-detail representations of the faces. Other techniques for the simplification of entire blocks and even cities are discussed