[Religion and the Visual] Visual Depiction of Impossibility and Hans Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521)

Abstract

Long gone is the idea that in science, or in the observation ingredient in science, objects are presented nakedly to the senses, without the intermediary of theory; or at least that idea is largely absent among those acquainted with the rudiments of contemporary philosophy of science. And that is just the beginning of the various changes in our understanding of science since roughly the time of Kant. Taken together, these changes indicate that though science is indeed a good or even the best way of gaining knowledge of the sensible world, caution is needed when we try to understand precisely how we gain this knowledge