The gap at the center

pp. 45-78

in: Frederick Kersten, Galileo and the "invention" of opera, Berlin, Springer, 1997

Abstract

While not quite like being eaten by a wolf and thrown over a cliff, the prospect of the internal collapse of the Classical formulation of consciousness has a serious impact. It lays bare the ambiguity at the heart of ordinary experience by serving notice on the ungroundedness of its underlying ontic conviction, leaving in sore need of resilvering the tarnished prestige of the power of mimesis and analogy to represent the "real."¹ The contemplative sight of the measure of the higher and the far, beheld at night, has become blurry and increasingly myopic. At worst, mimetic and analogical resemblance will prove to be inadequate to the task of meeting the needs, cares and necessities of ordinary life under the yoke of the criterion of beauty. At best they will be reduced in rank to become the "tools" of the rhetoric and logic of scientific persuasion.²