The processes of discovery and creativity are topics of critical importance for our understanding not only of how science works, but also for our understanding of how the human mind itself works. While the processes of science are certainly unique in many respects, it has become clear that discovery and creativity in science and art are in some sense related. Dr. Lenoir is studying this interrelationship in the context of empiricist theories of vision in mid-19th century Germany and their relation to the realist movement in painting. One of the central issues facing the cultural and political life of German in the two decades following the failed revolutions of 1848 was the need to construct a new vision of the future, one which rejected idealism in politics, philosophy, and science in favor of the pursuit of practical interests. This new orientation required the construction of a new kind of discourse of realism. Dr. Lenoir's concern is with the simultaneous pursuit of realism in theories of vision and in painting. Central to his study is the work of Hermann Helmholtz in physiological optics and its relation to his efforts to reformulate a Kantian epistemology with strong empiricist foundations. Arguing that Helmholtz treats the eye as a measuring device, he places his work within a larger movement initiated in the 1850's to go "back to Kant" and construct more practically oriented foundations of knowledge. Equally important for this study is the work of realist painters, particularly Adolph Menzel. The themes painted by realists were ideologically charged. Menzel depicted on canvas the image of German society united in terms of the pursuit of practical interests which also inspired Helmholtz and other scientists such as Emil du Bois- Reymond, Carl Ludwig and Werner Siemens. Dr. Lenoir's interests go beyond the themes of realism to the techniques of realist representation. For it is the theory of representation that links realism in painting to realist theories of vision and knowledge. The work of the realist painters was a resource for Helmholtz. Determining how painters succeed in creating the illusion of reality was one important source for determining the rules and strategies the mind uses in constructing visual images. The view of realist painters that a realist representation "works" not because it is a copy of reality but because it is a guide to practical action paralleled Helmholtz's sign theory, the centerpiece of both his constructivist approach to visual perception and his empiricist epistemology. The aim of this study is to show that painters and physiologists participated in forming a common discourse through arriving at the same solutions to the problem of constructing realistic representations of the world. Realism in painting and realism in optics were simultaneous solutions in different domains for remaking the world. Linked to one another through their related concerns with vision, the common modes of representation gave rise to a structure of realistic discourse supported by language, images and ways of knowing, the basis of a stable life-world.
