VisualPhilosophy

Quora Answer : Can philosophy exist without words? For example, can you visualize philosophy?

Jan 16, 2018

I think it's a fascinating and wonderful challenge.

I once dreamed of creating a book of paintings called "Philosophical Illustrations".

The project foundered because I couldn't actually think how to do it.

I'd love to see it tried.

Visual languages are pretty powerful. Many visual traditions have rich symbolisms, that make them almost a pictographic. Many people in the tradition of mediaeval Christian art would know what a picture of a dove or a pelican meant, for example. Or consider all the symbolism in a Bruegel painting.

However, such languages might be lacking in certain logical operations that I think are pretty crucial to philosophy. For example, you'd need a way to represent negation. And perhaps a "therefore" or "entails" type operation. Without that, it's hard to see how you could do much philosophy.

Philosophy, being linguistic, relies on a certain ordering or narrative of ideas. Again, pictures tend to be simultaneous. Yes, there are philosophers who worked with disconnected aphorisms or small fragments, allowing the reader to navigate them at will. But pictures are generally "in parallel" rather than sequential. This might be a great challenge for both creators and readers of a visual philosophy. Or may be mentally freeing.

I have another ongoing project to try to produce a visual / gestural programming language. Getting something like that might be a step along the way to a visual language that could handle full philosophy.