The epistemic potential of the line. Lines as instruments for image interpretation in the social sciences.

Abstract

In this article we discuss the line in regard to its principle epistemic potential. Thereby the line turns out as a formal structure decisive for accessing the semantics of two-dimensional presentations and thus also has an important function for any reconstructive methodology of image interpretation. This access via the line, so we argue, is particularly opened by its being the key to the planimetric composition of an image, i.e., to understanding the structure of an image in the plane. In the actual research practice, applying lines is often misled by an objectivist epistemology that is searching for a right or true line or line structure – a thinking this article wants to guard against. In contrast, we support the idea to employ lines as media of knowing in the sense of what since Imdahl is called seeing seeing. Against this backdrop, the genuine logic of images can be conceived of as an image-specific implicit knowledge, in which the line assumes a pivotal function. With our attempt to explicate the line as an element of implicit, daily knowledge, its application in image interpretation can be based, beyond art-historical discourses, within a social sciences methodology, insofar such methodology starts from implicit standards of understanding. Our considerations are highly theoretical at first, but at the end of the article we exemplify them on the basis of a commercial image in order to demonstrate their practical yield.