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Related to the lack of consideration for intra- generational or horizontal relationships is a presumption that the past is a parent.  Medieval mother confronts the scientific age father.  The neglect of theology leads Bordo to favour epistemic breaks over continuities.  Even a strong adherence to a narrative of rupture does not preclude some problems in periodization.  For example, the medieval period itself can be the point at which separation anxiety arises.  This is a feasible scenario if, forgetting about charitable care of thy neighbour's body, Christian mortification of the flesh is compared to a previous pagan era's putative celebration of the body and of nature.

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In the familial drama approach to history, any event can be interpreted as result or as motive.  Not all emplotment is caricature.  For example, the rise of the scientific method can be read within the context of a reaction to the wars of religion (Toulmin).  The entertaining of counter arguments and alternative narratives is facilitated if historical periods are not personified as parents.

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Despite a tendency to homogenize historical periods, Bordo is not a total zeitgeist enthusiast.  An inkling of the concept of hegemony appears in her discourse when her psychocultural account grafts developments in the visual arts onto changes in the conception of space.  The evidence may point to another story.  Bordo claims

it is only after the conventionalization of linear perspective in art ­­ and, according to Karsten Harries and others, largely as a result of its influence ­­ that the homogeneous, infinite space "implied" in the perspective painting becomes the "official" space of the culture. (Bordo 68)

In the note to this section of Flight to Objectivity, the "others" represent only one other source (n5).  Furthermore, in the article cited by Bordo, Harries suggests Rhenish mysticism and hermetic tradition as other possible factors (Harries 31 n. 1) and announces a forthcoming treatment of these in a study on Nicolaus Cusanus.  In this later article ignored by Bordo his position is clear:

It would be misleading to place too much weight on this reflection, which leads from a consideration of perspective to the infinity of the cosmos. (Harries 1975, 7)

Harries unlike Bordo discusses the matter in terms of correlation rather than causation:

Historically and conceptually central perspective, which was given its theoretical foundation by Brunelleschi and Alberti, and the objective space of the new science are closely related forms of description. (Harries 1975, 7)

"Closely related forms" of description suggests a complex genealogy.  Other possible influences, such as the Kabbalah, on the development of the idea of infinite space are traced by Max Jammer (n6)  whose complementary study seems unknown to Harries at the time of the appearance of these articles.

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For Harries art is only one locus, one expression, for "the rising awareness of and interest in the phenomenon of perspective [...] that goes hand in hand with the emergence of the objective conception of space which is presupposed by the new science" (Harries 1973, 30).  The wide currency gained by speculations on the nature of perspective is adduced by a circa 1530 Nuremburg woodcut which indicates that the "sixteenth century was ready for the discoveries of Tycho Brahe and Galileo" (31).  Harries describes the figure in the illustration as "breaking out of the shell of the cosmos" (31).  Bordo no doubt was seized by his ekphrasis.

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The evidence offered can alternatively be taken to illustrate the question of Archytas who asked whether it would be possible at the end of the world to stretch out one's hand or not.  This ancient philosopher's challenge to the Aristotelian cosmology is preserved in a commentary on the Physics by Simplicius.  Reservations about circulation of early manuscripts and of thirteenth century Latin translations notwithstanding, the commentary became, just prior to the period in question, widely current.  In 1526, four years before the date attributed to the Nuremburg woodcut, is published by the Aldine press in Venice an edition of Simplicius.  Four years is enough time for story or book to cover the distance, an engraver to work, proofs be pulled, yet not too much time to elapse before discounting any possible direct connection or influence.  However, the common Renaissance practice of using the same illustration for different texts mitigates against conclusive interpretations. 

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Nonetheless, the printing press does play a role in the rise of ideas about infinite space as much as it does in the circulation and production of any intellectual property.  It is not however a necessary cause except perhaps in a tale of detachment. And so Bordo claims:

the ability to "discover reality" in the perspective painting requires visual skills ­­ the ability to adopt a detached point of view and to scan a static frame ­­ that are developed, McLuhan argues, only through experience at silent, private reading of the printed page. (Bordo 66)

One would have thought that the experience of trying to draw would teach one about how to see.  Bordo uncritically adopts McLuhan's assumption of universal literacy and thus disregards collective viewing accompanied by oral commentary as a means of passing on the visual skills necessary for the appreciation of perspectival painting.  McLuhan's eye-ear dichotomy serves to authorize not only Bordo's spacial categorization of cognitive activity into private detached and participatory public but also her privileging of participation over detachment (n7). 

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Regardless of the validity of the medium/message collapse, participation in its various guises (n8) does not curry full favour with all of Bordo's sources.  Enumerating several writers, she enlists their authority to claim that "The subject/object distinction has, at the very least, hardened over time" (Bordo 48).  One of her sources patently says the opposite.  Owen Barfield credits modern physical science and philosophy since Kant for recognizing participation of the human mind in the creation or evocation of the phenomena of the familiar world (Barfield 12).

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She quotes from Morris Berman who describing a break in ancient Greek epistemology summarizes Eric Havelock's work (Bordo 48; Berman 71).  She does not apply herself to Havelock's work directly.  She does not recognize that the ethics of instrumentality are no purer in cultures governed by participation.  Havelock writes: "To control the collective memory of society he [the reciter] had to establish control over the personal memories of individual human beings" (Havelock 145).  To this effect, Havelock makes note of Marcel Jousse's description of verbomoteurs, the inhabitants of oral cultures, as mnemotechnicians.  As evidenced by Havelock's and Jousse's instrumental vocabulary, technocratic motives are observer-dependent.  Equally so are observations on contact with a maternal realm.  Approached from the pole of performance, participatory cultures are far from bonding with the mother.  Participatory cultures have their own technologies.

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