Response to David R. Topper

co~IMENTARIES Readers' comments offering substantial theoretical and practical contributions to issues that have been raised in textspublished in Leonardo are welcomed. The Editors reserve the right to edit and shorten letters. Lettersshould be written in English and sent to the Main Editorial Office. RESPONSE TO DAVID R. TOPPER David R. Topper [1] has referred to an exchange between Linda Henderson and myselfin thisjournal [2], asserting in an attempt to support Henderson's position that the epistemologically bankrupt concept of Zeitgeist was central to this exchange . As Topper notes very aptly, my analysis in the present article begs the question regarding Zeitgeist: when Henderson applied the Zeitgeist label to me, she introduced a red herring [3]. The true issue at hand was the distinction between stating "Painter A read book B, therefore painted painting C", and "Painter A read book B, and subsequently painted painting C". The notion of Zeitgeist was introduced by Henderson, not by me, but in a manner so vague that it would encompass anyone who would disagree with the former statement. Henderson might equally aptly have e 19911SAST Pergamon Press pic.Printed inGreat Britain, 0024-094X/91 53.00+0.00 called me an alchemist or an astrologer , and it is pointless to discuss here either astrology, alchemy or Zeitgeist, all of which have proven epistemologically bankrupt. I stated that the sigmoid/feedback model provides an alternativeto the Zeitgeist model, which is the very opposite of an attempt to explain that model. Topper asserts that the feedback model, in predicting a leveling off, does not account for a disappearance. The works of a past period do not, however, disappear. A movement subsides when no new works are created. We consider the romantic movement long past by the 1930s, in spite of the fact that Rachmaninoff's Paganini Variations ,dating from 1934, are squarely in the romantic tradition. Romanticism had by then virtually subsided: very few romantic compositions were being produced. Conversely, Ludwig Tieck and, to some extent, Sir Walter Scott, predated high romanticism: they belong to the initial slow-growth part of the sigmoid curve, when few, though significant, trail-blazing romantic works were produced, and the Enlightenment and rationalism held sway.The heyday of any 'period' lies in the fast-growth central portion of the sigmoid curve, flanked by the initial slow growth, when little is as yet produced, and the saturation, when little is produced any longer. References 1. David R. Topper, "On a Ghost of Historiography Past", Leonardo 21, No.1, 76-78 (1988). 2. Linda Dalrymple Henderson, "On Artists, Scientists and Historians: A Response to Arthur Loeb" and "Reply by Arthur Loeb", Leonardo 19 No.2, 153-156 (1986). 3. "[Loeb's] view ofhistory as a series of correlations in art and science suggests the preoccupation with Zeitgeist prevalent in early twentiethcentury art history"; Henderson [2] p. 153. ARTHUR L LoEB Department ofVisual and Environmental Studies Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Harvard University Cambridge, MA02138 U.S.A. LEONARDO, Vol. 24, No.5, p. 635, 1991 635 ...