The history of world pictures (Weltbilder) is, above all, the history of their representability.

The concept of a worldview (Weltanschauung) already implies that visibility is a constitutive aspect of our experience of the world. In addition, the concept of a “picture” in the phrase “world picture” signals the unavoidable connection between worldviews and visual media. For this reason, the concept of a “picture of the world” should always refer to concrete visual models.

 The terms “world picture” and “worldview” do not constitute the two poles of an opposition between abstraction and concreteness. To begin with, every worldview necessarily involves pictures; furthermore, world pictures represent the visual condensation of a worldview. Neither aspect precedes the other; instead they are inextricably entwined in a circular process. Two main theses can be derived from this fact: firstly, world pictures are not implementations of antecedent worldviews. Secondly, there are no worldviews without imagery.

The recent surge of interest in forms of visual codification, and the fundamental questions about the possibility, the specific surplus value and, finally, the boundaries of epistemological processes buttressed by pictures has wide-reaching consequences for any interdisciplinary investigation of world pictures. Such a research perspective expressly opposes a one-sided logocentric model of epistemology. Instead, it emphasises the fact that, with the so-called “iconic turn,” the meaning of a critical analysis of visual forms has moved into the centre of cultural studies.

Last but not least, the relevance of the study of images to the “picture of the world” lies in the variety of the visual manifestations produced by a world picture. These range from historical models, such as cosmological world pictures, to the most recent visualisations in the life sciences. This team's research will be concentrated on paradigmatic studies. These will analyse the various manifestations of world pictures as they are conditioned by culture, social environment, and medium.

On principle, investigations of the “world as a picture” include systematic and historical aspects. Our research is focused around four different questions: 

• How can the circular interaction of world pictures and worldviews be analysed by the study of pictures?
  

• What role do concrete visual media play for the function of world pictures in determining action and knowledge?
  

• What rules determine how a specific world picture can become part of a collective visual memory?
  

• How does the emergence of new techniques of producing, distributing, and experiencing pictures affect the modelling of new world pictures? How do these new techniques have a retroactive effect on the experience of world pictures handed down from the past?