The “great idea” is to study morphological thought showing its efficiency not only to better understand what is the act of making science; but also to test morphology’s visual matrix as the link (a missing link) between art and science. In short, in the beginning of the project we will start approaching morphology as “ thought” (not a system but a method) and gradually, by identifying its scientific and artistic affinities, morphology will irradiate as a conceptual constellation. The project, with its tasks and activities, maps the development and metamorphosis of the morphological thought into this conceptual constellation.

Our point of view is the one that defines morphological thought itself: to describe forms as formation and transformation. In order to do this methodically, we consider that epistemologically we have two main guidelines: “nature and art” and “art and science”. Our tasks follow these two main guidelines providing an opportunity to further develop the themes of perception, language and landscape subordinated to “nature and art”; and architecture, maps, history and collection taking as reference “art and science”. This science concept is already an irradiation of the project where we will consider history, art history, anthropology, and biology.

1) To present an approach on perception as essential to assert it as an epistemological model enabling a clearer understanding of the bond between art and science;
2) to strengthen the concept of nature, linking it to landscape, which has been set aside both in science and in art criticism (but not by artists themselves);
3) to provide a full account on how a city’s growth is similar to a plant’s growth taking Goethe’s original morphology as main reference (attesting consequences to architecture, urbanism and mapmaking);
4) to promote a self-evaluation by history and natural sciences based on aesthetic categories.

The team expects to present as results that:
1) art is a visual matrix essential to science;
2) science needs to reconsider its ways of dealing with nature;
3) urban landscape development needs to consider both science and man in the sense that a city’s growth is an expression of the evolution of human species (ecology);
4) the activity of describing (catalog, classify) is an opportunity that science has to rethink its own essence, assuming its perceptive/ visual matrix as originary;
5) language constantly looks for a balance between science and art, as Goethe stated they form a “Korrelat”, and it is simultaneously what allows both to constantly take new forms.

The final result of the project is the edition of a book where significant Seminar sessions and conference presentations will be published so academics doing research on the topic of morphology can access to state of the art scholars thinking.