Studio Sindone
The new website about the Shroud: a matter of reason, not of faith
A MESSAGE IN CODE FOR THE MAN OF THE 21st CENTURY?
by Antonio Bonelli
The conflict between faith and science, and between faith and reason,
is one of the most amazing swindle of human history.
Summary
- The "history" and its limits in the Shroud affair
- What's the response of "science"? - First Part
- What's the response of "science"? - Second Part
- How had that extraordinary image formed?
- The "affair" of the C14 dating
- Who is the man of the Shroud?
- Discussion
What's the response of "science" - Second Part
What does negative mean toward positive? A mere question of photographic terms for both names, they relate only to the phenomenon of light: in a positive, as everyone well knows, the parts exposed to light turn out bright and vice versa, with all the intermediate tones of grey directly proporzional to the amount of light, aside from the distance of its source. It's the kind of vision familiar to all of us, which we find quite normal. Just the opposite is a negative, a representation of the reality that we perceive as absolutely innatural and clearly artificial. In our case, the difference between the actual image of the Shroud and its positive translation is of astonishing effect.
Fig. 3: the Visage in negative
Fig. 4: juxtaposition of Visage in positive,
as it appears on the Shroud,
and Visage in negative
(Source: Stevenson, Habermas)
The discovery of the image negativity - a discovery in the true sense of the word -, lmade the Shroud to become an object of scientific research, right in the end of that very century in which science was spreading its horizons into new fields, toasting its unlimited powers in a joyful atmosphere of optimism. And the renewed interest comes on so sensational and provocative, like a volcano that, no matter if after one or two thousand years of quietness, it's ready to explode without forewarning. But, how can a negative picture exist at least five centuries before negativity had been known through the invention of photography? Furthermore, who could have drawn it in the 14th century, and perhaps much earlier, since still nowadays not a single painting exists with such a feature? But supposed per absurdum that a supreme genius of arts remained surprisingly unknown(10) had been able to, what was his reason for? Fun? And we didn't known nothing about him?
Mister Pia, without even realizing, had started a relentless, heavy fly-wheel in all the branches of knowledge, included - think of it! - numismatics, that is the study of coins. The questions to be answered were basically two, strictly correlated:
how that extraordinary image came into being?
who is he person represented?
Notes
(10) From time to time, some people said that the image impressed is a work of Leonardo da Vinci, and who else? without even thinking that when the Shroud emerged in France in 1353, the poor Leonardo was one century ahead of birth!
