ABSTRACT
The term hermeneutics has been used to describe the task of understanding and interpreting ideas and texts. Rudolf Arnheim, in his extensive work on visual perception, has shown that the dichotomy between seeing and thinking which runs through much of the Western tradition is a very problematic one. One might add that it is the fundamental activity of the religious imagination as well. Susanne Langer writes, "Images are, therefore, our readiest instruments for abstracting concepts from the tumbling streams of actual impressions". According to Arnheim, the way in which we reach out for and grasp the "object we see, either in our immediate range of perception or through the medium of photography, is dependent upon who we are and what we recognize from past experience". Arnheim writes that the eye and the mind, working together in the process of cognition, cannot simply note down images that are "already there".
