Dogmas And History: Italian painting. Italy's wealth during the Middle Ages was derived largely from her trade with the Orient, and in each city leaders competed in externally expressing their power and grandeur. The purchase of works of art was one of their methods, and great opportunities developed for the artists who excelled in reflecting the philosophy, religion, and needs of their particular patrons. Cities vied with each other and all their citizens discussed the relative merits of the masters. The church, too, used the artist to explain its dogmas and history to the people. These developments in different localities are today known as schools of painting. In Italy the principal centers of art were in Florence and Venice, although minor schools existed in all other large cities.
The ingenuity employed in designing experiments to validate or to negate the Law of Effect is amazing. Possibly, if interpreted far beyond the legitimate scope of experimental studies of the learning process, laymen construe them to justify the validity of retaliatory or retributive punishments for human misbehavior. Such dogmas, of course, pervert science and are unjustified.
Pythagorean ethics consisted in ascetic practice. Happiness was the perfection of the soul's virtue, which was a kind of harmony. The process of purification of the soul was accomplished by metempsychosis, the transmigration of the soul (q.v.), a theory imported by Pythagoreans from the Orient and one of their most characteristic dogmas.
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Photography
