Blumenberg, Justi, Wind, Gundolf, Wölfflin, Foucault, Kantorowicz, Schmitt, Malraux, Bourdieu, Seldmayr, Gombrich, Arnheim, Barthes, Deleuze, Facillon, Feyerabend, Warburg: In seventeen portraits, significant visual science theories and previously unknown image practices of important researchers and intellectuals of the 20th century are presented. At the center of each portrait is the relationship between seeing and thinking, between image use and theory formation, as well as the methodological responses to the stimuli and dangers of the visual. Images, as the common focus of all representations, are not primarily aesthetic objects. Rather, they should be understood in their own energies, which stimulate a theory formation called visual science. The selection offers a compelling insight into the intellectual history of this discipline in the 20th century.