This book explores continuity and ruptures in the historical use of visual representations in science and related disciplines such as art history and anthropology. The book also considers more recent developments that attest to the unprecedented importance of scientific visualizations, such as video recordings, animations, simulations, graphs, and enhanced realities. The volume collects historical reflections concerned with the use of visual material, visualization, and vision in science from a historical perspective, ranging across multiple cultures from antiquity until present day.
The focus is on visual representations such as drawings, prints, tables, mathematical symbols, photos, data visualizations, mapping processes, and (on a meta-level) visualizations of data extracted from historical sources to visually support the historical research itself. Continuity and ruptures between the past and present use of visual material are presented against the backdrop of the epistemic functions of visual material in science. The function of visual material is defined according to three major epistemic categories: exploration, transformation, and transmission of knowledge.
Author(s): Matteo Valleriani, Giulia Giannini, Enrico Giannetto
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 367
City: Cham
Preface
Acknowledgments
Contents
Editors and Contributors
Part I Transmission
1 The Art of Learning: Illustrated Lecture Notebooks at the Old University of Louvain
1.1 The Tradition of Illustrated Notebooks
1.2 Learning Mechanisms
1.3 Emblematic Language: Recuperation and Adaptation
1.4 Affixiones, Thesis Prints, and Emblem Books: The Jesuit Influence
1.5 Framing Device, Representation of Science, and Ars Memorativa
1.6 Conclusion
References
2 The Illustrated Printed Page as a Tool for Thinking and for Transmitting Knowledge. The Case of the Theoricae Planetarum
2.1 Introduction
2.2 From the Theorica Vetus to Peuerbach’s Theoricae Novae
2.3 The Role of Illustration in the Rivalry Between the Old and New Theories
2.4 Theorica: The Meaning of a Term
2.5 The “Theoricae” as “Pictures” of Heavens: The Elusive Relationship between Geometrical Abstraction, Modelization, and Concrete Reality
2.6 The Images as Pedagogical Summaries and Glossaries of Technical Terms
2.7 The Theoricae as Instruments
2.8 Conclusion
References
3 Microscopy and Natural Philosophy: Robert Hooke, His Micrographia, and the Early Royal Society
3.1 Hooke and the Royal Society
3.2 The Micrographia Project
3.3 Microscopy and Apologetics
3.4 Interpreting Microscopical Images
3.5 The Graphic Transposition of the “True Form” and Its Functions
3.6 Microscopy and Natural Philosophy
3.7 Conclusion
References
4 Vision on Vision: Defining Similarities Among Early Modern Illustrations on Cosmology
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The Role of a Scientific Illustration
4.3 Three Historically Meaningful Forms of Similarity Among Early Modern Scientific Illustrations
4.4 Statistics and Tools
4.5 Clustering of Philological Groups
4.5.1 Methods to Cluster
4.5.2 Results
4.5.3 Evaluation
4.6 Diffusion, Communities, and Outlook
References
Part II Transformation
5 Theorizing Technology: Theōria, Diagram, and Artifact in Hero of Alexandria
5.1 Introduction: Theorizing Hero
5.2 Ways of Seeing in Early Greek Science
5.3 Theorem and Diagram in Hero
5.4 Learning to See in Hero’s World
5.5 Seeing Invisible Things: The Pneumatica
5.6 Conclusion
References
6 Internal and External Images: Sixteenth-Century Herbals and the Vis Imaginativa
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Descriptio versus depictio
6.3 Ante oculos ponere
6.4 Living Images
6.5 Pictures as a Basis of Discussion
6.6 The Artist as Naturalist
6.7 Visual Didactics
6.8 Artistic libido and Scientific Truth
6.9 Deceitful Colors
References
7 Capturing, Modeling, Overseeing, and Making Credible: The Functions of Vision and Visual Material at the Accademia del Cimento
7.1 An Institutional Context: The Florentine Accademia del Cimento (1657–1667)
7.2 The Function of Visual Material in the Only Work Published by the Cimento: The Saggi di Naturali Esperienze (1667)
7.3 Other Sources: The Unpublished Documents
7.4 The Experiments on the Nature of Heat and Cold
7.4.1 Leopoldo’s Trial: Explaining Nature’s Mechanisms by Making Them Visible
7.4.2 The Use of Tables: Exploring by Creating a Synthetic Image of the Data
7.4.3 Exploring Physical Effects Through Geometrical Demonstrations
7.4.4 The Publication of the Heated Ring Experiment
7.5 Conclusive Remarks
References
8 The Transformations of Physico-mathematical Visual Thinking: From Descartes to Quantum Physics
8.1 Introduction: Visual Thinking
8.2 Scientific Visual Thinking, Descartes, and Modern Science
8.3 From Descartes to Relativity and Quantum Physics
References
Part III Exploration
9 Science, Photography, and Objectivity? Exploring Nineteenth-Century Visual Cultures through the HMS Challenger Expedition (1872–1876)
9.1 A Short History of the Challenger Expedition, Photography, and Their Historiographies
9.1.1 History and Historiography of the Challenger Expedition
9.1.2 Visual Culture on the Challenger Expedition
9.1.3 Objectivity? The Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Photography and Science
9.1.4 Historiographical Divergence and Complexity
9.2 Complexity: The Challenger’s Photographic Practices and Collections
9.2.1 Ideal Characters? The Several Photographers of the Challenger Expedition
9.2.2 The Challenger’s Diverse Photographic Methods
9.2.3 The Multiple Mediators and Sources of the Challenger Photographs
9.3 Art or Science? Placing the Challenger Photographs within Longer Aesthetic Traditions
9.3.1 Aesthetic Selectivity and Naturalistic Visual Ordering
9.3.2 The Depiction of Character, Romanticism, and Adventure in Artistic Traditions
9.3.3 Aesthetics of Empire
9.4 Scientific Circulation and Use: Photographs in the Official Report of Scientific Results
9.4.1 Photographic Plates and Woodcut Reproductions
9.4.2 Maintenance of Drawing Practices for Illustrating Scientific Specimens
9.4.3 Depicting Color
9.4.4 The (In)accessibility of Landscapes
9.5 The Reproduction and Circulation of the Challenger Photographs within Wider Scientific Circles
9.5.1 Speedy Capture and Replication
9.5.2 Saving for Later: Photographs as Templates for Drawing and Painting
9.5.3 Photography as a Printing-Press-in-the-Field
9.6 Personal Circulation and Use of the Challenger Photographs
9.6.1 Personal Albums and Journals
9.7 Complex Interplays: The Challenger, Science, and Society
9.7.1 Photography as a Printing Press for Public Communication
9.7.2 Use in Popular Accounts of the Challenger Expedition
9.7.3 Adding Popular Appeal to the Official Narrative
9.7.4 The Photographs as Commodities
9.7.5 Subjective Interpretations: The Commodified Photographs Return to Science and the Public
9.7.6 Public Communication of Scientific Racism
9.8 Flexibility: Challenger Photographs, Science, and Society in the Nineteenth Century
References
10 Images, Data-Visualization and the Narratives They Create: The Narrative Function of Images in Fostering MRI Innovation
10.1 Introduction
10.2 The Narrative Function of Images and Data-Visualization in the Innovation Trajectory of MRI Development
10.3 The Invention and Development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
10.4 The Patient as a Driving Force in the Aberdonian Development of MRI
10.5 Scaling Up: From the Hand-Painted Image of a Dead Mouse to a Full-Body MRI Scan
10.6 Conclusion
References
11 Arguing from Appearance: The Numerical Reconstruction of Galactic Tails and Bridges
11.1 Images of Very Large (But Very Distant) Objects
11.2 Images of Model Encounters
11.3 The Image and the Argument
References
12 Ethnoscience and Spatial Representations of Changing Environments
12.1 Layout
12.2 Some Questions About Cartography
12.3 Tides and Wildfires. Mapping Problems
12.3.1 Tides
12.3.2 Fires
12.4 Space and Consciousness
12.5 Landscape Dreaming
12.6 Emptiness and Control—You Can’t Map a Story
12.7 Mapping Knowledge(s)
12.8 On the (Visual) Superposition of Epistemologies
12.9 Arts in Vision
References
Index
