Valleriani M., Giannini G., Giannetto E. (eds.) Scientific Visual Representations in History

Cham: Springer, 2023. — 368 p. — ISBN 9783031113161, 3031113160.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.Editors and Contributors
Transmission
The Art of Learning: Illustrated Lecture Notebooks at the Old University of Louvain
The Tradition of Illustrated Notebooks
Learning Mechanisms
Emblematic Language: Recuperation and Adaptation
Affixiones, Thesis Prints, and Emblem Books: The Jesuit Influence
Framing Device, Representation of Science, and Ars MemorativaThe Illustrated Printed Page as a Tool for Thinking and for Transmitting Knowledge The Case of the Theoricae PlanetarumFrom the Theorica Vetus to Peuerbach’s Theoricae Novae
The Role of Illustration in the Rivalry Between the Old and New Theories
Theorica: The Meaning of a Term
The “Theoricae” as “Pictures” of Heavens: The Elusive Relationship between Geometrical Abstraction, Modelization, and Concrete Reality
The Images as Pedagogical Summaries and Glossaries of Technical Terms
The Theoricae as InstrumentsMicroscopy and Natural Philosophy: Robert Hooke, His Micrographia, and the Early Royal Society
Hooke and the Royal Society
The Micrographia Project
Microscopy and Apologetics
Interpreting Microscopical Images
The Graphic Transposition of the “True Form” and Its Functions
Microscopy and Natural PhilosophyVision on Vision: Defining Similarities Among Early Modern Illustrations on CosmologyThe Role of a Scientific Illustration
Three Historically Meaningful Forms of Similarity Among Early Modern Scientific Illustrations
Statistics and Tools
Clustering of Philological Groups
Methods to Cluster
Results
Evaluation
Diffusion, Communities, and OutlookTransformation
Theorizing Technology: Theōria, Diagram, and Artifact in Hero of Alexandria
Introduction: Theorizing Hero
Ways of Seeing in Early Greek Science
Theorem and Diagram in Hero
Learning to See in Hero’s World
Seeing Invisible Things: The PneumaticaInternal and External Images: Sixteenth-Century Herbals and the Vis ImaginativaDescriptio versus depictio
Ante oculos ponere
Living Images
Pictures as a Basis of Discussion
The Artist as Naturalist
Visual Didactics
Artistic libido and Scientific Truth
Deceitful ColorsCapturing, Modeling, Overseeing, and Making Credible: The Functions of Vision and Visual Material at the Accademia del Cimento
An Institutional Context: The Florentine Accademia del Cimento (–)
The Function of Visual Material in the Only Work Published by the Cimento: The Saggi di Naturali Esperienze ()
Other Sources: The Unpublished Documents
The Experiments on the Nature of Heat and Cold
Leopoldo’s Trial: Explaining Nature’s Mechanisms by Making Them Visible
The Use of Tables: Exploring by Creating a Synthetic Image of the Data
Exploring Physical Effects Through Geometrical Demonstrations
The Publication of the Heated Ring Experiment
Conclusive RemarksThe Transformations of Physico-mathematical Visual Thinking: From Descartes to Quantum Physics
Introduction: Visual Thinking
Scientific Visual Thinking, Descartes, and Modern Science
From Descartes to Relativity and Quantum PhysicsExploration
Science, Photography, and Objectivity? Exploring Nineteenth-Century Visual Cultures through the HMS Challenger Expedition (1872–1876)
A Short History of the Challenger Expedition, Photography, and Their Historiographies
History and Historiography of the Challenger Expedition
Visual Culture on the Challenger Expedition
Objectivity? The Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Photography and Science
Historiographical Divergence and Complexity
Complexity: The Challenger’s Photographic Practices and Collections
Ideal Characters? The Several Photographers of the Challenger Expedition
The Challenger’s Diverse Photographic Methods
The Multiple Mediators and Sources of the Challenger Photographs
Art or Science? Placing the Challenger Photographs within Longer Aesthetic Traditions
Aesthetic Selectivity and Naturalistic Visual Ordering
The Depiction of Character, Romanticism, and Adventure in Artistic Traditions
Aesthetics of Empire
Scientific Circulation and Use: Photographs in the Official Report of Scientific Results
Photographic Plates and Woodcut Reproductions
Maintenance of Drawing Practices for Illustrating Scientific Specimens
Depicting Color
The (In)accessibility of Landscapes
The Reproduction and Circulation of the Challenger Photographs within Wider Scientific Circles
Speedy Capture and Replication
Saving for Later: Photographs as Templates for Drawing and Painting
Photography as a Printing-Press-in-the-Field
Personal Circulation and Use of the Challenger Photographs
Personal Albums and Journals
Complex Interplays: The Challenger, Science, and Society
Photography as a Printing Press for Public Communication
Use in Popular Accounts of the Challenger Expedition
Adding Popular Appeal to the Official Narrative
The Photographs as Commodities
Subjective Interpretations: The Commodified Photographs Return to Science and the Public
Public Communication of Scientific Racism
Flexibility: Challenger Photographs, Science, and Society in the Nineteenth CenturyImages, Data-Visualization and the Narratives They Create: The Narrative Function of Images in Fostering MRI InnovationThe Narrative Function of Images and Data-Visualization in the Innovation Trajectory of MRI Development
The Invention and Development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
The Patient as a Driving Force in the Aberdonian Development of MRI
Scaling Up: From the Hand-Painted Image of a Dead Mouse to a Full-Body MRI ScanArguing from Appearance: The Numerical Reconstruction of Galactic Tails and Bridges
Images of Very Large (But Very Distant) Objects
Images of Model Encounters
The Image and the ArgumentEthnoscience and Spatial Representations of Changing Environments
Layout
Some Questions About Cartography
Tides and Wildfires Mapping Problems
Tides
Fires
Space and Consciousness
Landscape Dreaming
Emptiness and Control—You Can’t Map a Story
Mapping Knowledge(s)
On the (Visual) Superposition of Epistemologies
Arts in Vision