Josep Simon

Visual representations in science.

5 For historiographical reviews, see Jordanova, L. (1990) Medicine and Visual Culture, Social History of Medicine 3, 89–99; Pang, A. S.-K. (1997) Visual Representation and Post-constructivist History of Science, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 27, 139–171; Elkins, J. (1999) Art History and Images that are not Art. In The Domain of Images, pp. 3–12, Cornell University Press; Baldasso, R. (2006) The Role of Visual Representation in the Scientific Revolution: A Historiographic Inquiry, Centaurus 48, 69–88; Burri, R.V. and Dumit, J. (2007) Social Studies of Scientific Imaging and Visualization. In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (Hackett, E., Amsterdamska, O., Lynch, M., and Wajcman, J., eds.), pp. 297–317, The MIT Press; Nikolow, S. and Bluma, L. (2008) Science Images between Scientific Fields and the Public Sphere. An Historiographical Survey. In Science Images and Popular Images of Science (Hü ppauf, B. and Weingart, P., eds.), pp. 33–51, Routledge; Dupré, S. (2010) Art History, History of Science, and Visual Experience, Isis 101, 618–622. A selection of major general studies produced in the last two decades includes: Lynch, M. and Woolgar, S. (1990) Representation in Scientific Practice, MIT Press; Lynch, M. (1991) Science in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: Moral And Epistemic Relations Between Diagrams and Photographs, Biology and philosophy 6, 205–226; Ferguson, E.S. (1992) Engineering and the Mind’s Eye, MIT Press; Mazzolini, R., ed. (1993) Non-Verbal Communication in Science prior to 1900, Olschki; Cartwright, L. (1995) Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture, University of Minnesota Press; Baigrie, B.S. (1996) Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science, Toronto University Press; Cartwright, L., Treichler, P. and Penley, C., eds (1998) The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender and Science, New York University Press; Jones, C.A. and Galison, P. (1998) Picturing Science, Producing Art, Routledge; Gooding, D.C. We live in a world of images. Yet, we are poorly trained to deal with them. The study of the visual has traditionally been confined to art education. However, the world of images is much wider than what the artistic canon considers as its own. Decades ago, historian and art critic James Elkins made a call for a new history of art which would expand its iconographic repertoire, since – he stressed – the art canon addresses in fact a very small selection of all images. Elkins emphasized the interest in focusing on those images whose major aim is considered to be conveying information, in particular, those in the domain of science, technology and medicine. The study of visual representation in science had remarkable contributions long ago, especially in connection with the European Renaissance. It seemed particularly relevant for this cultural context, in which the sciences and the arts were hardly demarcated or different. The study of early modern science and art has produced works that are classics, such as those by Martin Kemp on ‘the science of art’ and Samuel Edgerton on the place of linear perspective in the rise of modern science. There were also early attempts to bring the study of visual representation to the centre in history of science, such as Martin Rudwick’s groundbreaking paper on the role of visual language in the making of geology as a discipline. If the study of the visual has not become mainstream in history of science, it has attained nevertheless a certain level of popularity in the works of scholars such as Ludmilla Jordanova and Patricia Fara (with their focus on portraits) and in wide-ranging epistemological histories such as Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s Objectivity. However, in the last three decades a large amount of literature has been produced which deals with visual representations as major tools in scientific practice itself. This body of scholarship is characterized by its diversity, stemming from sociological, philosophical and historical