Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science

Front Cover
Brian Scott Baigrie
University of Toronto Press, Jan 1, 1996 - Science - 389 pages

The traditional concept of scientific knowledge places a premium on thinking, not visualizing. Scientific illustrations are still generally regarded as devices that serve as heuristic aids when reasoning breaks down. When scientific illustration is not used in this disparaging sense as a linguistic aid, it is most often employed as a metaphor with no special visual content. What distinguishes pictorial devices as resources for doing science, and the special problems that are raised by the mere presence of visual elements in scientific treatises, tends to be overlooked.

The contributors to this volume examine the historical and philosophical issues concerning the role that scientific illustration plays in the creation of scientific knowledge. They regard both text and picture as resources that scientists employ in their practical activities, their value as scientific resources deriving from their ability to convey information.

 

Contents

Some Thoughts on Scientific
3
Vision
40
Descartess Scientific Illustrations and la grande mécanique
86
Illustrating Chemistry
135
Representations of the Natural System in the Nineteenth
164
Depicting the MissingLink
184
Towards an Epistemology of Scientific Illustration
215
Illustration and Inference
250
Visual Models and Scientific Judgment
269
Are Pictures Really Necessary? The Case of Sewall Wrights
303
BIBLIOGRAPHY
339
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
373
Copyright

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Page 346 - AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY : being a preparatory View of the Forces which concur to the Production of Chemical Phenomena. By J. FREDERIC DANIELL, FRS Professor of Chemistry in King's College, London ; and Lecturer on Chemistry and Geology in the Hon. East India Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe ; and Author of Meteorological Essays.

About the author (1996)

Brian S. Baigrie is an associate professor in the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the Universtiy of Toronto.

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