Visual Cultures in Science and Technology: A Comparative History

ISBN-13: 9780198717874 / Angielski / Twarda / 2014 / 512 str.

Klaus Hentschel

Opis

This book offers a broad, comparative survey of a booming field within the history of science: the history, generation, use, and function of images in scientific practice. It explores every aspect of visuality in science, arguing for the concept of visual domains. What makes a good scientific image? What cultural baggage is essential to it? How are imagery and text intertwined?

This book attempts a synthesis. It delves into the rich reservoir of case studies on visual representations in scientific and technological practice that have accumulated over the past couple of decades by historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science. The main aim is thus located on the meta-level. It adopts an integrative view of recurrently noted general features of visual cultures in science and technology, something hitherto unachieved and believed by many to be a mission impossible.

By systematic comparison of numerous case studies, the purview broadens away from myopic microanalysis in search of overriding patterns. The many different disciplines and research areas involved encompass mathematics, technology, natural history, medicine, the geosciences, astronomy, chemistry, and physics. The chosen examples span the period from the Renaissance to the late 20th century. The broad range of visual representations in scientific practice is treated, as well as schooling in pattern recognition, design and implementation of visual devices, and a narrowing in on the special role of illustrators and image specialists.

Recenzje

Visual Cultures in Science and Technology is intended to provide a systematic and integrative account of the formation and development of a plurality of visual cultures throughout the history of Western science, technology, and medicine. At the core of its methodology is an exhaustive — and new — comparative approach based on a large number of case studies covering a period that extends from the early modern era to the present day. The selection and range of examples is indeed phenomenal. And so are the visual materials and bibliography that support the argument.

O autorze

Prior to his current full professorship in the history of science and technology at the University of Stuttgart, Klaus Hentschel was a Lecturer/Researcher at the Universities of Berlin, Göttingen and Berne, a Fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science & Technology at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts 1996/97 and Ernst Cassirer Guest Professor at the University of Hamburg 2003.