Brad Eric Hollister - A Concise Introduction to Scientific Visualization: Past, Present, and Future

Main Image/Drawing:

The water mechanism/Leonardo Da Vinci: wowinside/ stock.adobe.com

Image Bar from left to right:

Simian immunodeficiency virus, 3D model. Donald Bliss (Nlm), Sriram Subramaniam/National Cancer Institute/Science Photo Library

RBC, SEM: DENNIS KUNKEL MICROSCOPY/Science Photo Library

Rayleigh Bernard Convection simulation: (CC BY-SA 3.0): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RayleighBernardConvection.png / http://wiki.palabos.org/community:gallery:rb_3d /Author: LBMethod.org/jonas

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Much of our cortex is dedicated to processing visual information, and it imposes upon mental models a physical intuition. While there are exceptions in modern science when our visual nature leads to artifact, for the vast number of problems our ability to visualize the natural world has elevated human understanding to its current level. Using imagery, we are able to see the unseeable, and thus further knowledge.

This treatise will outline scientific visualization. While there is an established related field of information visualization, we mostly address visualization for scientific purposes. Despite modern buzzwords like data science and computer graphics in popular media, the general public (and even some academics) remain unfamiliar with scientific visualization. But, anyone capable of mental pictures, often instinctively uses visualization to solve problems they encounter. If their solutions model the natural world, or produce useful abstractions from it, then this type of problem-solving is considered scientific visualization.

Scientific visualization is not an isolated area of research. While today, visualization is primarily computer-generated, visualization in science stretches back to a time well before computers! That said, we do not consider problems in the broader discipline of visualization that are not scientific. Nor do we consider areas of study such as realism in art. When illustration relates to scientific visualization, it is discussed to convey context.

The first two chapters cover the role of geometry in natural science and scientific visualization. A link is drawn between Euclid and the work of da Vinci (and others) of the Renaissance period. Then, the kinematics of celestial motion is presented in connection with later methods for shape and curvature description. Starting with chapter three, we describe Faradays insight into invisible electromagnetic fields. Faraday was known to have had his great revelation through visualization of the phenomena. As another case study, Lawrence Bragg, a scientist known to possess an early aptitude for spatial problems, contributed to molecular visualization and the first direct experimental structural determination of matter. Computers still had not been invented yet during this era of scientific visualization, but that was soon to change. In the last two chapters, modern scientific visualization starts to take form. We see how early computer use was directed exclusively at problems of science. However, not until the latter part of the twentieth century, did the computer become sophisticated enough to draw interactive imagery.

From the vantage point of modern culture and technology, it is difficult for us to directly relate to the perspective and actions afforded those of considerably early times. It was generally the case that most visual artifacts were produced as records of the world, and less of mental imagery and ruminations on reality .

Unless, however, we consider prehistoric art. Then, by discrepancies between prehistoric drawings juxtaposed with rational modern representation ( perspective , proportion, etc.), we begin to see what is considered deficiencies in our ancestors own internal view and todays conceptualization of the external world. Analyzing these discrepancies lead us to an estimation of what was visualized (the products of earlier minds) in the prehistoric period.

Another running theme of the prehistoric period is the lack of delineation and intent between the various forms of visual invention. As there was no science , one can not interpret this periods achievements as directly in service of