Peter Weingart - Science Images and Popular Images of the Sciences

1. Science and the Media
Alternative Routes in Scientific
Communication
Massimiano Bucchi

2. Animals, Disease and Human Society
Human-Animal Relations and the Rise of
Veterinary Medicine
Joanna Swabe

3. Transnational Environmental Policy
The Ozone Layer
Reiner Grundmann

5. Technoculture and Critical Theory
In the Service of the Machine?
Simon Cooper

6. Biomedicine as Culture
Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific
Knowledge, and New Modes of Life
Edited by Regula Valrie Burri and
Joseph Dumit

7. Journalism, Science and Society
Science Communication between News
and Public Relations
Edited by Martin W. Bauer and
Massimiano Bucchi

Most essays of this collection are revised papers presented at the conference Images of the Sciences and Scientists in Visual Media held at Deutsches Haus at New York University in November 2003. We gratefully acknowledge financial support for the publication by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (New York), the Institute of Science and Technology Studies (IWT), Bielefeld University, and the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung, Munich.

2008 by Bernd Hppauf and Peter Weingart

Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

First issued in paperback 2011

Except as permitted under U. S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Science images and popular images of the sciences / edited by Bernd Hppauf and,
Peter Weingart.

p. cm. -- (Routledge studies in science, technology and society ; 8)

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-38381-3 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Science--Study and teaching--Audio-visual aids. 2. Science fiction
films--History and criticism. 3. Motion pictures in science. 4. Visual communication. I. Hppauf, Bernd-Rdiger. II. Weingart, Peter.

Q190.S37 2007

303.483--dc22 2007011628

ISBN13: 978-0-415-38381-3 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-51240-4 (pbk)

interview.

, 1998, digital-video installation, video still; ultrasound picture.

, 1998, digital-video installation, video still; CAT scan.

Images in science, or science images, as we prefer to call them, have been very influential in the history of the modern sciences. Yet, until recently, very little was known about them. The conditions of their emergence, genesis, and continued production, their fashions, impact on research, philosophy, and the general perception of nature had attracted surprisingly little interest (surveys of recent literature are Daum 1998; Kretschmann 2003; Oels 2005). This indifference was often associated with contempt for the visual in relation to abstract discourse. In recent years, this has changed. There is a new uncertainty about the relation between images and knowledge brought about by new theories of the sciences as well as a new type of images. The computer generated digital images have led to an intensive debate about the relationship between images and the sciences. The end of an epoch of illustrations in the sciences is undoubtedly approaching. Iconoclashes were always not only destructive but also linked to moves toward the construction of new images and techniques of representation (for a detailed and instructive illustration of the ambivalence of iconoclasm see Latour and Weibel 2002). More often than not, the tearing apart of images was implicated in a discarding of systems of belief and knowledge and was followed by enthroning new ideals, theories, and deities. The sciences were no exception and the current changes of science images seem closely related to a change of the image of science.

At the current turning point, the status of images is being radically redefined and the relationship between images and science has become an object of intensive research. Neglect has given way to a new assessment of the importance of the visual for the intrinsic processes of the production of knowledge and, as a result, of the position of the sciences in the public mind. Not only the history and sociology of science and science studies have taken an interest in these issues but art history and cultural studies have also discovered images in the sciences as an object of study. The proposition of a new discipline named image theory concerned with the science of images (Mitchell in this volume) was initiated, it can be assumed, by new developments in the production of science images that inspired attempts to make them comprehensible in terms of a general theory of the visible. The question of what we do when we see an image is being reconstituted as a result of an extension of the field of pictures by including the new electronically generated images. The pioneering work by Aby Warburg and art historians associated with his multi-disciplinary approach to images as icons had prepared a field of research that is only loosely connected with art history and all but neglected by the sciences. The extension of a theory of pictures as art makes it possible to attribute to images in the sciences a status of their own, independent of their artistic value, and develop an iconology directed at symbols by resemblance such as pictures, images, sketches, models, diagrams, graphs, and also linguistic images such as metaphors and allegories. Intensive research has made the common assumption untenable that images in the sciences are produced and communicated by and among scientists for ancillary purposes such as mere illustration or demonstrations for teaching. Visualization has been demonstrated to be an integral element of the reasoning in the sciences: while it is deeply involved in the abstract process of theory building, it cannot be understood in complete isolation from conventions of seeing developed over centuries in art history. This has implications for the image of the sciences that go far beyond the confines of the sciences.