Scientific picture
Scientific images include images that are used in science .
Functions (selection)
Heuristic, epistemic functions
In science, images are used to gain knowledge . Correlations, for example, can be seen and read on diagrams . It was only with the help of a map that Dr. John Snow used a water pump as the cause of a cholera epidemic in London. He marked the deaths of cholera with dots and the water pumps with crosses and visualized a significant accumulation of deaths near the water pump on Broad Street (see illustration).
Visualization function
Many scientific facts are abstract, difficult to imagine or unthinkable. Science uses different approaches to make the invisible visible and to visualize it as a scientific image. She likes to describe something unknown with linguistic images, ie with a metaphor , an analogy or a comparison. The invisible is given the garb of the everyday and known.
Models describe phenomena in a simplified and abstract way and allow statements and predictions to be derived from them. Finally, scientific instruments are visual aids, extensions of the sensory organs, with which data from the smallest to the largest structures can be obtained and evaluated.
For example, the reproduction of the image of a three-dimensional tree in a two-dimensional book falsifies the effects shown, so that it is sometimes difficult to see which aspects should be pointed out. Scientific drawing can solve this problem by presenting the desired views of the objects in such a way that the effects to be demonstrated are emphasized and distracting influences are minimized.
The picture as a substitute
Scientific instrumental images have the function of visual evidence in scientific research. You are required as a deputy to add scientific results to publications (specialist journals, textbooks, internet journals), to reproduce them and to make them accessible to the scientific community. The readers of the trade journals trust the correspondence between image and observation. Photography traditionally has a high level of credibility .
Explanatory function
While images are rarely used in scientific journals, there is a high use of images in teaching and popular science .
Persuasion function
Images also serve to convince the viewer in scientific publications, on posters or in lectures.
Canonical scientific images
Scientific images reproduce the same facts over and over in a very similar way. Some of the most famous such images in molecular biology are the representation of DNA by Watson and Crick, the representation of the cell membrane based on the model of Singer and Nicolson, or the HI virus . Stephen J. Gould introduced the term "canonical icon" for these images. These arise z. B. from the internal scientific transfer and reproduction of representations in the sense of "chains of representation" (Bruno Latour 1979, cf. ders. 2002) or through the popular science communication of complex laboratory and research results.
Vögtli (2007) gives an example of the associated process of copying: The image of the HI virus that is used in Wikipedia is a copy of an image from Scientific American from 1987 (Gallo RC & Montagnier L .: HI in 1988. In: Scientific American , 1988, 259 (4), 41-48). It is not a direct copy of the original, but a copy from a textbook based on the original.
Types of scientific images
- Linguistic images ( metaphors , analogies, comparisons)
- Models
- Instrumental images
- Manual pictures
- Schematic pictures
- Naturalistic pictures
literature
Books
- Ralf Adelmann u. a. (Ed.): Data images. On digital image practice in the natural sciences. transcript, Bielefeld 2009, ISBN 978-3-8376-1041-3 .
- Brian S. Baigrie: Picturing knowledge. Historical and philosophical problems concerning the use of art in science. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 1996, ISBN 0-8020-2985-X .
- Horst Bredekamp , Birgit Schneider, Vera Dünkel (eds.): The technical picture. Compendium on a style history of scientific images. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-004496-5 .
- Bettina Heintz , Jörg Huber (eds.): Thinking with the eye. Strategies of visualization in scientific and virtual worlds. Edition Voldemeer, Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-211-83635-7 .
- Caroline A. Jones, Peter Galison (Eds.): Picturing science, producing art. Routledge, New York 1998, ISBN 0-415-91911-8 .
- Martin Kemp : lakes / unseen. Art, science, and intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble telescope. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, ISBN 0-19-929572-7 .
- Bruno Latour (Ed.): Iconoclash or Is there a world beyond the image war? Merve, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-88396-178-7 ( International Merve Discourse. 245).
- Bruno Latour: Laboratory life. The social construction of scientific facts. Sage, Beverly Hills, Calif. 1979, ISBN 0-8039-0993-4 .
- Wolfgang Lefèvre, Jürgen Renn , Urs Schoepflin (Eds.): The power of images in early modern science. Birkhäuser, Basel 2003, ISBN 3-7643-2434-1 .
- Alexander Vögtli, Beat Ernst: Scientific images. a critical consideration. Schwabe, Basel 2007, ISBN 978-3-7965-2313-7 ( publisher information )
Magazines