X326
Section 26240
Jordi Cat
Tuesday, Thursday  1:00 p.m.-2:15 p.m.

Science is not blind. Science is typically viewed as a mode of
reasoning exemplified in calculations and analysis of laboratory or
field data. But the practice of science involves also a great deal
of imagination, especially visual imagination and communication.
This course explores philosophical and historical questions raised
by the use of images in science. What are images? Are there
different kinds of images? What do scientific images represent? How
do they succeed to do so? Do scientific images teach us anything
about scientific modeling? How do images contribute evidence for
hypotheses? Do illustrations represent values as well as facts and
entities? Do photographic images tell the truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth? Are cinematographic images interestingly
different? How is imaging technology trusted and intrepreted? Do
images represent fictions? Does the use of such scientific fictions
compromise the objectivity of science? Does it bring science closer
to art? What is the traffic of resources between science and art?
Have artists relied on scientific ideas of geometry and color for
the design and interpretation of visual representation? Have
scientists benefitted from artistic skills, methods, tools, ideas or
materials for the construction and interpretation of scientific
images? Are aesthetic values relevant to scientific practices? Are
scientific values relevant to artistic practices? Are images tools
for calculation? Do we really think visually? Do they serve any
other purpose, cognitive, rhetorical or otherwise? Does their use
have any other intended and unintended consequences? How are images
handled, produced, reproduced, stored, circulated? Do historical
episodes reveal meanings and purposes specifics to particular
contexts? Have the parameters that decide and evaluate the use of
images changed in the history of science? Are images in different
sciences used differently?