Objectivity (Zone Books)

The emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences, as revealed through images in scientific atlases--a story of how lofty epistemic ideals fuse with workaday practices. Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences -- and show how the concept differs from its alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences -- from anatomy to crystallography -- are those featured in scientific atlases, the compendia that teach practitioners what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity -- or truth-to-nature or trained judgment -- is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to anyone interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity -- and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Peter Galison is Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, How Experiments End, and Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, among other books, and coeditor (with Emily Thompson) of The Architecture of Science (MIT Press, 1999). Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences — and show how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images.From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences — from anatomy to crystallography — are those featured in scientific atlases: the compendia that teach practitioners of a discipline what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Atlas images define the working objects of the sciences of the eye: snowflakes, galaxies, skeletons, even elementary particles.Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology.As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity — or truth-to-nature or trained judgment — is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to any one interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity — and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity , Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences and show how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences from anatomy to crystallography are those featured in scientific the compendia that teach practitioners of a discipline what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Atlas images define the working objects of the sciences of the snowflakes, galaxies, skeletons, even elementary particles. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity or truth-to-nature or trained judgment is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to any one interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Daston And Galison Chart The Emergence Of Objectivity In The Mid 19th Century Sciences And Show How The Concept Differs From Its Alternatives, Truth-to-nature And Trained Judgement. This Is A Story Of Lofty Epistemic Ideals Fused With Workaday Practices In The Making Of Scientific Images. Preface To The Paperback Edition -- Preface To The First Edition -- Prologue: Objectivity Shock -- Epistemologies Of The Eye -- Blind Sight -- Collective Empiricism -- Objectivity Is New -- Histories Of The Scientific Self -- Epistemic Virtues -- The Argument -- Objectivity In Shirtsleeves -- Truth-to-nature -- Before Objectivity -- Taming Nature's Variability -- The Idea In The Observation -- Four-eyed Sight -- Drawing From Nature -- Truth-to-nature After Objectivity -- Mechanical Objectivity -- Seeing Clear -- Photography As Science And Art -- Automatic Images And Blind Sight -- Drawing Against Photography -- Self-surveillance -- Ethics Of Objectivity -- The Scientific Self -- Why Objectivity?. The Scientific Subject -- Kant Among The Scientists -- Scientific Personas -- Observation And Attention -- Knower And Knowledge -- Structural Objectivity -- Objectivity Without Images -- The Objective Science Of Mind -- The Real, The Objective, And The Communicable -- The Color Of Subjectivity -- What Even A God Could Not Say -- Dreams Of A Neutral Language -- The Cosmic Community -- Trained Judgment -- The Uneasiness Of Mechanical Reproduction -- Accuracy Should Not Be Sacrificed To Objectivity -- The Art Of Judgment -- Practices And The Scientific Self -- Representation To Presentation -- Seeing Is Being : Truth, Objectivity, And Judgment -- Seeing Is Making : Nanofacture -- Right Depiction -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index. Lorraine Daston And Peter Galison. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Daston And Galison Chart The Emergence Of Objectivity In The Mid 19th Century Sciences And Show How The Concept Differs From Its Alternatives, Truth-to-nature And Trained Judgement. This Is A Story Of Lofty Epistemic Ideals Fused With Workaday Practices In The Making Of Scientific Images. Prologue: Objectivity Shock -- Epistemologies Of The Eye -- Blind Sight -- Collective Empiricism -- Objectivity Is New -- Histories Of The Scientific Self -- Epistemic Virtues -- The Argument -- Objectivity In Shirtsleeves -- Truth-to-nature -- Before Objectivity -- Taming Nature's Variability -- The Idea In The Observation -- Four-eyed Sight -- Drawing From Nature -- Truth-to-nature After Objectivity -- Mechanical Objectivity -- Seeing Clear -- Photography As Science And Art -- Automatic Images And Blind Sight -- Drawing Against Photography -- Self-surveillance -- Ethics Of Objectivity -- The Scientific Self -- Why Objectivity? -- The Scientific Subject -- Kant Among The Scientists -- Scientific Personas -- Observation And Attention -- Knower And Knowledge -- Structural Objectivity -- Objectivity Without Images -- The Objective Science Of Mind -- The Real, The Objective, And The Communicable -- The Color Of Subjectivity -- What Even A God Could Not Say -- Dreams Of A Neutral Language -- The Cosmic Community -- Trained Judgment -- The Uneasiness Of Mechanical Reproduction -- Accuracy Should Not Be Sacrificed To Objectivity -- The Art Of Judgment -- Practices And The Scientific Self -- Representation To Presentation -- Seeing Is Being : Truth, Objectivity, And Judgment -- Seeing Is Making : Nanofacture -- Right Depiction. Lorraine Daston & Peter Galison. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 419-481) And Index. Prologue: objectivity shock Epistemologies of the eye blind sight Images at work Objectivity is new Histories of the scientific self Epistemic virtues The argument Objectivity in shirtsleeves Truth-to-nature Before objectivity Taming nature's variability The idea in the observation Four-eyed sight Truth-to-nature after objectivity Mechanical objectivity Seeing clear Photography as science and art Automatic images and blind sight Drawing against photography Self-surveillance Ethics of objectivity The scientific self Why objectivity? The scientific subject Kant among the scientists Scientific personae Observation and attention Knower and knowledge Structural objectivity Objectivity without images The objective science of mind The real, the objective, and the communicable The color of subjectivity What even a god could not say Dreams of a neutral language The cosmic community Trained judgment The uneasiness of mechanical reproduction Accuracy should not be sacrificed to objectivity The art of judgment Practices and the scientific self Representation to presentation Seeing is being : truth, objectivity, and judgment Seeing is making : nanofacture.