A Historiographical Study On Western Visual History Of Science Since Mid-20th Century

Visual history of science(or “the study of visual representation in the history of science”) is a new research field of history of science which developed gradually in the western countries since the mid-20 th century, under the influence of many disciplines such as philosophy of science, art history, art psychology, iconography, semiotics, visual cultural studies, and flourished rapidly since the mid-1990 s with the influence of historical anthropology.This dissertation is a second-order historiographic investigation about the western visual history of science since the mid-20 th century with the view of historiography of science. The main objective of this dissertation is to retrospect the history of visual history of science, and have an investigation and rethinking on some critical historiographic issues about the visual representation of science in this research field.This dissertation is constituted by nine chapters. Besides the Chapter 1 introduction and Chapter 9 conclusion, the remaining seven chapters constitute the main part of the dissertation, and divided logically into three modules:Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 are all first-order researches about the visual representation of science. Chapter 2 has an overview about the relationship between visual representation and language representation, and an analysis about the advantages and disadvantages of the visual representation as a tool of representation and communication. Chapter 3 discusses the demarcation of visual representation of science and other visual representation,and the classification of visual representation of science. These two chapters constitute the first module of this dissertation, which provides background knowledge and research basis for the second-order historiographic researches of later chapters.Chapter 4 is the second module of this dissertation, which has a review about the history of the western visual history of science since the mid-20 th century from the perspective of historiography of science. By analysing the data of relevant literature in Isis,this chapter suggests that the visual history of science has become a significant research field of history of science in recent years. This chapter divides the development course of visual history of science into four historical periods: preparatory period, infancy period, growing period, and prosperity period, and illustrates three typical research approaches of visual history of science with three cases.The second-order investigations about the historiographic issues in visual history of science in Chapter 5 to Chapter 8 constitute the third and most important module of this dissertation. Among them, Chapter 5 focuses the multiple function of visual representation of science, argues that we can neither deny the cognitive functions of visual representation of science as a subject tool such as observation and recording, induction and abstract as well as visual thinking, nor ignore its social functions such as symbolic function, rhetorical function, and convince function.By examining the debates about the objectivity of visual representation of science in the visual history of science, Chapter 6 concludes that visual representation of science has its material basis of objectivity because it is reflection about the physical world and objective laws, but also has its social nature because the unavoidable historical, social, cultural and subjective factors in the productive process of visual representation of science.Chapter 7 reexamines the relationship between science and art of painting from the view of visual history of science, and draws a conclusion that modern science and art of painting have deep homology in the history and homogeneousness in the cognitive paradigm.In reflecting on the researches of visual history of science, Chapter 8 concludes that the significance of visual representation to history of science is not only to play a role of “eyewitness”, but also brings new historical materials, research findings, research styles and clues of historical analysis to history of science.