Before 20th century, images were always an important component in scientific atlas or papers. Maybe it is not too much to say they were the most important component. Because image has its inherent nature that it can give a convincing persuasion to audience. Drawings and photographs share this nature. But since the coming of photography (especially after photographs can be reproduced by lithography), the explosion of images made scientists begin to think the essence of images used in science. Whether truth-to-nature or mechanical objectivity, they both depend on images’ power to give credible proofs. But on what level images can be treated as evidence? In some scientists’ opinion, scientific objectivity was not a matter of viewing nature as it really was – that was impossible. Nor did it have anything to do with fidelity to sensations or ideas. Instead, objectivity lay in the invariable relations among sensations, read like the abstract signs of a language rather than as images of the world. As mentioned before, photography does not end this battle of objectivity as people would wish, it pushes this argument into a more complex situation. According to these structuralism scientists, objectivity was not about sensations or objects, so it has nothing to do with images, no matter through what medium images are presented. It was about enduring structural relationships that survived mathematical transformations, scientific revolutions, shifts of linguistic perspective, cultural diversity, psychological evolution, and the quirks of individual physiology. Only in this situation that beyond imprisonment of vision, objectivity could be achieved.
Another challenge for mechanical objectivity came from the uncertainty of pictures. This started with the using of X-ray photography in pathology and reached its peak in cloud chamber photograph appeared in mid twentieth century. To see a typical picture, an electron losing energy in a gas as it spirals within a magnetic field. Basically, the purpose of this picture is trying to find the extraordinary from the ordinary. But, the problem here is, scientists who made this picture could only show what is ordinary and specific “extraordinary” in this picture. They could not predict what would happen when others repeat this experiment. Readers have to learn how to separate them rather than what it would be like. The atlas makers no longer could make claims for general applicability of their pictures, the responsibility is given to readers. Automation, self-registration, or self-restraint (of scientists) gave way to the expert training of the eye (of readers). Pictures got rid of the burden of representation accentuated by mechanical objectivity. Scientific sight had become an “empirical art”. But this empirical art is different from truth-to-nature which the judgments were all done by atlas maker. The mode of truth-to-nature was making a prototype through variant individuals, while the trained judgment is using a particular picture to indicate potential situations.
Another challenge for mechanical objectivity came from the uncertainty of pictures. This started with the using of X-ray photography in pathology and reached its peak in cloud chamber photograph appeared in mid twentieth century. To see a typical picture, an electron losing energy in a gas as it spirals within a magnetic field. Basically, the purpose of this picture is trying to find the extraordinary from the ordinary. But, the problem here is, scientists who made this picture could only show what is ordinary and specific “extraordinary” in this picture. They could not predict what would happen when others repeat this experiment. Readers have to learn how to separate them rather than what it would be like. The atlas makers no longer could make claims for general applicability of their pictures, the responsibility is given to readers. Automation, self-registration, or self-restraint (of scientists) gave way to the expert training of the eye (of readers). Pictures got rid of the burden of representation accentuated by mechanical objectivity. Scientific sight had become an “empirical art”. But this empirical art is different from truth-to-nature which the judgments were all done by atlas maker. The mode of truth-to-nature was making a prototype through variant individuals, while the trained judgment is using a particular picture to indicate potential situations.