GoodmanN., Languages of art: An approach to a theory of symbols (London, 1969), 7.
2.
Noteworthy in the field of astronomy are: LynchM.EdgertonS. Y., “Aesthetics and digital image processing: Representational craft in contemporary astronomy”, in FyfeG.LawJ. (eds), Picturing power: Visual depiction and social relations (London, 1998), 185–220, and “Abstract painting and astronomical image processing”, in TauberI. A. (ed.), The elusive synthesis: Aesthetics and science (Dordrecht, 1996), 103–23; SchafferS., “On astronomical drawing”, in JonesC. A.GalisonP. (eds), Picturing science, producing art (London and New York, 1998), 441–74; and MortonO., Mapping Mars: Science, imagination, and the birth of a world (New York, 2002).
3.
For further information on images analysed in this essay, see WhitfieldP., The mapping of the heavens (London, 1995).
4.
According to Pliny, Apelles hid so as to overhear the comments of the viewers.
5.
On Castelli's device, see van HeldenA., “Galileo and Scheiner on sunspots: A case study in the visual language of astronomy”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxl (1996), 358–96, pp. 375–7; BiagioliM., “Picturing objects in the making: Scheiner, Galileo and the discovery of sunspots”, in DetelW.ZittelC. (eds), Wissensideale und Wissenskulturen in der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin, 2002), 39–96, pp. 73–76; and BredekampH., Galilei der Künstler. Der Mond. Die Sonne. Die Hand (Berlin, 2007), 254–7.
6.
On such devices, see SchafferS., “Astronomers mark time: Discipline and the personal equation”, Science in context, ii (1988), 115–45; DastonL.GalisonP., “The image of objectivity”, Representations, xl (1992), 1992–128; and de ChadarevianS., “Graphical method and discipline: Self-recording instruments in 19th-century physiology”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxiv (1993), 1993–91.
7.
For a seminal account of contrasting “visual technologies” for objective depiction, see AlpersS., The art of describing (London, 1983); for a fascinating application of Alpers's approach to astronomical imagery, VertesiJ., “Picturing the Moon: Hevelius's and Riccioli's visual debate”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxxviii (2007), 2007–21; for explorations of the variety of ways in which images have aspired to “truth to nature”, DastonL.GalisonP., Objectivity (New York, 2007), and articles by them there cited.
8.
On the rhetorical nature of the early Royal Society's “plain prose”, see VickersB., “The Royal Society and English prose style”, in VickersB.StrueverN. S., Rhetoric and the pursuit of truth: Language change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Los Angeles, 1985), 1–76. Cf., in a very different vein, Roland Barthes's analysis of the factual “scientific code” of the medical case history used by Poe in “The facts in the case of M. Valdemar”: Barthes, “Textual analysis of Poe's ‘Valdemar’” [1973], transl. by YoungR., in YoungR. (ed.), Untying the text (London, 1981), 133–61.
9.
On the difficulties of discerning legitimate from ‘dodgy’ image enhancement, see LynchEdgerton, op. cit. (ref. 2).
10.
For analyses of the full range of Galileo's and Scheiner's sunspot images, see van HeldenBiagioli, and (in exhaustive detail) Bredekamp, all as cited above (ref. 5).
11.
As aptly described by Bredekamp, op. cit. (ref. 5), 220–1.
12.
Galileo, Opere, ed. by FavaroA. (Florence, 1890–1909), v, 117, as cited by Biagioli, op. cit. (ref. 5), 73.
13.
Galileo, Opere, v, 106.
14.
See, for example, KossoP., Reading the Book of Nature: An introduction to the philosophy of science (Cambridge, 1992), chap. 6; and KuklaA., “Observation”, in PsillosS.CurdM. (eds), The Routledge companion to the philosophy of science (London, 2008), 396–404.
15.
For valuable reflections on the roles of hypotheses in perception and visual representation, see Gombrich'sE. H. classic Art and illusion: A study of the psychology of pictorial representation (London, 1960); on the roles of collective “thought styles” in directing perception and picturing in the sciences, FleckL., “To look, to see, to know” [1947], in CohenR. S.SchnelleT. (eds), Cognition and fact: Materials on Ludwik Fleck (Dordrecht, 1986), 129–51; on theory-loading of geological imagery, RudwickM. J. S., The great Devonian controversy (Chicago, 1985), chap. 3.
16.
The classic philosophical work on visual languages is Nelson Goodman's Languages of art: An approach to a theory of symbols (London, 1969), Goodman's approach being convincingly developed by KulvickiJohn V., On images: Their structure and content (Oxford, 2006). For important observations on this issue, see RudwickM. J. S., “The emergence of a visual language for geological science 1760–1840”, History of science, xiv (1976), 1976–95, and Alpers, op. cit. (ref. 7).
