Scientific Visualizations: Bridge-Building between the Sciences and the Humanities via Visual Analogy‘Everything one invents is true’ Gustave Flaubert

Abstract

Text-based reasoning has, naturally, been crucial to intellectual activity; but it does not represent the entire map in cognition and education. With modern students so responsive to visual stimuli, visual analogy provides a fascinating resource in the exploration of fresh learning interfaces between subject areas, galvanising important new modes of creative-critical teaching across the disciplines and carrying the potential to ignite deeply participatory interdisciplinary discussions. The type of analogy emphasised here is termed a ‘scientific Visualization’; it derives from observable phenomena in technology and science, and is put to use, in this paper, chiefly within literary studies. A spectrum analogy for intertextuality is introduced, developed later into a filter analogy providing a particular perspective on translation. Further analogies examine various aspects of textual reception through genetics, crosstalk and chaos theory. Attractive, novel and accessible, these materials open up a range of cross-disciplinary prospects in research and teaching. Offered in a spirit of serious play, the examples presented in the figures establish the basis for a much wider pilot study; the hope is that the approach will eventually be deployed across many fields.