Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientific

Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 398-439 www.brill.nl/esm Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientific Imagery Christoph Lüthy & Alexis Smets* Radboud University Nijmegen To John E. Murdoch, eminent iconographer Abstract is essay examines the problems encountered in contemporary attempts to establish a typology of medieval and early modern scientific images, and to associate apparent types with certain standard meanings. Five particular issues are addressed here: (i) the unclear boundary between words and images; (ii) the problem of morphologically similar images possessing incompatible meanings; (iii) the converse problem of com- parable objects or processes being expressed by extremely dissimilar visual means; (iv) the impossibility of matching modern with historical iconographical terminologies; and (v) the fact that the meaning of a given image can only be grasped in the context of the epistemological, metaphysical and social assumptions within which it is embed- ded. e essay ends by concluding that no scientific image can ever be understood apart from its philosophical preconditions, and that these preconditions are often explained during disputes between the protagonists of different iconographical types. Keywords scientific imagery, epistemic images, word and image, taxonomy of images, iconogra- phy, chymistry, Marsilio Ficino, Giordano Bruno, René Descartes * Faculty of Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9103, NL—6500 HD Nijmegen, e Netherlands ([email protected]; [email protected]). We would like to thank the editors of this volume, William R. Newman and Edith Sylla, for their precious comments and observations. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI : 10.1163/157338209X425632 C. Lüthy, A. Smets / Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 398-439 399 Introduction Contemporary science is pictorial and often even picturesque. Hardly any laboratory press release comes without colorful graphics, no lecture seems to be able to do without gaudy slides, no journal article without glossy pictures. e multiple reasons behind this prolifer- ation of images need not concern the historian of medieval and early modern science. But if Martin Kemp is correct in claiming that “the modes of representation in twentieth-century science are very much the heirs of the Renaissance revolution” that led to “the rise of illustration as a major tool of science,” then it falls to the historian to elucidate both this alleged revolution and to retrace its wider implications, also for our own times.1 In fact, much has in the past fifteen years been written about the visual aspects of science past and present. Historians of art have begun to study non-artistic visual manifestations, including so-called ‘epistemic images’ appearing in the context of theory formation.2 Historians of science, in turn, have paid increasing attention to the visual manifestations of scientific theory and practice across the centuries, although they have shown a tendency “to treat scientific pictures only as after-images of verbal ideas.”3 Philosophers of science, finally, are busy analyzing the function of models and diagrammatic representations in the logic of scientific discovery and explanation as well as in the dissemination of knowledge.4 1) Martin Kemp, “Seeing and Picturing. Visual Representation in Twentieth-Centu- ry Science,” in Science in the Twentieth Century, eds. John Krige and Dominique Pestre (Amsterdam, 1997), 361-90, at 363. 2) In this paper, we use the term ‘epistemic image’ to refer to any image that was made with the intention of expressing, demonstrating or illustrating a theory. e more fre- quent term, ‘scientific image’, which we also invoke because of its greater accessibility, has however an awkwardly anachronistic ring to it when applied to centuries in which scientia meant something quite different than ‘science’ does today. 3) e quote is from David Topper, “Towards an Epistemology of Scientific Illustra- tion,” in Picturing Knowledge. Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science, ed. Brian S. Baigrie (Toronto, 1996), 215-49, at 215. 4) Davis Baird, ing Knowledge. A Philosophy of Scientific Instruments (Berkeley, 2004) views as instruments both two- and three-dimensional ‘models’ (see notably his 400 C. Lüthy, A. Smets / Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 398-439 Underlying much of this prolific literature, however, one finds the assumption that it is legitimate to speak systematically about images, rather than merely historically and contingently. is view presumes (1) that there are timeless criteria for distinguishing images from non-images; (2) that images possess a fairly stable ontological and epistemic status across the centuries; and (3) that it is possible to develop a stable classification or taxonomy of images. All three assumptions seem to us not only doubtful, but also open to refutation. Indeed, it is the purpose of this essay to document a number of complications that arise from any supra-historical, essentialist approach to epistemic images and to suggest instead an approach that takes into consideration the epistemological, ontological and pedagogical assumptions that surrounded their produc- tion. It is our conviction that the investigation of epistemic images requires a patient study of that endless range of stable or unstable, but always temporally and geographically bounded iconographical traditions, on the one hand, and on the other hand of the way in which each of these traditions was in time extended, subverted, redefined or simply replaced by another. e reason why this subject matter deserves to be discussed in the present context is that this essay originated in a lecture held during an academic celebration of John Murdoch’s 80th birthday. With his monographic contribution to I.B. Cohen’s Album of Sci- ence series, Murdoch has, after all, provided one of the earliest and most trenchant analyses of the logic of historical epistemic images. Unlike the other authors in Cohen’s series, who in keeping with the series title word did produce ‘albums’, Murdoch spent little energy on the display and discussion of images that merely illus- trated scientific theories and practices (e.g., images of star-gazers, surgical instruments, or plant species), but chose instead to focus on the question of how images attempted to express, prove, organize or interpret the arguments found in the texts to which they were ch. 2: “Models: Representing ings”). In a similar direction go recent attempts to place i mages in the category of ‘paper tools’; see e.g. Ursula Klein, Experiments, Models, Paper Tools: Cultures of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century (Stanford, 2003). C. Lüthy, A. Smets / Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 398-439 401 attached (by means of diagrams, geometrical proof, sciagraphiæ, etc.).5 Problem I: e Unclear Boundary between Words and Images Particularly praiseworthy seems to us Murdoch’s attention to the way in which words can pattern themselves out over a page and in so doing take the first step towards image formation—a sensitivity that is absent from all those contemporary discussions that either bluntly treat images as texts, or alternatively presume with equal bluntness an essential distinction between word and image. A study of the illustrations included in part II of Murdoch’s book, “Stan- dard Schemata and Techniques for the Visual Facilitation of Learn- ing,” will inevitably remind us of the fact that the Greek word γραφεῖν (grafein) means any gesture that (literally) ‘engraves’ something on a tablet—irrespective of whether the result is a word (which might, or might not, violate the rules of orthography), or a diagram, or indeed a graphic design. When the γραφίς (grafis), the slate pen- cil, is made to draw its lines, the result can be a ‘drawing’, a ‘letter’, or some other type of ‘text’—but in each case it will be a γραφή (grafê) or a γράμμα (gramma)—for these two all-embrac- ing words mean all of these things.6 In the particular case of hieroglyphics, the ‘drawing’ and the ‘letter’ may even fall together, and only the context will tell you whether the drawings should be read as text or as image.7 5) John Murdoch, Album of Science. Vol. 1: Antiquity and Middle Ages (New York, 1984). Under the general editorship of I. Bernard Cohen, three more volumes were published in this series. 6) Noëlle Batt, “L’expérience diagrammatique: Un nouveau régime de pensée,” in Pen- ser par le diagramme: De Gilles Deleuze à Gilles Châtelet, ed. Batt (Saint-Denis, 2004), 5-28, suggests that the verb γραφεîν hails from the Indo-European root ‘grbh-mn’, in which ‘grbh’ means ‘to scratch’ and ‘mn’ ‘image, letter, text’. According to this et- ymological reconstruction, the manual gesture and its outcome would early on have merged into a single verbal unity. is etymology does not differ very significantly from that given by James Elkins in e Domain of Images (Ithaca, NY, 1999), 82. 7) e image-text division of hieroglyphics is further complicated by the fact that hi- eroglyphic texts can choose between phonetic and ideogrammatic scripture. On this 402 C. Lüthy, A. Smets / Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009) 398-439 In his ground-breaking e Domain of Images, James Elkins chal- lenges Nelson Goodman’s division of ‘image’ into writing, notation and picture.8 He demonstrates that, upon close inspection, almost any image seems to rely on a blend of all three categories, though examples can be found to document the gradual progression from ‘pure scripture’ to ‘pure picture’.9 Interestingly, Murdoch’s collection of images appears to corroborate Elkins’ research, although it doc- uments a different type of progression from word to image. It allows us to witness how arguments occurring in a running text are ordered into columns or what we would now call ‘text boxes’ by an assiduous copyist (see fig. 1); how lines are drawn between such singled-out words to show logical dependencies, as in the case of dichotomies (see fig.

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