The Dynamics of Scientific Knowledge - Mapping Scientific Frontiers: The Quest for Knowledge Visualization - page 31

Fig. 1.15 Rene Magritte's
famous statement
between what we see, what we think, and what we say. Philosophers study such
questions in the name of hermeneutics . Hermeneutics can be traced back to the
Greeks and to the rise of Greek philosophy. Hermes is the messenger of the gods,
he brings a word from the realm of the wordless; hermeios brings the word from
the Oracle. The root word for hermeneutics is the Greek verb hermeneuein ,which
means to interpret .
Don Ihde's topic Expanding Hermeneutics - Visualism in Science (Ihde 1998 )
provides a series of examples from the history of science and technology in
an attempt to establish that visualist hermeneutics is essential to science and
technology. According to Ihde, “This hermeneutics, not unlike all forms of writing,
is technologically embedded in the instrumentation of contemporary science, in
particular, in its development of visual machines or imaging technologies.”
Ihde argues that what we see is mediated by enabling devices. We see through,
with, and by means of instruments (Ihde 1998 ). Science has found ways to enhance,
magnify, and modify its perceptions. From this perspective, Kuhn's philosophy in
essence emphasizes that science is a way of “seeing.” We will return to Kuhn's
paradigm theory later with the goal to visualize the development of a paradigm.
Ihde refers to this approach as perceptual hermeneutics . Key features of perceptual
hermeneutics are repeatable Gestalt, visualizable, and isomorphic.
Ihde noted that Leonardo da Vinci's depictions of human anatomy show muscu-
lature, organs, and the like and his depictions of imagined machines in his technical
diaries were indeed in the same style - both exteriors and interiors were visualized.
Ihde also found similar examples from astronomy and medicine, such as Galileo's
telescope and the invention of X-rays in 1895 by German physicist Wilhelm Conrad
Rontgen (1845-1923) (See Fig. 1.16 ). What had been invisible or occluded became
observable. These imaging technologies have similar effects as da Vinci's exploded
diagram style - they transform non-visual information to visual representations.
Two types of imaging technologies are significant: translation technologies that
transform non-visual dimensions to visual ones, and isomorphic ones. Imaging
technologies increasingly dominate contemporary scientific hermeneutics.