Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
public, otherwise they would not produce such a wealth of picture-laden
glossy brochures. Like their clients from chemistry or chemical industry,
however, they are less versed in the historically based cultural impli-
cations of the visual elements they employ to portray chemistry, in part
because scholarly studies on this topic are virtually nonexistent. Al-
though chemistry is routinely portrayed by visual stereotypes, no effort
has been made thus far to understand what implicit sociocultural mes-
sages they convey. The use of such images without knowledge of their
historical contexts, no matter how highly polished, can be embarrassing
if, as we show, the stereotypes carry with them negative associations.
In an earlier quantitative study we have analyzed the popular image
of science and the visual self-representation of scientists (Schummer &
Spector 2007). Unlike other disciplines, chemistry not only dominates
the popular image of science overall, it also stands out for its extremely
conservative visual self-representation. Chemists, rather than correcting
the popular clichés that they frequently complain about, reinforce these
clichés in their own self-representation. In this chapter we use the visual
material from our earlier study for a complementary qualitative analysis
of the most important visual stereotypes of chemistry as they occur in
portraits of chemists (Section 2), depictions of chemical plants (Sections
3&4), and images of chemical glassware and apparatus (Section 4). In
order to explore their meaning and visual associations, we delve deeply
into our visual culture, which includes the history of science, the history
of art, and aesthetics. We investigate the historical origins of these
stereotypes, their predecessors, and the cultural contexts in which they
emerged and how they have changed over time to assume their current
meaning. A historical approach not only has the advantage of tracking
the development of these stereotypes, and thus the dynamics of our vis-
ual culture, it also reveals their earlier sociocultural associations and
connotations which, even if they no longer prevail, are still contained by
the images. In addition, examining these visual chemical stereotypes
within the broader visual culture allows us to interpret them in the con-
text of past and present aesthetic and cultural frameworks.
