Epistemic Images

Attila Bátorfy
ELTE Institute of Art Theory and Media Studies

Past and present of scientific imagery

Institut für Höhere Studien
Vienna, 2020. 11. 04.

"Most images are not art"

James Elkins - The Domain of Images, 1999, p3.

Directions

History

Method

Semiotics/Perception

Image Theory

History

Mathematical-statistical tradition

Neurological/Psychological School

Cultural History

Art Historian Tradition

Funkhouser, Friendly

Wainer, Cairo

Rendgen, Lima, Cairo, Kahn, Berkowitz, Baptiste and Rusert
Grafton and Rosenberg, Bender and Marrinan, Drucker, Spence

Crary, Gombrich, Mitchell, Elkins, Bredekamp, Kemp

Based on Murray Dick's classification, 2020

Discourses

Functionalist-normative-idealist

Pragmatic-realistic

Didactic-persuasive

Critical

Aesthetic-expressionist

Brinton, Tufte, Tukey, Bertin, Cleveland, Few, Wainer, Yau, Knaflic, Kirk

Cairo, Dick

McCandless, Lima

Neuraths

Baptiste and Rusert, Kennedy and Hill

Based on Murray Dick's classification, 2020

• observation

• counting

• memorization

• systematic collection

• research methods

• graphic methods

• technologies

45000BC

4000BC

Conceptual criteria

Informational images

Exploration

Explanation

• Discovery

• Analysis

• (Re)search

• Seeing

• Finding

• Understanding

• Inform

• Enlight

• Highlight

• ​Demonstration

• Argumentation

• Persuasion

asking questions

making statements

Semiotics/Method

Metaphoric

Pictorial

Abstract

knowledge

body

diseases

calculations

urbanism

sky

Knowledge

Boethius - Arbor porfyriana, ca. 520

Ramon Llull (1235–1315)
Arbor scientiae, copy ca. 1515

Chistophe de Sevigny
Tableaux accomplis de tous les artes liberaux, 1597
University of Virginia Library

Heinrich Kuhnrath (1590–1605)
Amphiteutrum Sapientiae Aeternae, 1595
Wisconsim Madison Library, Duveen Collection

Diderot and D'Alambert
System of the Human Knowledge
Encyclopédie, 1750–51
BNF

Body

The Lebombo counting bone, Swaziland, 40000BC - Lunar phase? Menstrual cycle?

Ismail Ibn Hasan Jurjani (1044–1136)
Anatomical drawing - the human body
The Treasure of Khvarazm' Shah, 1120ca
National Library of Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran

Mansur Ibn Ilyas (14. century)
Arterial and nervous system
Tashrih-i badan-i insan, 1390ca
US National Library of Medicine, Bethesda

Anonymous
Book of Macharias on the Eye, ca. 1400
British Library, Sloane Collection

John Arderne (ca. 1307–1370)
Cross section of the human body
De arte phisicali et de cirurgia, ca. 1425
National Library of Sweden

Anonymous
The pregnant body
Writings of Astronomy, Astrology and Medicine, ca. 1485
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cgm 597 fol. 259v

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
The Human Fetus in the Womb
Leonardo's Sketchbooks, ca. 1511
The Royal Collection Trust

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
Proportions of the human body
Vier Bücher von menschlischer Proportion, 1525
National Library of Medicine, Bethesda

Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564)
Nerves
De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, 1543

William Harvey (1578–1657)
Blood circulation
De motu cordis, 1628
Warnock Library

Robert Hooper (1773–1835)
Diagram of the Human Eye, 1803
Wellcome Collection

Lemercier's anatomy
Planche 30
1844

Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923)
Hand mit Ringen - Anna Bertha Ludwig
1895 22nd December

Fritz Kahn (1888–1968)
Osteogenesis
Das Leben des Menschen, 1924

Crick and Watson's original DNA molecular model, 1953
King's College, Science Museum London

Crick's drawing of double helix
Nature, 1953

Diseases

Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
Flea
Micrographia, 1665
Collection of the Royal Society

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723)
Animalcules - bacteria
Letter to the Royal Society, 1683
Collection of the Royal Society

Valentine Seaman (1770–1817)
Yellow Fever Map, 1798

John Snow (1813–1858)
Cholera Map of London, 1854

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895)
Silkworm infected by bacteria, 1870
Linda Hall Library

Robert Koch (1843–1910)
Photomicrograph of bacillus anthraxis, 1877

Many faces of the SARS2-COVID19

Harry Stevens - Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially and how flatten the curve
Washington Post, 2020. 03. 14.

Calculation

Babylonian "Pythagoras Theorem", ca. 1900BC

Fragment of a papyrus copy of Euclid's Geometry Book II, ca. 100, University of Pennsylvania

Nicole Oresme (1325–1382) - Latitude of forms (proto bar charts), ca. 1350

Willam Playfair (1759–1813)

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) - Histogram normal distribution, 1876

Francis Galton (1822–1916) - scatter plot diagram for correlations, 1875

Urbanization

Townplan of Nippur, 1400 BC and 1200 BC

Leonardo Da Vinci - Plan of Imola

Henry Drury Harness (1804–1883)
Transport flow map inbound Dublin, 1837

Leon Montigny
Election Map of Paris, 1870

Martin and Chevalier
Isochrone map of France
1882

Florence Kelley (1859–1932)
Chicago Wage Map
1895

Sky

Unknown - De cursu zodiacum, appendix to Macrobius' Commentary to Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, ca. 950

Unknown - Planetary movements, ca. 1175, Walters Art Museum

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543)
Diagram of the Heliocentric world
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, 1543

Galileo (1564–1642) - First drawing of the Moon, 1610

Edmund Halley (1656–1742) - The first weather map, 1686

Leon Foucault and Louis Fizeau - first photo of the Sun, 1845

Francis Galton - The first modern weather maps, 1863

Isaac Roberts - the first photo of the Andromeda Galaxy, 1887

The first photo of the Earth from space, White Sands Missile Range, Applied Physincs Laboratory, 1946

The Blue Marble - The first colour photo of the Earth by Apollo 17, 1972, NASA

The first photo of a black hole, NASA, Event Horizon Telescope, 2019

http://hint.fm/wind/

Tim Meko - Mapping America's Weather Disasters, Washington Post, 2019

Softwares

Analytics

Visualization

Dataprep

• Excel

• Import.io

• Knime

• Excel

• Tableau

• Flourish

• Datawrapper

• Rawgraphs

• Plotdb

• ​Tableau

• Illustrator

• WebGL

• Sublime text

Cartography

• Flourish

• Datawrapper

• Rawgraphs

• Plotdb

• ​Tableau

• Illustrator

• WebGL

• Sublime text

• Qgis

• Kepler

• Mapbox

Thank you!

batorfy.attila@btk.elte.hu