User:Lucian Wester Annotation Objectivity prologue/chapter 1

Objectivity

Prologue and chapter one.

The prologue describes how a physicist named Arthur Worthington studies the impact of a liquid drop on a flat service. In the beginning he makes drawings of his own perception but later he uses photography to catch the different stages of the impact. In compare, the drawings made by observation where much more stylized and in perfect symmetry than to the photographs that showed a more chaotic splash. After comparing the drawings to the photographs the scientist realised how much his own subject, his own prejudice was involved in making these drawings.

In the first chapter this phenomena of objective view is more thoroughly described and given a historic background. The books study objects are images from atlases. The writer argues that objectivity emerges about 1860 and that it replaces the so called truth-to-nature view. The difference between the two is that truth-to-nature for example depicts a flower in an atlas as one who stands for the whole while objectivity shows the variety of the hole. In other words the first is stylized the other isn’t. This change appears because of what is illustrated in the prologue: ‘their fear was that the subjective self was prone to prettify, idealize, and, in the worst case, regularize observations to fit theoretical expectations: to see what it hopes to see.’ (objectivity, p.34) They also describe how objectivity cant be understood without subjectivity. Objectivity is mostly described as something outside of your self, something that is bigger than your self. At the and of the chapter the writer shows how scientific objectivity isn’t a concept that lays like a great structure over sciences as a whole but more exist in ‘performing objective acts’ (objectivity p.52). By constantly performing and repeating these objective act you build eventually a structure that you could call objective.

Chapter 2

Before objectivity

Truth-to-nature seeks to unravel the underling structures in the variety of forms in witch nature percents its self. To do so a scientist must be an expert in observation: “genius of observation” (objectivity p.58). Because, as Goethe is quoted in Objectivity: “To depict it, the human mind must fix the empirically variable, exclude the accidental, eliminate the impure, unravel the tangled, discover the unknown.” (objectivity p.59). (Witch in a sense has an strong relation to the practise of making art.) In a sense the pictures created by these observation practises are more real than nature itself because they seek underlining structures.

The idea in the Observation

The scientists needed to see a lot of different specimens to render a archetype witch stands for the whole. There are two ideas in observation described: ‘The “ideal” image purports to render not merely the typical but the perfect, while the “characteristic” image locates the typical in an individual.’ (objectivity p.70). Within the “ideal” images the scientist seeks to combine truth and beauty to get the purest images therefore he needs artists. ‘… This convergence of artistic and scientific visions arose from a shared understanding of mission: many observations, carefully sifted and compared, were a more trustworthy guide to the truths of nature than any one observation.’ (objectivity p.82)

Four-eyed sight

The scientist has to work closely with the artist who makes his drawings to get the clearest result. Four-eyed sight means that the scientist tries to guide the artist what he should draw and even correct them when they make mistakes.

Drawing from nature

Artist learn to draw from other pictures in books and when they were good enough they would be allowed to draw from real specimens, from nature. There were scientist that taught their own children to draw, in this way he could shape them to make the drawings he wanted.

Truth-to-nature after objectivity

Although objectivity became the standard in the scientific practise truth-to-nature was still used, especially in the botanic discourse. These images did changes and became more a portrait of nature than an interpretation, or an idea of underlining structures.

Chapter 3 – Mechanical Objectivity

Seeing clear

The scientist noticed that the interpretations that they made were sometimes the wrong ones and they were the ones to blame not nature itself. So the new goal was to: ‘Let nature speak for itself’ (objectivity p.120). The ‘willful intervention of the artist-author’ (objectivity p.121) has to be repressed by ‘a strict protocol, if not automatically.’ (objectivity p.121) the scientist must be self-regulated. In this banning out the subject of the scientific practice mechanical devices and machines where very helpful because they lack a free will to intervene. Photography is one of these mechanical devices that was used al lot by scientist because of it so called: ‘blind sight.’ (objectivity p.124).

Photography as science and art

Here the authors describe how the scientific practice and the artistic practice separate from each other: ‘ … the new opposition of science and art that the mixing of genres of objective (scientific) and subjective (artistic) photography could provoke scandal, ..’ (objectivity p.133). As Baudelaire is quoted in Objectivity: ‘The artist, the true artist, must never paint except according to what he sees or feels. He must be really faithful to his own nature.’ (objectivity p.131) ‘A photograph was deemed scientifically objective because it countered a specific kind of scientific subjectivity: intervention to aestheticize or theorize the seen.’ (objectivity p.135)

Automatic images and blind sight

The blind sight that a photograph gives is a ‘judgment-free representation’ (objectivity p.139) and the scientist aimed to see like a photograph, whiteout judgment and to be like the machine. But images are always mediated and so a photograph is never free from intervention by a subject. The dream of the objective scientist to have images that are completely objective was never fulfilled: ‘Merely using photography could not cure the diseases of the will, a disorder that survives in the very construction of the German word willkürlich.’ (objectivity p.151) (willekeur – dutch or arbitrariness – English)

Drawing against photography

In the late 19th century there wasn’t yet a way to directly print photographs into books so they needed to be engraved into woodcuts or lithograph. Photographs where used for the investigations but the images that where reproduced in the atlases where mostly drawings from photographs and in some cases with all the distortion that a photograph can have. As Christeller is quoted about the photography and the imperfections that he left in as a mark of objectivity: ‘I believed it my obligation also, at the same time, to display with great objectivity the limits of the technique.’ (objectivity p.172).

Self-surveillance

Photography by itself is not enough to give the scientist the objective images they need to self-control there own subject to make ‘No “theoretical conclusions”, no “practical conclusions”’ (objectivity p.175). ‘.., the photographic trace becomes an archive as a drawing could not; the photograph is a resource for further inquiry.’ (Objectivity p.178)

Ethics of objectivity

Although the scientist tried to suppress their intervention in the act of image making they called themselves the authors of the images and thereby admitting that they did construct these objective images. ‘Knowledge and artistry were, after all, their title to authority and authorship; otherwise, any greenhorn or untutored artist could publish a scientific atlas.’ (objectivity p.186) ‘The photograph has acquired a symbolic value, and its fine grain and evenness of detail have come to imply objectivity; Photographic vision has become a primary metaphor for objective truth.’ (objectivity p.187)

Reverence: Objectivity by Lorraine Datson & Peter Galison