Objectivity (Zone Books) by Lorraine Daston (PDF)

Description

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences — and show how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images.From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences — from anatomy to crystallography — are those featured in scientific atlases: the compendia that teach practitioners of a discipline what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Atlas images define the working objects of the sciences of the eye: snowflakes, galaxies, skeletons, even elementary particles.Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology.As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity — or truth-to-nature or trained judgment — is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to any one interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity — and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Peter Gallison is a great writer. This book is an in-depth look at objectivity through the image. It covers the evolution of being objective in science.

⭐Four versions of “seeing” scientifically are succinctly summarized (pp. 412-413):18th century (classical) “four-eyed” sight — truth-to-nature depiction;19th century “blind” sight of mechanical objectivity;20th century “physiognomic” sight of “trained” judgment;where the first three give way to “haptic” sight by means of image-as-tool, inseparable from the scientific-self, made visible to the acolyte:–subject to simulated manipulations–machine-generated virtual artifact, expertly extracted from an artificial reality — a model–altered in aspect, hue, or scale to make it artistically pleasing–no longer held to be a copy–the True and Beautiful necessarily converging for the sake of presentation — not representation–deliberately enhanced to clarify, persuade, and/or please.Daston is the new Mary Hesse.

⭐This is a review on how the book came. I received the book today and it came stained with an oily substance. Luckily, the other book that was shipped with it did not get as stained as this one. I checked the packaging to see if an oily substance was in there and nothing. Im assuming this happened while the items were being packaged. Im disappointed because this book wasn’t free and it came damaged.

⭐A fascinating, enlightening book. Made me realize how ideologically slanted by epistemological education was. A book to be taken seriously by philosophers and educators both science and the arts. (Occasionally, however, a conclusion is drawn from a weak premise — this is mostly, but not always, a minor error.) I am rereading and closely analyzing the book to use it support my own future publications. It’s a good read, a great historical study and an important source of insight.

⭐This book is a very interesting, and entertaining, exposition on the history of what we now call scientific objectivity. It explores the definitions of the objective, subjective, and their pre-kantian and post-kantian meanings in the context of the evolution of the social construction of scientific objectivity. These few words cannot do this great book proper justice but there are very few books, that when I finish, I immediately begin to read again. This was one of them.

⭐This book should be required reading for university students, the world over. Many students are so entrenched in ideology, the objectivity of their own carefully constructed reality is rarely questioned. This reading will certainly give you a some guidelines to arrive at an objective “truth.”

⭐This is the best book I have read in a decade. It is breathtaking in its scope and its depth of detail. Seeing objectivity as it is depicted in scientific atlases provides a new image of objectivity and a new understanding of the history of its evolution.

⭐By far my favorite book even though I’ve only read 20 pages

⭐What the heck is the book about? Illustration and presenting things be it facts, ideas, images as a common denominator in all knowledge. Ok. That and epistemic virtues and so on but it’s just so weighty and unreadable, because you can go paragraphs without any point seemingly being made. Could just be a list of virtues and surprising findings in bullet point form; it would save readers days.

⭐Libro recomendable en el debate sobre la epistemología de las ciencias sociales en relación con las ciencias naturales. Entrega y calidad de la edición más que correctas.This book should be a basic reference for every student of philosophy or sciences.Definitely, one of the best books I ever read.Brilliant. Important. And beautifully written.

⭐Yes.

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