Notes for "Objectivity", Daston, Galison

objectivity

18  Truth to nature (underlying form) → Objectivity (mechanical product) → Trained judgment

19 Working Objects: Atlas Images, Type Specimens, Lab processes

29 Objectivity used to mean the opposite. With Kant came the now familiar objective=nature

31f objectivity as part of the tradition to examine 'obstacles to knowledge'

34 ""Man of science" began to fret openly about a new kind of obstacle to knowledge: themselves"

36 Objectivity vs. Subjectivity

37 In other context, the "subject" was celebrated

37 Scientific self and scientific images vs. artistic self and artistic images

38 Scientific techniques of the self: Lab notebook, grid drawings, experimental observers, objective/subjective distinction, voluntary attention

39 religious overtones in scientific morals

44 'calibration of the eye' as essential

49 imagine changes as avalanche: Sometimes stones and branches don't do anything, but if the conditions are there, they can start a growing avalanche. But even if conditions are there, a falling branch might cause nothing.

51 Objectivity is often treated as an abstract concept without history and practices. Such, criticisms also switch between metaphysical and moral meanings of the term

52 "The ideal and ethos are gradually build up and bodied out by thousands of concrete actions…"

53 Objectivity is a value: violating it draws the attention of others [See Birth in…, Jordan]

58 Truth is not Objectivity

60 "The type was truer to nature…  more real… than any actual specimen

64 Before: improved taxidermy, drawings were the most lifelike impressions that could be brought from expeditions [→ drawing things together, latour]

67 Truth to nature: intervene to show the true form; mechanical objectivity: No human involvement plz!

77 Even as-if-is representation need intervention

81 Artist corrects natures imperfections

82 " To learn to see the typical was the achievement of a lifetime"

84 it is difficult too work with artists, they do things not as intended by the author/researcher

89 women  were excluded from history and religious painting, some of them did do illustrations (→97)

88ff struggle for visibility and primacy of work between the naturalists and the artists

95 related to 88f: Who is tool, who is master

95 artist as medium, not just 'subordinate'

96 Passivity metaphors: mirrors, wax, photo-plates (→95) see Mirror of Nature

98 Artists: this is drawn "after life"-but e.g. flower and fruit were represented in same drawing – which not the case in nature

99 drawing from copybooks

102 No conflict between focus both on nature and beauty

104 Drawing from nature means integrating from memories of nature, creating a beautifully and truthfully crafted image

105 Truth to nature continued to exist parallel to mechanical objectivity

121 Mechanical objectivity, non-intervention but ideally automated transcription of images

121 Total mechanical objectivity can not be achieved it is a normative ideal

122 Mechanical objectivity as a morally loaded aestheticism

123 Machines > People  see Brain as Computer, Birth of a Metaphor

123 Machines offer freedom from will (Hegel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and other will-focused philosophers?)

124 Illustrators are a check for scientist’s love for confirming their hypothesis.

130 Photography initially thought to be an efficient way to copy art

133 creating an "objective" image needs great skill

135 people were not concerned about fraud but subtle influence by wishes of the researcher

138 "No intelligence would disturb the image"

139 Aesthetic pleasure in identical objects

138f Machines said to deliver a standard outcome are better (tireless) workers and have no bias

161 holding back corrections, discard underlying mathematical models, beauty, symmetry, policing the process… mechanical objectivity is hard and painful.

169 Synthesis was a scientific virtue; Galton pushed it to be "artistic"

169 Automated Synthesis

171 Artistic interpretative - moved to→ routine/mechanical

174 serlf-surveillance

178ff photography was limited in depth of field, color, diagnostic utility… – but the epistemic value of objectivity had a strong pull

183 Seeing clearly as goal of science and character (see moral)

186 Atlas makers: Interpretation is bad (not objective) but without it you get irrelevance
the compromise is to show mechanically reproduced samples that are "normal" and have the reader construct the "type" intuitively.

187 mechanical objectivity value is non-intervention not verisimilitude.

188 people knew there was also intervention in photography; different light could change what is visible etc.

202 Class and gender: Hard work was bad (see also antique Greeks; unveiling nature)

203 Enlightenment: extract truth-to-nature from ore → colonialism

209 Scientific self and ethos

109 Kant can't be easily mapped to mind/worlds, yet his philosophy had great influence

213 Much progress but also weariness of changes and divisions of opinions

215 Change and discarded theories fueled the turn away from truth and towards objectivity

224 Temptations of the enlightenment self

223 fragmented self → will and coherent self

230 Scientists as both man of action and sacrificing and restraining

234ff Technologies of the scientific self: Observation (Posture, Waiting, Focus)

235 Memory ←→ Self ←→ Diary

236 Incoherent self, incoherent objects → held together by lab diary.

240 'the object as a whole shattered into a mosaic of details'

242 Attention= Civilized

242 Conflict: Observation and Experimentation

247 The interest of Haeckel in both science and art was "eccentric" (but see 102, where aesthetic and truth was not a conflict)

[STRUCTURAL OBJECTIVITY]

253 'Objectivity  lay in the invariable relations among sensations, read like the abstract signs of language rather than as image of the world'

254 Only structures can be conveyed

255 Communicate sciences "everywhere and always"

256 Objectivity is what survives translation, transmission, theory change

257 Mechanical Objectivity iis self-restrained, structural objectivity is giving up in favor for abstract structures

257 Subjectivity as common enemy of different forms of objectivity

258 Psychology showed how variables perception is. Hope: Structures exist beyond that

260 free of senses at all

263 Kant: a judgment is Objective is it is valid for everyone

264 Wundt: Self-observation-method no good

263, 265 looking for the ('primitive') origin of thought an mathematics  (267, 277, 281)

273 Colors are subjective, particles are real

288 Poincare: Only relationships are stay, theories come and go

296 Beyond humans

[Trained judgment]


311 Trained judgment needed hunches, not self-constraint

312 Intuition can be taught

314 'Intuition' became a thing

318 Recognizing Family Resemblance

321 Atlas is for "training the eye"

322 Truth-to-nature  found the underlying idea (e.g. Urpflanze); trained judgment trains to means to classify and to manipulate

325 Scientists became "more intellectual than Algorithmic"

326 Not only lectures; active learning up to drill on instruments like in the military

327 Training also protected against a diversity of approaches and methods; they made uniform and 'calibrates' students

328 'The expert (unlike the sage) can be trained

328 Reading images likened to reaching in an unfamiliar Language and script

328 "more of an empirical art than an exact science"

329 Not anti-high-tech. Trained judgment judged images that new tech produced.

336ff recognizing human races and the skilled judgment were often compared

347 Focus: Not Metaphysical truth but usefulness for teaching

354 Making lesions, characteristics obvious for the reader

360 Maker and reader more active (in trained judgment)

360 Rorschach as image(s) that speak only through the subject not by themselves


SEEING/MAKING IN ATLASES


380 Objectivity has many uses and meanings. all, however are in contrast to subjectivity

391 Nano-manipulation atlas as examples what can be made, not of what is out there

395 both science and engineering

402 the microscopes both manipulated, staged AND depicted

402 Art and science in nanoscience and fluid dynamics.