Objectivity / Lorraine Daston & Peter Galison

Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Object Details

Author
Daston, Lorraine 1951-
author
Galison, Peter 1955-
Author
Galison, Peter 1955-
Contents
Prologue: objectivity shock -- I. Epistemologies of the eye: Blind sight -- Collective empiricism -- Objectivity is new -- Histories of the scientific self -- Epistemic virtues -- The argument -- Objectivity in shirtsleeves -- II. Truth-to-nature: Before objectivity -- Taming nature's variability -- The idea in the observation -- Four-eyed sight -- Drawing from nature -- Truth-to-nature after objectivity -- III. Mechanical objectivity: Seeing clear -- Photography as science and art -- Automatic images and blind sight -- Drawing against photography -- Self-surveillance -- Ethics of objectivity -- IV. The scientific self: Why objectivity? -- The scientific subject -- Kant among the scientists -- Scientific personas -- Observation and attention -- Knower and knowledge -- V. Structural objectivity: Objectivity without images -- The objective science of mind -- The real, the objective, and the communicable -- The color of subjectivity -- What even a god could not say -- Dreams of a neutral language -- The cosmic community -- VI. Trained judgment: The uneasiness of mechanical reproduction -- Accuracy should not be sacrificed to objectivity -- The art of judgment -- Practices and the scientific self -- VII. Representation to presentation: Seeing is being: truth, objectivity, and judgment -- Seeing is making: nanofacture -- Right depiction
Summary
Daston and Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid 19th century sciences and show how the concept differs from its alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgement. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images.
2010
Call number
BD220 .D37 2010
Type
Books
Physical description
501 pages, 48 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps (some color) ; 24 cm
Smithsonian Libraries
Topic
Objectivity
Record ID
siris_sil_1081591
Metadata Usage (text)
CC0