IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001561165

Instrument to Evidence to Argument: Visual Mediation of Invisible Phenomena in Scientific Discourse (2008)

University of Maryland, College Park
Fahnestock, Jeanne
Publication date: 2008
Language: English

Publication Date: 2008
Edition Details: Advisor: Fahnestock, Jeanne
Physical Details: 365 pp.

Outside Links

This dissertation examines how scientists and scientific editors have approached specific problems related to visualization and visual argumentation in scientific texts. These problems are related to the following research questions: (1) How are new visualization practices established as scientifically credible? (2) How do scientists modify existing instrument output to make new visual arguments? (3) How do scientists use verbal and visual means to transform problematic data into acceptable support for novel claims? (4) What are the practical and ethical boundaries of modifying visual artifacts for scientific arguments? (5) How do scientists refute established (but incorrect) visualizations that have been widely accepted as accurate representations of reality? This project considers these issues rhetorically by examining a number of recent and historical cases. The first three case studies explore how scientists created both compelling and uncompelling visual arguments by mediating the visual output of instruments with rhetorical strategies. These case studies focus on visualizations from physical science: x-ray diffraction photographs, graphics establishing the theory of plate tectonics, and visualizations of atmospheric phenomena. In each case, visualizations articulated invisible phenomena in new ways, transforming unclear or seemingly unremarkable data into convincing knowledge claims. My analysis of these cases explores how scientists integrate visuals into the analogical, causal, transitive, symmetrical, and dissociation arguments that are so essential to the practice of science. The later case studies examine broader concerns regarding ethics, persuasion, and modern scientific visualization. I examine recent issues related to the digital generation and manipulation of scientific images and rhetorical issues related to scientists' increasing dependence on complicated computer algorithms for creating visual arguments.

...More

Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/09 (2009). Pub. no. AAT 3324811.

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB001561165

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Brink-Roby, Heather; (2009)
Natural Representation: Diagram and Text in Darwin's On the Origin of Species (/p/isis/citation/CBB001030093/)

Thesis Hanson, Valerie Louise; (2004)
Haptic Visions: Rhetorics, Subjectivities and Visualization Technologies inthe Case of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561929/)

Article Leeming, William; (2011)
Graphical and Computationally Intensive Techniques for Presenting and Disseminating Information about the Genetics of Disease: Possibilities, Limitations, and Additions (/p/isis/citation/CBB001320110/)

Article Leo, Angela de; (2006)
The Origin of Graphic Recording of Psycho-Physiological Phenomena in Germany (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023631/)

Article Benjamin Sheredos; (2017)
Communicating with scientific graphics: A descriptive inquiry into non-ideal normativity (/p/isis/citation/CBB842247874/)

Article Raphael Scholl; (2016)
Spot the difference: Causal contrasts in scientific diagrams (/p/isis/citation/CBB979252699/)

Book M. Kupfer; A. S. Cohen; J.H. Chajes; (2020)
The Visualization of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (/p/isis/citation/CBB645276255/)

Article R. Lee Lyman; (2019)
Misunderstanding graphs: The confusion of biological clade diversity diagrams and archaeological frequency seriation diagrams (/p/isis/citation/CBB729212970/)

Article Mary S. Morgan; (2020)
Inducing Visibility and Visual Deduction (/p/isis/citation/CBB269777379/)

Article Cook, Simon; (2005)
Late Victorian Visual Reasoning and Alfred Marshall's Economic Science (/p/isis/citation/CBB000550675/)

Article Daniel C. Burnston; (2016)
Data graphs and mechanistic explanation (/p/isis/citation/CBB555220713/)

Book Miles A. Kimball; Charles Kostelnick; (2016)
Visible Numbers: Essays on the History of Statistical Graphics (/p/isis/citation/CBB863564987/)

Article Rodgers, Tara; (2011)
“What, for Me, Constitutes Life in a Sound?”: Electronic Sounds as Lively and Differentiated Individuals (/p/isis/citation/CBB001035556/)

Article Kargon, Jeremy; (2014)
The Logic of Color: Theory and Graphics in Christine Ladd-Franklin's Explanation of Color Vision (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201297/)

Article Brick, Greg; Alexander, E. Calvin, Jr.; (2012)
Early Graphic Representations of Groundwater Nitrate Concentrations (/p/isis/citation/CBB001211605/)

Article Jessica Carter; (2018)
Graph-algebras—Faithful representations and mediating objects in mathematics (/p/isis/citation/CBB329983095/)

Article Johnston, Stephen; (2010)
Wren, Hooke and Graphical Practice (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023550/)

Article Wimsatt, W. C.; (2012)
The Analytic Geometry of Genetics: Part I: The Structure, Function, and Early Evolution of Punnett Squares (/p/isis/citation/CBB001210189/)

Chapter Gieemann, Sebastian; (2008)
Graphen können alles. Visuelle Modellierung und Netzwerktheorie vor 1900 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001211731/)

Article Sachiko Kusukawa; (2019)
Introduction Making Visible: The Visual and Graphic Practices of the Early Royal Society (/p/isis/citation/CBB301285884/)