florisw's review against another edition
5.0
Over the past decade or so Objectivity has been considered a field-defining work, sparking discussions and continuing to be relevant in various scholarly disciplines. It was a partial inspiration for my PhD project, and I have now read it exactly with that in mind. As it has already been lauded by historians of science since it was first published, I don't see how my praises would add anything new. I look forward, rather, to seeing how historians will continue to use it critically and constructively. So perhaps I can comment on how I see this happening. In the foreword to the paperback edition Daston and Galison suggest various ways scholars can build on their work:
I'd like to add to this list a few of my own aims. First, Daston and Galison often use images as single coherent entities, with particular epistemic fingerprints which situate them in the historical framework of objectivity they construct. Yet this means that visualisation practices and methods are considered retroactively; the image is always introduced before the process which led up to it. I wonder if different conclusions can be drawn from starting with observation and/or illustration methods, and seeing how these lead to different types of images (e.g. say you want to picture an electron, how do you get to that point from scratch, and how do the methods you choose impact your image?). Especially those historians concerned with tacit knowledge, who may contend whether images are fundamentally the product of epistemic decisions, would find in such an approach a way of highlighting how technologies and gestures influence visual ontology.
Second, whereas Daston and Galison limit themselves (justifiably, as the book is already quite ambitious in scope) to the history of objectivity in the North-American and European contexts, there is certainly much scope for more global approaches. I'm thinking particularly about exchanges between different cultures: if images are encoded with epistemic virtues and practices, are they then decoded differently in different cultural contexts? In the context of my own interest in snowflake visualisation, the transfer of snowflake images around the turn of the nineteenth century from the Netherlands to Japan presents an enticing case study. In what ways do Japanese snowflake images produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century compare to those made by the Dutch several decades earlier? What can such similarities and differences tell us about the epistemology of scientific images in East Asian cultures compared to European ones?
Third, whereas Daston and Galison construct a macro-narrative about what they consider to be the progressive layering of the history of objectivity (truth-to-nature, mechanical objectivity, trained judgement), it might be interesting to see how a narrower (but still longue durée) view would relate to this narrative. One could do so by choosing a (relatively) consistent object that cuts through all of these layers, presenting as it were a cross-sectional perspective on this layering, exposing how different technologies, practices, and epistemic virtues affect the visualisation of one particular object. This is definitely something I'm keen to explore, in combination with the other two avenues for expansion, as well as Daston and Galison's own list. In the meantime I can only highly recommend this book.
We imagined this study as a beginning rather than an end. We hoped that it would engage the curiosity of other scholars about topics that do not yet have a history, despite their leading role in creating modern science: the forms and requirements of collective empiricism, the ways in which scientific experience is molded by image-making and image-reading, the entanglement of epistemology and ethos in epistemic virtues, the mutations of the scientific self, the mesh between the most concrete image-making practices and the most abstract epistemological goals. (p. 6)
I'd like to add to this list a few of my own aims. First, Daston and Galison often use images as single coherent entities, with particular epistemic fingerprints which situate them in the historical framework of objectivity they construct. Yet this means that visualisation practices and methods are considered retroactively; the image is always introduced before the process which led up to it. I wonder if different conclusions can be drawn from starting with observation and/or illustration methods, and seeing how these lead to different types of images (e.g. say you want to picture an electron, how do you get to that point from scratch, and how do the methods you choose impact your image?). Especially those historians concerned with tacit knowledge, who may contend whether images are fundamentally the product of epistemic decisions, would find in such an approach a way of highlighting how technologies and gestures influence visual ontology.
Second, whereas Daston and Galison limit themselves (justifiably, as the book is already quite ambitious in scope) to the history of objectivity in the North-American and European contexts, there is certainly much scope for more global approaches. I'm thinking particularly about exchanges between different cultures: if images are encoded with epistemic virtues and practices, are they then decoded differently in different cultural contexts? In the context of my own interest in snowflake visualisation, the transfer of snowflake images around the turn of the nineteenth century from the Netherlands to Japan presents an enticing case study. In what ways do Japanese snowflake images produced in the early decades of the nineteenth century compare to those made by the Dutch several decades earlier? What can such similarities and differences tell us about the epistemology of scientific images in East Asian cultures compared to European ones?
Third, whereas Daston and Galison construct a macro-narrative about what they consider to be the progressive layering of the history of objectivity (truth-to-nature, mechanical objectivity, trained judgement), it might be interesting to see how a narrower (but still longue durée) view would relate to this narrative. One could do so by choosing a (relatively) consistent object that cuts through all of these layers, presenting as it were a cross-sectional perspective on this layering, exposing how different technologies, practices, and epistemic virtues affect the visualisation of one particular object. This is definitely something I'm keen to explore, in combination with the other two avenues for expansion, as well as Daston and Galison's own list. In the meantime I can only highly recommend this book.
megbriers's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
adding this to my folder of texts that are classified 'how have they made such incredible points while still keeping their prose so readable'
such a great dive into objectivity and its relationship to the practices of image making in a variety of (albeit european) contexts and i feel very happy to have had the opportunity to just go cover to cover through it. excited to see how this aligns to representations of eclipses across the 19c in my research!
such a great dive into objectivity and its relationship to the practices of image making in a variety of (albeit european) contexts and i feel very happy to have had the opportunity to just go cover to cover through it. excited to see how this aligns to representations of eclipses across the 19c in my research!
canamac's review against another edition
4.0
necessarily incomplete bc of its ambitious scope, but the book is all the more valuable because of what it cannot capture and the places that invite other insertions from other fields or case studies. not to mention that it does an amazing job of anticipating criticisms and asserting the grounds of its argument: that it is possible to trace a history of objectivity and other epistemic virtues/values.
kyletuhr's review
3.5
made me really reconsider how objectivity has been developed as a concept, and how all scientific "givens" are constructed and constantly changing! making me think abt climate
but it did feel very slow and a bit difficult to get through honestly.. would've preferred reading just an article instead
but it did feel very slow and a bit difficult to get through honestly.. would've preferred reading just an article instead
nickrs's review
4.0
Blessedly lucid (and slightly redundant—but these often go hand in hand). The limitation to scientific atlases and image/non-image problems certainly shapes its conclusions, but Daston & Galison's dissensus-oriented overlap model of "epistemic virtues" can actually account, reflexively, for the partiality of their schemata. Those schemata lodge nicely in the brain, and it's nice to leave a book like this without the usual hangover of aporia-paralysis or last-minute appeal to relevance/urgency/hope. Instead: a battle of virtues, a self in flux, changing epistemologies in answer to new fears.
bojangles's review
4.0
Brilliant, of course, but also painfully repetitive in stating its thesis. Those repetitions can be easily skipped without losing much meaning. One of the few academic texts I'd recommend to someone who wasn't actively doing research on the subject area.
More...