Thinking About Science, Reflecting on Art by Otávio Bueno George Darby Steven French Dean Rickles & George Darby & Steven French & Dean Rickles

Author:Otávio Bueno,George Darby,Steven French,Dean Rickles & George Darby & Steven French & Dean Rickles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351629133
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

5 Seeing and imagining in the sciences

Perceptual imagining, as involved in the interpretation of scientific results, also plays an important role in the sciences. Consider, for instance, the use of the transmission electron microscope by George Palade (1955). When, in the early 1950s, he stumbled upon a number of dots scattered throughout the membranes of the cells that he was studying, and which were clearly visible on the images the electron microscope generated, he had no clear idea of what exactly he was seeing. He initially thought that the dots could be artifacts of the method of preparation of the sample. But, after changing the methods, the dots were still present in the resulting images. He then varied the animals from which the cells were being collected, and the parts of the body the cells came from. The dots were still there. At this point, he suspected that the dots were not an artifact of the experiment, but perhaps a genuine new cellular structure. After ultra-centrifuging the sample, and noting that the observed decantation time of the material was compatible with the measured size of the dots (which was done by using the data provided by the electron microscope), he concluded that a new cellular structure had been found.

Looking at the images of the cell and the multitude of dots near the membranes depicted on the surface of the image generated by the electron microscope, Palade did not know what exactly he was seeing. (His situation was not very different from the one the early users of optical microscopes faced when they saw microorganisms without knowing exactly what they were seeing.) He imagined that he was seeing an acid, but was unsure whether this was indeed the case. He had no idea of the function or the exact structure of those dots, and when he finally published the paper describing the results of his experiments and displaying the images he obtained, he gave it the least committing title possible: “A Small Particulate Component of the Cytoplasm” (Palade, 1955). A few years later, additional chemical analysis was implemented, and it was determined that these particulate components were indeed primarily composed of ribonucleic acid. They were then called “ribosomes.”

In order to imagine certain features of the ribosomes, Palade was being guided by the perceptual information provided by the electron microscope. In this process, he was invoking a form of perceptual imagination that is similar to the one involved in the experience of films. In both cases, the perceptual content provided by the images constrains and shapes the imagination of the relevant objects. The objects are imagined on the basis of how they are perceptually experienced, and the resulting interpretations are formulated taking into account the perceptual imagination in question.

As an additional example, consider the study of the surface of structures at the nanoscale, using scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) or atomic force microscopes (AFMs; Chen, 1993; Bueno, 2011). The data that are generated by these instruments provide information about objects that, however, is not sufficient to perceptually characterize them.

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