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10 - Imagery And Representation In Twentieth-Century Physics

from Part II - Discipline Building in the Sciences: Places, Instruments, Communication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Arthur Miller
Edited by
Mary Jo Nye
Mary Jo Nye
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
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Summary

Scientists have always expressed a strong urge to think in visual images, especially today with our new and exciting possibilities for the visual display of information. We can “see” elementary particles in bubble chamber photographs. But what is the deep structure of these images? A basic problem in modern science has always been how to represent nature, both visible and invisible, with mathematics, and how to understand what these representations mean. This line of inquiry throws fresh light on the connection between common sense intuition and scientific intuition, the nature of scientific creativity, and the role played by metaphors in scientific research.

We understand, and represent, the world about us not merely through perception but with the complex interplay between perception and cognition. Representing phenomena means literally re-presenting them as either text or visual image, or a combination of the two. But what exactly are we re-presenting? What sort of visual imagery should we use to represent phenomena? Should we worry that visual imagery can be misleading?

Consider Figure 10.1, which shows the visual image offered by Aristotelian physics for a cannonball’s trajectory. It is drawn with a commonsensical Aristotelian intuition in mind. On the other hand, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) realized that specific motions should not be imposed on nature. Rather, they should emerge from the theory’s mathematics – in this way should the book of nature be read. Figure 10.2 is Galileo’s own drawing of the parabolic fall of an object pushed horizontally off a table. It contains the noncommonsensical axiom of his new physics that all objects fall with the same acceleration, regardless of their weight, in a vacuum.

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Chapter
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The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 191 - 216
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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