II.l SCIENCE AND PERCEPTION

emphasis: science as attention to material world, perception as knowledge

cross-referenced to: cognitive background

tapes :

• Excerpts from Leonardo's Deluge SIG 52
• Leonardo's notation of turbulent flow animated by Sims
• User Interface for Nanomanipulator SIG 96, haptic interactivity, "a remarkable feeling for a chemist ..."
• "The Nanomanipulator: a Virtual-Reality Interface for Scanning Tunneling Microscope", Taylor et al, CG Proceedings 1993, 127

print references:

A Feeling for the Organism, Evelyn Fox Keller on geneticist Barbara McLintock's observation of genetic structure

points:

l. observation

• how before why
• the naturalist tradition in science, c/f experimental tradition
• attention and pleasure, inattention and anxiety
• Evelyn Fox Keller 'erotic science'
• natural observation
• developed observation
• assisted observation (highspeed photograahy, microscopy)
• computer-synthesized observation
• technology: perception mechanically extended
• contemplation: perception enlarged internally

2. politics of the status of perception

• historical perception-thinking distinction
• cultures of desensorization
• perceptual denigration, cognitive hierarchization
• signifier vs. presence, semantic depth
• scientific visualization

3. perception as knowledge

• perception as cognitive structure
• insight/intuition as perceptual induction
• implicit vs. explicit knowledge
• implicit knowledge demonstrated in ability to simulate, e.g., draw from memory

4. self-visualizing phenomena: examples

• dry hill shows presence of water by difference of color
• markings on a shell show time progression of process that formed it
• vapour marks structure of air currents