Faraday is often described as an experimentalist, but his work is a dialectical interplay of concrete objects, visual images, abstract, theoretically-informed visual models and metaphysical precepts. From phenomena described in terms of patterns formed by lines of force he created a general explanation of space-ªlling systems of force which obey both empirical laws and principles of conservation and economy. I argue that Faraday's articulation of situated experience via visual models into a theory capable of verbal expression owed much to his strategy of moving-via conjectural visual models-between the phenomenology of particulars (often displayed as patterns) and the general features of dynamical phenomena which he depicted as structures.Everyday human reasoning combines visual, auditory and other sensory experience with non-sensory information and of course, with verbal and symbolic modes of expression. Scientiªc reasoning is no different. Scientists use a variety of images that visualize phenomena, visual representations of theories about phenomena and models that display structure and connectivity. Such objects always combine visual and non-visual elements because scientiªc work requires representations that are hybrid (that combine verbal or symbolic expressions with visual and other sensory modalities) and plastic, enabling the meaning of an image, word or symbol to be negotiated and ªxed (Gooding 2004a(Gooding , 2004b. A diagrammatic rendering of a photograph of a fossil, X-ray, fMRI scan or bubble chamber track moves the eye and the mind from a barely interpreted visual source to a meaningful construct.
Narrative accounts misrepresent discovery by reconstructing worlds ordered by success rather than the world as explored. Such worlds rarely contain the personal knowledge that informed actual exploration and experiment. This article describes an attempt to recover situated learning in a material environment, tracing the discovery of the first electromagnetic motor by Michael Faraday in September 1821 to show how he modeled new experience and invented procedures to communicate that novelty. The author introduces a notation to map experiment as an active process in a real-world environment and to display the human agency written out of most narratives. Comparing maps of accounts shows how knowledge-construction depends on narrative reconstruction. It is argued that invention processes can be interpreted in the same way as discovery, and a study is proposed to compare packaging learned skills into demonstration devices with the innovative strategies of inventors such as Edison. If situational knowledge is as important as is claimed, computationalists need to join science studies scholars in coming to grips with nonverbal and procedural aspects of discovery and invention.
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