The Meaning of a Scientific Image: Case Study in Nanoscience a Semiotic Approach

Abstract

This paper proposes a new approach for analysing daily activities in a laboratory. The case study presented is an analysis of shop-talk around a microscope. In addition to the classical approaches, such as ethnomethodology and anthropology of science, I argue that a microsemiotic approach could be useful to better understand what is at stake. The semiotic approach I shall use here was proposed by a group of Belgian semioticians: Groupe μ. This semiotic approach leads to a constructivist point of view: the meaning of a visual representation is progressively constructed and is very contextdependent. This semiotic approach is fruitful because it allows a very precise analysis of shop-talk recorded data, and gives a better account of the materiality of visual representations.

The Impact on Public Trust of Image Manipulation in Science

“…Contemporary visual culture suggests that our world is expressed through images, which are all around us. Therefore, we need to promote the reliability of scientific pictures, which visually represent knowledge, to add meaning in a world of complex high-tech science (Allamel-Raffin, 2011;Greenberg, 2004;Rosenberger, 2009). Since the time of Galileo, and today more than ever, scientific activity should be understood as knowledge produced to reveal, and therefore inform us of, (Wise, 2006) all that remains unexplained in our world, as well as everything beyond our senses.…”

Photography in the boundaries of the visible. From Santiago Ramón y Cajal to Cecil Frank Powell

“…In any case, the fact is that our contemporary visual culture has become ubiquitous, and the visual representation of knowledge is based on the collective reliability of assigning meaning to a complex high-tech scientific environment (Allamel-Raffin, 2011;Greenberg, 2004;Rosenberger, 2009). Since the time of Galileo, and today more than ever, scientific activity should be understood as the production of knowledge that aims to make visible, and therefore familiar (Wise, 2006), all that remains unexplained in our perceptual environment, as well as everything beyond our limited sensory experience.…”

“Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich’s sein!”—Partaking in the Nanoworld

“…Just like the informed stroller, the beholder of nanotechnological imagescapes does not take these as straightforward representations of facts but alternates between the modalities of positing and perceiving the world. Catherine Allamel-Raffin documented this alternation of perspectives in a nanotechnological laboratory: Layers, strata, zones, erosions, and grains provide orientation as the image is calibrated to render visible just those geological features of a sample [1].…”

“…As they negotiate the question of what they see, for instance on a microscopic image, they become a thought collective. Such a process of negotiation is described in detail by Catherine Allamel-Raffin [1]. The ethnographic transcript of a discussion during an observation session in the laboratory of the Interface/Surface group Fig.…”

“…The technoscientific perspective uncovers how these images implicate research practices since the achievement of basic capabilities of control includes, quite prominently, the capability to visualize processes and phenomena at the nanoscale. 1 As we will see, this is a matter not only of research technologies and the advancement of observational techniques. It is a matter also of developing a visual setting that exhibits knowledge and practice, surprise and control.…”