The Scientific Gaze

Developing a theory for the analysis of natural

scientific perception

Kulturvetenskap med samtidsinriktning 41-60

Konst, Kultur, Kommunikation

Written by Adam Brenthel

Supervisor Tommy Lindholm

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Table of contents

1. Introduction 3

Questions 4

Empirical method 5

Theoretical background 7

Disposition 9

2. The Practice of Visual Representation in Science 10

The theoretical framework – Part one 11

Theoretical framework - Part two 13The Gaze and different episteme 15

3. The experiment 18

The work process 20Preparations of the specimen for SEM 20

Analysing the image 23

4. The scientific gaze 25

The Image 25

The Observer 27The role of education 28

The space of the gaze 29

References 30

Appendix 1 32

Appendix 2 33

Appendix 3 34

Appendix 4 35

Appendix 5 36

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1. Introduction

The objective of this paper is to develop a theory for analysing the

practice of representing the world with visualizations in the form of

different images and the scientific gaze that renders these images

meaningful. These images are often combined with text, since the

natural sciences are lexivisual practices. For natural scientists

these visual and lexivisual representations appear totally

unproblematic. Scientific representations can be many kinds of

pictures, graphs, tables or diagrams and are seen as vehicles of

knowledge; in their concrete and tangible form we call them images

but they can also be displayed, screened and projected. I will not

directly deal with mental images or conceptions of the world, only as

one way to understand what renders the tangible images meaningful.

But of course, the conflict between a culturalistic and a natural

scientific conception of the world runs through this paper, as the

empirical material is natural scientific and the analysis is

culturalistic.

Scientists use, produce and distribute the scientific images in their

daily work. Still the images are not questioned at all within the

scientific community, they are not reflected upon. I see mainly two

general problems with the practice of scientific visual

representation:

First, these visualizations are accessible and intelligible in

their fullness only for scientists. This constitutes a relational

problem of power between those who are scientifically educated and

those who are not. The problem is not unique for natural science;

every discipline of knowledge tends to exclude those who are not

scientifically disciplined. The problem has been described as

scientific visual illiteracy1.

Second, natural scientists lack in some aspects a reflexive

approach to their visualization practices. Maybe it’s home-blindness,

or natural scientists acquire an aspect-seeing/blindness resulting

from social or educational disciplining. These two problems should be

critical for contemporary natural science; the apparatus for

scientific image production is developing fast and are becoming more

efficient and ubiquitous. We live in the “spectacle” age according to

Guy Debord, Foucault claims that it is the “surveillance” society and

Martin Jay suggest that we should study it as a “scopic regime”,

1 Trumbo. Visual Cultures of Science. Pp. 266-285

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whereas W.J.T Mitchell has it that philosophy has taken a “pictorial

turn” after the engagement with text. The point is that

contemporary/post modern philosophy is totally engaged with the

question of the image. Still natural scientists regard the image as

unproblematic.

My working hypothesis; there is a natural scientific gaze that

renders scientific images meaningful and useful. By developing a

theory for analysing and describing this gaze from a Cultural Studies

perspective, the practice of visual representation in natural science

will be opened up for criticism. The empirical departure point of

this paper is a field study in a zoological laboratory. I follow a

doctoral student working with a SEM – Scanning Electron Microscope.

SEM is used for high magnification of non-living specimens. This

paper brings into play the outcome of this laboratory work – the

scientific images, the context of image production and the production

of meaning for its analysis, which will be performed from a social,

cultural, discursive and power perspective i.e. a Cultural Studies

perspective. Since Cultural Studies by tradition is mostly engaged

with the study of popular culture; film, television, pop-art,

literature from a reader perspective, it is necessary to point out

that I am not focusing on the popular perspective of science. That

would be popularized science discourse but instead intra-relational

science discourse and educational discourse, still from a “reader”

vantage point, the trained or in-training scientist perspective.

Questions

1.How does the scientific gaze render the images meaningful in this

particular experiment?

2. How is the scientific gaze of this researcher constituted?

3.Where does this scientific gaze take its beholder?

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Empirical method

Walking through the laboratory, observing, asking questions,

sometimes socializing with the research colleagues. This was neither

an interview situation, nor observation; instead it was a go-along,

as Kusenbach presents it2. The go-along overcomes the ambiguity when

choosing generally from the two methods in ethnography – interview or

participatory observation. In the interview situation the object of

inquiry is detached from the “normal” context, socially and

spatially. The context and practices that produces meaning are

absent. The material obtained will be limited to the questions the

ethnographer raises and to what the informant recalls and retells.

The other option, participatory observation, will produce less

empirical material to work with since not much is said in the

laboratory; lengthy periods of silence characterize the material

obtained in the digital sound recorder. The time needed for

conducting a proper participatory observation was not at hand.

Laboratory shoptalk is incoherent and the work is hard to follow for

an outsider in the laboratory3, either the outsider gets in the way

or gets lost. Performing the go-along, the ethnographic observer

follows the object in the daily life, in this case in the laboratory,

taking notes, photos, asking question and acting in a normal way, in

the meaning of blending into the surroundings. Kusenbach sees the

following advantages with the go-along method as compared with

interview or observation.

First, go-alongs unveil the complex layering and filtering of

perception: they can help ethnographers reconstruct how personal

sets of relevancies guide their informants’ experiences of the

social and physical environment in everyday life. Second, go-

alongs offer insights into the texture of spatial practices by

revealing the subjects’ various degrees and types of engagement in

and with the environment. Third, go-alongs provide unique access

to personal biographies. They highlight the many links between

places and life histories, thus uncovering some of the ways in

which individuals lend depth and meaning to their mundane

routines. Fourth, go-alongs can illuminate the social architecture

of natural settings such as neighborhoods. They make visible the

complex web of connections between people, that is, their various

relationships, groupings and hierarchies; and they reveal how

2 Kusenbach. Street Phenomenology: The go-along as ethtnographicresearch tool.3 Latour. Science in Action.

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informants situate themselves in the local social landscape.

Fifth, go-alongs facilitate explorations of social realms, that

is, the distinct spheres of reality that are shaped by varying

patterns of interaction. 4

Since the physical room, the laboratory, and other spaces too, both

material and virtual, are important in this paper, a method that

takes into account both environmental perception and spatial

practices is well suited. The instructions I gave the researcher

concerning my presence, was to treat me as he would treat a

colleague, to use whatever words, concepts and language he normally

would. My own background as biologist helped me to be treated more

like a fellow colleague, and less like an ethnographer. The go-along

allowed me to observe the shaping of perception as an insider, or as

Kusenbach write:

Go-alongs can sensitize ethnographers to the idiosyncratic sets of

relevancies that govern their informants’ environmental

experiences. Being able to witness in situ the filtering and

shaping of their subjects’ perceptions. 5

I followed the experimenter with digital sound recorder and digital

camera during three days of work, asking questions and observing,

trying to witness just that filtering and shaping of perception. An

obvious problem with my empirical method is that the go-alongs are

short compared with the time our experimenter spent and will spend in

the laboratory. Never the less, my own background as biologist,

minimize the time spent to grasp the fundamentals of laboratory life,

allowing me to focus on the experimenter and this particular

experiment. The downside is that my background has shaped my own

perception, the very same perception I now seek to describe. Being

aware of that I still consider the chosen method well suited for this

field study. Still, the go-along is described by Kusenbach as a

phenomenological method6 but my framework is cultural theoretical,

treating science production as a sociocultural practice. The relation

between phenomenology and cultural studies could be problematized but

that is a task for another paper.

4 Kusenbach. Street Phenomenology: The go-along as ethtnographicresearch tool. p. 466.5 ibid. p. 469.6 Ibid. p. 455.

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I will bring the laboratory to the reader of this paper since most

readers probably never have been in a laboratory. The digital

material obtained during those days is presented as a slideshow and a

pod cast. The pod cast is used as an introduction to laboratory work

and scientific image production, but it is also an empirical source

of this paper. Even though this paper has a fieldwork as a point of

departure, the focus will be the philosophical, historical, cultural

and social context of laboratory work and scientific image

production, not the actual work. The empirical material that I will

use in the paper is limited to what was obtained during those days in

the laboratory. Since the outcome of that work only is a small part

of a coming article I cannot follow the images outside the

institution, but the images will result in a zoological article

later. There is only one complicating factor as I see it, to use too

much of our researcher’s material would compromise the trust that

made the go-along possible, unpublished material is delicate to

handle because the yet not common known is very valuable.

Theoretical background

To begin this brief theoretical background; Ludwig Fleck was one of

the first to question the epistemology of natural science from a

cultural and social perspective. The book The Genesis and Development

of a Scientific Fact, translated to English in 1935, can

anachronistically be called an early social constructivist work. He

developed the concept of thought collectives, also known as thought

styles in the 1930s. In the book, Fleck argued that scientific facts

are dependent on the collective way scientists think and that this

thinking changes over time. Therefore, scientific truth is

unattainable and scientific knowledge production cannot be

unidirectional or cumulative. He did this, not as a trained

philosopher or historian, but as a practising medical microbiologist.

The same goes for Thomas S. Kuhn, also he a science practitioner, a

physicist and not philosopher or sociologist, though he taught a

course in history of science on Harvard in the late 40s to the mid

50s. Kuhn takes as his departure the thoughts of Fleck when he writes

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. Kuhn uses historical

examples to show how the way scientists think has dramatically

changed over time; the Copernican revolution, Lavoisier discovery of

oxygen and disproval of the phlogiston theory and explaining what

caused these changes. As the title reveals, the change in thinking

over time is revolutionary, overthrowing old knowledge and way of

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thinking, replacing it with new ways. The way scientists think and

work is called a paradigm. In the beginning of a paradigm, new

textbooks are written, the history rewritten to conform to current

paradigm. New techniques and instruments are developed. Science in

this phase is flourishing and very productive, the phase is called

normal science, in time anomalies and contradictions will arise

within the paradigm, straining it but not giving away until a new

credible paradigm can replace the old in a revolution. The new and

the old paradigm are incommensurable, lacking a common ground for

understanding each other, that is why the change must be

revolutionary and this makes linear accumulation of knowledge

impossible. Much is similar to the Foucauldian criticism of science,

though Foucault focus on similarities within epistemes instead of the

process of change and his concept is much broader, including all

possible knowledge in a given time. After Kuhn groups of sociologists

started to investigate scientific institutions, ethical norms and

systems of rewards to give it sociological explanations. The most

well known group is the “strong programme” (David Bloor, Barry

Barnes, Steven Shapin), focusing on explaining scientific “beliefs”.

The “strong programme” did not deal with the technical aspects of

science but had an outsider perspective. The needs to understand

science as a situated practice lead many academics to do

methodological studies (Karin Knorr-Cetina, Michael Lynch, H.M.

Collins, Steve Woolgar, John Law). One of the more known is Bruno

Latour, a French sociologist of science who also has been engaged in

the questioning of the scientific images. Latour claims that science

only can be understood if studied as a practice and has been one of

the founders of the Actant Network Theory (ANT). ANT is a

constructivist attempt to describe the interaction between human and

non-human in a material-semiotic network. The similarities to the

material of this paper are apparent. The major works of Latour that

deals with these questions are Laboratory Life: The construction of

Scientific Facts and Science in Action. ANT has inspired many others

within Social Studies of Science and Feminist Studies of Science.

Foucault’s work opened up for the study of visual culture of

medicine, for example Karin Johannisson and Lisa Cartwright. But

there are also Donna Haraway, writer of Manifesto for Cyborgs, Judith

Butler, Evelyn Fox Keller and Sandra Harding to mention a few of the

he feminist critics of scientific representation and language.

My theoretical framework for this paper consists of selected parts

from the art historian Jonathan Crary, cultural theorist Martin Jay,

feminist and film theorist Lisa Cartwright and Michel Foucault. I

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draw mainly from these four to construct the theoretical framework

(presented in chapter one) that will allow me to analyse the

scientific gaze and the images. The first analytical assemblage is

the episteme analysis that helps me to talk about science as a

discursive practice and power. The second assemblage is the gaze as

an epistemological apparatus – how seeing is connected to knowing.

Disposition

The next chapter gives a theoretical framework for the following two

chapters. Here I present relevant work done by others on topics in

the vicinity of mine and necessary theory and philosophy. It starts

with a discussion on what characterizes the scientific images. Then

follows the theoretical framework made from “Foucauldian bricks” that

structures the analysis.

Chapter three is a description of the experiment that produced the

images in question. It is both a basic protocol of how the experiment

is carried out and a compilation of what was said about the produced

images by the experimenter. This chapter is complemented with a

slideshow and a pod cast.

In Chapter four I test my theory by applying it on the scientific

gaze. Here I present my conclusions and suggestions on follow-ups.

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2. The Practice of Visual Representation in

Science

Scientific images are often seen as naturalistic representations of

the world, meaning derived from real life or nature but also being

naturalistic in the artistic meaning of the word – true to life,

realistic or mimetic representations. These images can in some way be

described as naturalistic in the first meaning but not in the latter

since scientific images are always rendered or transformed to become

useful. Lynch describes four modes of transforming images to make

them more useful or theoretical. These transformations are filtering,

uniforming, upgrading and defining. Filtering can be removing unused

visuality from the image material in order to direct the gaze toward

relevant information or simply to extract material to make a separate

diagram. When visual conventions are laid down over the image, for

example using colour fields or shading, Lynch call it uniforming.

Upgrading is when dim differences are made distinct or fragments

missing are restored and when parts of the same structure are made

more alike and at the same time different from other structure, the

transformation is called defining. All this is done to make the image

come closer to an eidetic image - a mental image of how it really

looks, according to Lynch. Lynch’s four modes shed light on the fact

that there are many different ways to make images more “scientific”

and he contributes to a vocabulary on these images. The point is that

scientific images are regarded as “naturalistic” – meaning showing

the real, when they are rather showing an idea of what is real. The

images correspond more to an eidetic conception than they are

naturalistic images. An objection to this statement could be that the

eidetic idea is constructed from naturalistic images. I will return

to this question in chapter three concerning the role of education.7

If you read a natural science article, there will be many images

in it, whereas in an essay in the humanities is it likely that there

will be no images. Natural science is both lexivisual in the meaning

that image and text contribute to each other – images showing what

the text says. But also that text can invade the images, becoming

part of the visual. Apparently, there is no conflict between the text

and image, they can reside on the same surface, elsewhere is this

potential conflict taken as an explanation why studies on scientific

images are so difficult. As Michael Lynch points out concerning the

analysis of scientific visual documentation:

7 Lynch. Representation in Scientific Practice. p. 161.

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“Verbal propositions, arguments, references, analogies, metaphors,

and ideas have received much greater attention as constituents of

scientific reasoning and rhetoric. The imbalance may be due to the

fact that methods for analysing verbal materials are more

developed than those for analysing pictures. The fact that writing

is the dominant medium of academic discourse is not incidental;

while pictorial subject matter is alien to written discourse, and

requires a reduction to make it amenable to analysis, written

subject matter can be iterated without any “gap” within the

textual surface that analyses it”8

Still, this does not seem to stop the study of art or visual

culture. The “gap” that always is produced when describing the visual

with text is maybe unbridgeable, but that is not wholly the answer to

why scientists and academics often seem to avoid questions of the

scientific images.

The theoretical framework – Part one

In the structuralist book The Order of Things9 Foucault outlines a

criticism of the history of knowledge. It is a comparative study of

grammar with philology, biology with natural history, and study of

wealth with political economy. Foucault tries to find the

epistemological rupture on an archaeological plane that explains the

transformation of philology into grammar, study of wealth into

political economy and natural history into biology. These

transformations occur about the same time for these three areas of

knowledge. One discipline of knowledge cannot arise from the failure

or absence of another. Biology and natural history may have knowledge

of the same objects, but it is not the same knowledge. Natural

history knew the history of many plants and animals, but not in the

meaning of genealogy. Natural history knew the names and living

conditions of these plants and animals and placed them in a hortus

siccus, a dry garden. In these dry gardens the natural historian

could arrange plants and animals according to their presumed

relationships, every species at a god-given place. Linnaeus combined

all histories of the living (and dead) he could find, giving every

species a Latin name. But it was not a science of life. Life was

first invented as biology arose on the historical scene, when Cuvier

toppled the glass jars in the zoological museum in Paris. The

8 Representation in Scientific Practice ed.Lynch and Woolgar p.153.9 Foucault. The Order of Things.

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dissection of the animals in the glass jars opened up for new

knowledge, the gaze now saw the invisible. Dissection and autopsy

opened up the body to reveal life. Paradoxically, death was the price

paid for knowledge of life. Foucault searched for the ruptures that

explain this moment of dramatic transformation and find that they

coincide for many areas of knowledge, pointing to an explanation on

another level. These levels are called strata, borrowing from

archaeology and geology. Foucault finds two fault lines in the

epistemological bedrock that supports the strata above; they run

under several areas of knowing 1650 and 1800 corresponding to the

rise of natural history and the invention of life with biology.

Foucault has a constructivist view on science; he is one of the

founders of social constructivist criticism of science. This is how

he articulates the aim of The Order of Things which describes his

position well:

I should like to know whether the subjects responsible for

scientific discourse are not determined in their situation, their

function, their perceptive capacity, and their practical

possibilities by conditions that dominate and even overwhelm them.

In short, I tried to explore scientific discourse not from the

point of view of the individual who are speaking, nor from the

point of view of the formal structures of what they are saying,

but from the point of view of the rules that come into play in the

very existence of such discourse: what conditions did Linnaeus (or

Petty, or Arnauld) have to fulfil, not to make his discourse

coherent and true in general, but to give it, at the time when it

was written and accepted – or, more exactly, as naturalist,

economic, or grammatical discourse?”10 (My italics)

Following The Order of Things came The Archaeology of Knowledge11; it

can be read as a methodology book and is the end of Foucault’s

archaeological period12. His method to identify the epistemes that

explain what can be known during a certain epoch is discourse

analytical. According to his method; to do a discursive/epistemic

analysis you must go to the archives and read everything that has

been written on a special subject, not discriminating between high

and low, famous, infamous and unknown. The episteme determine all

10 Foucault. The Order of Things. p.xiv11 Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge.12 Jay. Downcast Eyes. p.407.

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that can be said in a meaningful way, not only scientifically. An

important point to make is that the episteme is not a repressive

structure that is determined by those in “power”. The episteme in

which power is exercised is productive, instead of only repressive.

Power is always productive according to Foucault and power cannot

belong to anyone but only be exercised in relations. It does not say

whether power is good or bad, only always present13

Foucault’s analysis of episteme is used in this paper to

understand what unites the intra-science readers of scientific

images and how the gaze is employed, not to find a repressive or

conspiratorial superstructure. Power is exercised through the

images, there is nothing behind them – everything is there on

their flat surface. The episteme concept is used to talk about

contemporary biology, as a mental tool to grasp the conceptual

scaffold that makes possible science as a shared understanding.

Another possibility would have been to use the paradigm concept,

as Kuhn14 defines it or Flecks thought styles 15. But the paradigm

concept focuses more on differences, why paradigms change over

time and less on what unites them16.

Theoretical framework - Part two

The second Foucauldian theoretical brick that composes the framework

of my analysis is the gaze as an epistemological apparatus. The Gaze

is a topic that Foucault designate primary in the books The Birth of

the Clinic and Surveillance and Punish but also in The Order of

Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge. In Surveillance and Punish

Foucault presents an analysis of how visuality is deployed as a

disciplining tool in contemporary society. He takes Jeremy Bentham’s

Panopticon as a model for how that power is deployed in society

(1975), that analysis is probably what Foucault is most known for

today. Therefore is it necessary to stress that I am not doing an

analysis from Foucault’s panopticon concept even though I will use

parts of Surveillance and Punish. From a visuality vantage point is

the “Society of surveillance” a consequence of the gaze as an

epistemological apparatus. When Man becomes a subject with a gaze

that produces knowledge, it is knowledge of man himself that is

produced. Man becomes an “observed spectator”, observed by himself.

“Man functioned both as an alleged neutral metasubject of knowledge

13 Foucault. Power.14 Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.15 Ludwig Fleck. The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact.16 Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

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and as its proper object, viewed from afar”17 I will use the part of

Foucault’s work that deals with seeing and knowing – how the gaze is

connected to knowledge and how this gaze is deployed, not primarily

to discipline others but to gain knowledge. Then, this potent gaze

may be a product of discipline in school, which inevitably is a part

of the panopticon.

In her book Screening the Body – tracing visual culture in

medicine, Lisa Cartwright uses Foucault as a starting point when

analysing the “scientific” uses of cinema from a feminist

perspective.

Foucault has described the penetration of the medical gaze into

the interior of the body in the practice of pathological anatomy

as “the technique of the corpse”. He notes that the opening up of

the body in autopsy in hopes of exposing to sight the seat of

disease ultimately failed to render pathology fully visible but

lead the physician instead to traces of the disease mapped upon

organs and surfaces. The qualitative and empirical gaze of

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century anatomoclinical perception that

Foucault describes overlapped with and was ultimately challenged

by the relentless analytical and quantitative gaze demonstrated in

the cases considered in this volume, a mode of perception

carefully incubated within the laboratories of physiologist and

medical scientists and finding its expressions in an unlikely

range and mix of institutions and practices, including the

hospital, the popular cinema film, the scientific experiment, and

modernist artwork.18

Cartwright shows how the film, which records and quantifies the

visual, complements the gaze and sometimes challenged it. Film

becomes a tool for the gaze in medicine. Much work has been done on

the medical uses of images; Foucault is the main contributor and

departure point of that discourse. Even though scientists of the

zoological laboratory use some of the same techniques that medicine

uses for producing knowledge, science and medicine are not identical

practices. It is an obvious statement, but humans and animals come

from the same origin, and from a biologist standpoint humans are

animals. But from a political standpoint humans are not animals;

animals do not have the same rights as humans for example. That could

be one reason why less critical work has been done concerning the

17 Foucault. The Order of Tings. p.318.18 Cartwright. Sceening the Body – tracing medicines visual culture.

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visualization in natural science than in medicine – medicine is in

part a political instrument. That can to some extent explain why the

usage of images in medicine is more studied than in natural science,

even though it is principally the same images. Foucault shows how

medicine became a science by using a language, both verbally and

visually that is analogue to natural science, but natural science

itself stay a somewhat blind spot.

The Gaze and different episteme

On the exterior, on the surface of the body, signs had to be read in

order to establish what the patient was suffering from in 18th century

medicine. If this reading is pursued correctly, seeing will say what

disease it is, but only if the patient died was it possible to know

more precisely which disease it was. In autopsy, in the interior of

the body, on surfaces of the tissues of the organs – there is the

disease totally visible and thereby knowable. Death is paradoxically

the key to knowledge of life. This is maybe the most fundamental

difference from a Foucauldian perspective between early medicine and

natural science, in biology it was and still is politically accepted

to kill for knowledge, not in medicine. Model animals are brought up

and carefully studied only to be experimented on and killed in a more

controlled way; for example the well known fruit fly Drosophila

melanogaster. The fish that is used in this experiment is one of the

first (or last) animals seen from an evolutionary perspective that

has animal rights since it belong to the group of the most primitive

vertebrates. Swedish law draws a line between vertebrates and

invertebrates; only animals with backbone have rights.19 There are

much more politics in medicine than in biology, explaining the

pursuit to unveil medicine. I am not trying to show that science also

has a political foundation as Foucault showed that medicine has. Even

though I consider the foundation of science ideological, we can

choose to call that foundation an episteme, a paradigm or evidence

based practice, depending on where we come from academically.

The qualitative gaze was replaced with a quantitative gaze as the

surface of the inner organs and tissues did not reveal everything

about life. Cartwright traces this epistemic shift and it coincides

with the usage of film in medicine. In the natural sciences the shift

probably came earlier, maybe with the organic chemistry. But it is

not the aim of this paper to find that shift; I only conclude that

19 Supplement till Centrala Försöksdjursnämndens skriftserie Nr 45, p.18. ISBN 91-974001-8-1. Stockholm, 2003.

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natural science is a quantitative science. Modern biology episteme is

dominated by molecular techniques that can be nothing but

quantitative. But the gaze is still a qualitative tool eclipsed by

the natural sciences self-identification as quantitative. Still, the

theoretical point of departure used by Cartwright with her focus on

how the objects of study is disciplined can be used for the study of

visual culture of natural science. Jonathan Crary on the other hand

leaves the objects and the visual material behind and focuses on the

observer, asking how the modern observer has been constructed and

described, an approach that I will borrow from to get a hold on the

scientist as beholder of the gaze:

Though obviously one who sees, an observer is more importantly one

who sees within a prescribed set of possibilities, one who is

embedded in a system of conventions and limitations. And by

“conventions” I mean to suggest far more than representational

practices. If it can be said there is an observer specific to

nineteenth century, or to any period, it is only as an effect of

an irreducibly heterogeneous system of discursive, social,

technological, and institutional relations. There is no observing

subject prior to this continually shifting field.20

His intention is to write an alternative history of vision, using

different vision devices he searches for archaeological ruptures,

borrowing from Foucault, contesting accepted art history of vision:

Whether perception or vision changes is irrelevant, for they have

no autonomous history. What changes are the plural forces and

rules composing the field in which perception occurs. And what

determines vision at a given historical moment is not some deep

structure, economic base, or worldview, but rather the function of

a collective assemblage of disparate parts on a single social

surface. It may even be necessary to consider the observer as a

distribution of events located in many different places. There

never was or will be a self-present beholder to whom a world is

transparently evident.21

Crarys work is useful in my analysis of the interpreter of scientific

images. As soon as you claim that there is no “self-present beholder

to whom a world is transparently evident”, then you must examine the

20 Crary, Techniques of the obsever. p.6.21 ibid.

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beholder to know what this beholder sees, but the individual beholder

is only interesting as a member of a discursive episteme22. I will

examine what the scientist in the SEM-laboratory sees in the

scientific images, not to psychologize or historize him but to

conclude from that what the episteme makes possible to see. According

to Crary is it possible to grasp this observer by studying practices

distributed in many different places, but on a single social surface,

the laboratory in my case.

22 Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge.

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3. The experiment

This experiment is carried out to reveal a story. The story of how

vision has evolved on earth. In the images produced during this

experiment, there are signs that can be interpreted to tell that

story, but these signs are maybe only legible to the scientist, to

others the images stay mute but beautiful. By retelling and analysing

the story of this experiment, I hope to reveal a story of the

scientific gaze.

The aim for our experimenter’s PhD project is to establish

relationships in critical vertebrate groups by studying eye

morphology. He is doing this within a larger group of other doctoral

students, senior researcher and professors, constituting The Vision

Group in Lund.23 On their homepage, they describe their research:

Our specialty is the design and evolution of eyes, and especially

how eyes are adapted to the lifestyles and habitats of animals.

Four major research themes are pursued, with techniques ranging

from optics, electrophysiology and theoretical modeling, to

electron microscopy, molecular biology and visual behavior.24

The four major research themes pursued in The Vision Group are: eye

designs, evolution and development of visual systems, vision in dim

light, and color and polarization vision. Our researcher is engaged

in eye design and the evolution and development of visual systems,

where he is focusing on the lamprey, bichir, lake sturgeon and shark.

By doing visual analysis (microscopy, schlieren photography and lens

laser scanning, in vivo photo refractor metrics) he is establishing

the relations of these fishes and thereby the genealogy and the

development of multifocal lenses; which are enabling colour vision in

eyes with short depth of focus, necessary for colour vision under

water. The work our researcher performs is done with the most modern

of instruments, high-tech and very expensive. He is working within

the modern molecular paradigm, but visual culturally he is still

connected to Linnaeus. Today, genetics is presented, at least in

popular writings of science, as the final solution to the question of

genealogy. But as our researcher points out, genetics are still “only

a qualified guess based on mathematical algorithms”. True

evolutionary relations can always be discussed, and there will always

be lacunas in the family tree. Extinct species will be unknown unless

23 www.biol.lu.se/cellorgbiol/visiongroup24 www.biol.lu.se/funkmorf/vision/index.html

19

they are found as fossils and it is hard to extract DNA from fossils

since it degrades. Many extinct species have lived on our planet but

today no physical trace of them can be found. Our researcher will do

genetic analysis in a specific genetic locus on all species he is

studying. The genetic constitution of an individual organism is

called a genotype; the expressed and visible character is the

corresponding phenotype. These are the two levels of analysis that he

is working on. In the visible analysis, which is the level I am

studying, he is searching for morphological characteristics that can

be compared with the closly related fishes presented above. The

visible analysis he uses is in some way the same conceptual model as

Linnaeus used. As Linnaeus belonged to an earlier episteme, that of

natural history according to Foucault, there are interesting

comparisons that can be made on the level of visual culture between a

qualitative and a quantitative epistemology. I will return to this in

the last chapter.

The aim of this particular experiment was to magnify the eye of a

Cuvier’s bichir, Polypterus senagalus, to establish useful

characters. By comparing with fish he studied before, discussions

with his supervisor and consulting the literature, three loci in

these fish eyes seem to be particularly interesting. These loci are;

the attachment of the lens to the eye globe; which can be an

intraocular muscle plus one or more suspensor ligaments, one or

several membranes, a ciliary body with ligaments and an extra-ocular

muscle. The second locus of interest is the stiffness of the lens,

which is hard to measure but is felt during dissection. The third

locus is the surface of the lens cells, which constitutes the lens;

these are always elongated but can be flat, round, regular, irregular

or protrusion/spotted. Other locus in the structure of the eye may

prove useful later, hopefully they will be found in the work process.

Everything is documented as image files with names connecting them to

species and structure. This is done to create a gallery of images

where characters can be compared to study possible relationship. This

experiment, as most ones, is part research and part training –

training both for the researcher’s eyes and hands. Many images have

been and will be produced with the SEM without knowing exactly what

he is looking for, rather he does it for the sake of looking,

training his eyes, establishing an aspect seeing. The eye characters

that will be valuable for the production of articles will hopefully

appear before his eyes, maybe on images where they could not be seen

before in his dry garden, the digital gallery.

20

The work process

The work from preparation of necessary solutions of buffers and

fixation to the final image took four days in the laboratory, spread

out over two weeks. I followed the experiment during three days. When

the specimen is fixated and dry, it can be stored for quite a long

time, many months in a freezer. Good specimen will be stored, only

degrading when used in the SEM, due to the harsh electron treatment.

The preparation text that follows will be complemented with a

slideshow and pod cast.

Preparations of the specimen for SEM

After a meeting in the institution concerning the economical

compensation for teaching undergraduate classes, our researcher

started the experiment looking for a colleague that had some spare

buffer. Preparations take most of the time and this was an attempt to

save some time. A buffer is a mixture of an acid and alkali (the

opposite of an acid), reacting with each other. The buffer solution

prevents the pH to drop or rise violently when other acids or alkali

is poured into it; this is to protect the specimen in it. The

specimen must stabilize before further handling like cutting,

fixation and other necessary preparations. The search for leftover

buffer ended with doubts over what was in the beaker found. After a

long discussion with colleagues about where the first colleague was

and where she kept her notes and what really was in the beaker he

found, it seemed risky to use her unknown buffer. So an hour or two

was spent finding empty clean beakers, calculating and weighing

chemicals in the chemical room, dissolving it in pure water with a

special magnetic stirring device. The laboratory is located in an old

five-story building, beautiful but not practical, our researcher

moves between the stories three, four and five and the basement, this

takes time. When the chemicals for the buffer are dissolved, plastic

is put over the beaker and two smaller cups are labelled with date

and name. It is time to take the elevator to the aquarium in the

basement and select the fish for today’s preparation. All the fishes

in the aquarium is ocularly examined, sick fishes must be removed

quickly before infections are spread to other fishes. Today all

fishes look healthy. Our researcher chooses a medium size fish and

catch it with a bag net, then put it in a bucket with lid. The fish

in the bucket and the experimenter take the elevator back to fifth

floor. Scissors and pliers are prepared for the execution of the

fish, the neck spine is cut in two, but the Bichir continues to move

during the removal of the eyes, though it is dead. The eyes are

21

removed under a light microscope (10X) since it is a delicate job

extracting interesting parts, leaving tissue that obstructs the gaze.

The skill necessary comes from experience, our researcher is in the

beginning of his doctoral education and the work is part research and

part education. Another fish is therefore brought up from the

aquarium to secure success in the experiment; it is hard to tell

whether the removal was successful before it is under the SEM due the

smallness.

Washing and fixation

The four eyes is labelled and put into the prepared buffer with

glutaraldehyde for washing and fixation (glutarladehyde is a

colourless liquid used to sterilize medical and laboratory equipment

and embalming specimen). Samples can be dirty or clean depending on

what one is interested in. The interior of the eye is interesting in

this experiment and all exterior will be perceived dirt. The two

first eyes are cut open and dissected before fixation. The second

pair is first fixated and later dissected, an invention made today

during the work process. Four small plastic beakers with the eyes are

placed in a fridge for 12 hour to fixate.

Dehydration

The next day is the buffer/fixation solution poured out from the

plastic beakers and 99.6% ethanol alcohol is poured into them. Rests

of buffer and fixation in the eye will dissolve into the alcohol,

after 15 minutes the alcohol is poured out and replaced with new

alcohol. The buffer and fixation are water based and must be removed

from the specimen to dehydrate it. It is crucial to dehydrate the

specimens due to the vacuum in the SEM. If there is water or other

liquids in specimen it will immediately evaporate from inside

destroying it, which is why living specimen cannot be examined in

SEM. Alcohol has the ability to dissolve both water and lipids and

therefore it is a suitable agent for removal of water. This process

is carried out 10 times, i.e. this takes half a day, leaving 10

minutes windows for studying articles, writing and preparing other

setups. Laboratory life is time fragmented.

Drying

When the specimen is dehydrated it can be dried or stored in alcohol.

Alcohol is a preserving agent and a step on the way to a dry sample.

The specimen has so long been submerged in a liquid, first a

buffer/fixation and now pure alcohol. Drying is a critical work

22

moment since we have to move from one phase to another, from liquid

to gas – that is drying. It is very violent for delicate specimen to

cross phase borders. Great forces can rip fragile structures apart

from inside. The solution for our researcher is to use a Critical

Point Dryer. This is a dryer where the alcohol, which the specimen is

in, is mixed in a small chamber at 10° C with carbon dioxide in high

pressure. High enough pressure will liquefy the carbon dioxide and it

will thereby be in the same phase as the alcohol. The alcohol is

dissolved since it is both water and lipid soluble as is carbon

dioxide when it is liquid. Then a valve is opened, pressure drops as

gas flows out bringing some alcohol with it. The valve is closed and

new carbon dioxide is let in the chamber and the pressure rises,

dissolving more alcohol. The process is repeated till all alcohol is

removed, the experimenter knows this when it doesn’t smell alcohol

from the valve. When all alcohol is removed the temperature and

pressure is raised above 31.1° C and 72.9 bar with the valve closed.

This is the critical point for carbon dioxide, meaning that if both

now temperature and pressure is dropped below this point simultaneous

the carbon dioxide will go from liquid to gas without crossing a

phase border i.e. the liquid has no surface as it turns into gas

simultaneous in the whole chamber. Now the chamber can be opened,

revealing a dry specimen, hopefully intact.

Mounting

The specimen is now mounted on a 12 mm aluminium cylinder with tape

or glue. It must be in contact with the cylinder to ground it

electrically; otherwise it will be damaged in the SEM. To increase

the conductivity of the specimen it is coated with a thin layer of

gold and platinum. Gold/Platinum is dissolved electrically in a

sputter coater machine that covers the specimen placed in it. The

thickness of the coating is 15-20 nm, 1 nm is a 1/1000 000 of 1 mm;

very thin but it is never the less the gold surface that will be

screened later. When the specimen comes out from the sputter it has

changed colour from whatever it was before to black metallic.

Scanning Electron Microscope

The SEM apparatus is located in a room with compressors and computers

in a vibration absorbing arrangement. Motions and vibrations in the

room will affect the outcome of the SEM, creating striped or

distorted images. The four cylinders with fish eyes are placed in a

holder with numbers on. This holder is placed in the sample chamber,

the stage of the microscope, the chamber is closed and the

23

compressors are turned on. High vacuum is created in the chamber to

avoid that gas molecules interfere with the electron beam. Electrons

are “shot” at the specimen to generate the image; since electrons

have a much shorter wavelength than visible light they can depict

smaller structure. The resolution of a SEM is about 1-20 nm, not

enough to see singular atoms but almost. The electron source is

heated up and the computer starts up. It takes a couple of seconds

before the overview screen image turns up. It is a low definition

image that permits the operator to turn and zoom in real time to

orient his gaze.

Analysing the image

First the experimenter has to “find” his samples; a round edge turns

up, then a big number three, covering the whole screen. We are still

only looking on the holder of the cylinders on which the samples are

mounted. After some fixing with the adjustment wheels a fish eye

turns up on the screen. The experimenter’s focus is now directed

towards the computer screen, the detector in the SEM is manoeuvred

with tuning wheels on a control panel, the result shows up on the

screen. Depending on level of magnification, the tuning wheels can be

more or less sensitive. The specimen in the electron chamber has

turned into an object-image on a screen.

- That is beautiful, is the first comment from our experimenter. He

has inspected the samples under light microscopy before they where

placed in the SEM, number three he suspected to be the best

preparation, now he has a confirmation on that suspicion. An overview

screen image is scanned with high-resolution; earlier only low

resolution scanning has been used to enable real time movement on the

screen. The high-resolution screen image is printed out on paper,

“good to have so that you don’t lose your self on the screen”. Our

experimenter move around in the image, zooming in and out, for an

untrained eye it is hard to get oriented. I feel a little nauseous.

- What do we see on the screen?

- This is the lens, and that is ligaments, and a muscle.

- The muscle is interesting cause it can help me to see differences

between species. I think it is a helpful character. This is a really

good image….

- What is the difference to light microscopy?

- Similar pictures can be generated in light microscopy, but many

interesting parts are transparent, cannot be seen in light

microscopy. But the big difference is the possibility of

24

magnification. It is a very good image, it was what I was looking for

today, let’s save this image.

-Let’s put out the light in the room so we see more details. But

there are some detritus in the sample, from clothes, fibres maybe.

Artefacts, suspicious, debris from the preparation, and when drying

it shrinks.

- Can you tell if the preparation changed the specimen?

- I photographed it under light microscopy before drying, making it

possible to measure the grade of shrinkage, but probably a couple of

percents. Things change during preparation, and I write that in the

article, but everybody knows these things, the solution for me is to

look on many samples.

-Thin structures vibrate and may cause imperfect image, we can

magnify 10.000 with this SEM and still have good images. Does this

ligament belong to this structure, hard to tell? Where does it come

from?

-How can you differ a ligament from a muscle if they have the same

colour here?

-I know it from the light microscope, where they have different

colours. And it is possible to dye tissue to know what it is, if it

is hard to tell, but that is work to do later. Now I want as

information rich images as possible, this does not look the same as

other bonefishes. It is easy to lose the orientation of the fish eye

during preparation, another time I have to orient it under light

microscopy and then embed it in gelatine. The first time I look in a

new eye, it is most about my orientation. The literature on the topic

does not comply with reality, but we are the only group working with

these fishes vision, so there are very few articles published to

compare with.

25

4. The scientific gaze

To answer my questions, this analysis will be carried out from two

ends, from the image and from the observer. These two meets in a

site, in this case, it is the stage of the microscope, where the

scientific discourse intersects a material practice. It is a site

where the corporeal specimen loses its materiality as is turns up on

the screen, turning into an object-image, still corporeal but to

become totally immaterial. When it meets the gaze of the scientist,

it becomes scientifically useful and scientific “truths” can be

stated.

The residence of truth in the dark centre of things is linked,

paradoxically, to this sovereign power of the empirical gaze that

turns their darkness into light. All light has passed over into

the thin flame of the eye, which now flickers around solid objects

and, in so doing, establishing their place and form.25

The Image

What was described in chapter three is nothing but the disciplining

and removal of nature, since science is a cultural practice, nature

must be subtracted26. All those steps that took the fish swimming in

the aquarium to the object-image are disciplining processes. The

particular specimen is detached from corporeality and turned into a

general scientific and cultural artefact. Science is knowledge about

the universal or general. From knowledge of the general, the

particular can be predicted, but general knowledge is produced from

the particular.

The particular fish eye cut out and still bloody, is to body-laden

to ascend to universality (appendix 1). Under the light microscope,

which was before washing, fixation, drying, mounting and coating it

could be turned into a photomicrograph, a little more knowable, but

only used to estimate shrinkage and to select the specimen to focus

on later (appendix 2). And even as is it turned into an image on the

screen it was only one example of one individual fish eye (appendix

3). When the researcher decides on specific loci of interest it

starts to ascend to universality (appendix 4 and 5). These loci are

described and what is found there is transcribed into words and named

if they yet have no name, this is a passage from visuality to text,

the gap is bridged as the object has been dissolved. Every character

25 Foucault. The Birth of the Clinic. p.xv.26 Foucault. The Birth of the Clinic. p.7.

26

that our researcher finds interesting is scanned and saved as a high-

resolution image in a gallery. It is the same practice as the natural

historian’s undertake, “a meticulous examination of things themselves

for the first time, and then of transcribing what is has gathered in

smooth, neutralized, and faithful words”.

The corpus of the fish eye is eclipsed by a gold/platinum surface on

the stage of the SEM; it is only a reflection that is turned into an

image. This is symptomatically for this seeing practice since it is

as much to exclude, as it is to interpellate nature when deploying

the gaze. The SEM renders everything in a grey scale and this is more

of an advantage than detrimental, because “everything that presents

itself to our gaze is not utilizable: colours especially can scarcely

serve as a foundation for useful comparisons”27. Colours are more or

less subjective as they are a function of the agency of light,

depending on what kind of light that illuminates a surface it is

perceived different. In the SEM, electrons have that agency. However,

very colourful SEM images are often seen in popular writings of

science. These images are more the result of Photoshop then they are

to be used for scientific purposes; colour is added in a way that

reflects the producer eidetic conception of the invisible world. It

is an invisible world since visible light (400-700 nm) is too crude

to penetrate to the “truth in the dark centre of things”28

This tabulated juxtaposition of words and things in the dry garden,

which is our researchers digital image gallery is, but only when it

is dense enough, the foundation of his seeing and knowing. The

articles he will produce during his PhD project will be constructed

from this material, even though he yet do not know what articles he

will write. Our researcher has chosen a method where only characters

on specific loci are relevant in a constructed system. “The system is

arbitrary in its basis, since it deliberately ignores all differences

and all identities not related to the selected structure. But there

is no law that says that it will not be possible to arrive one day,

through a use of this technique, at the discovery of a natural

system”29. The natural system as opposed to for example Linnaeus

artificial system for classifying is the ambition to reveal true

relationship of all species. It was obvious for Linnaeus that his

system was a construction. Today, genetics has been presented as the

way to establish a true natural system, but some vertebrate groups

27 Foucault. The Order of Things. p.133.28 Foucault. The Birth of the Clinic. p.xv.29 Foucault. The Order of Things. p.140.

27

escape this ambition, our researcher call these groups critical. But

in between two epistemic different practices, one quantitative

molecular genetic and one qualitative visually classifying, our

researcher believes that his method can give these critical groups

there proper place.

Two characters are easily turned into images, the attachment of

the lens and the structure of the lens fibres (appendix 4 and 5).

Whereas the third character, the stiffness of the lens is not visible

but tactile, and could not be turned into an image during this

experiment. But later our researcher will construct a technical

device, a heave where one end will be applied on to the lens, the

other end equipped with a thin laser beam that point at a scale. In

this way is tactility turned into visuality, allowing the gaze to be

deployed.

The Observer

It is apparently a privileged place our researcher has found, or

created, a place were very few have been before him. He feels

thrilled, “it’s a beautiful image”. There are no precise words that

describe this place, no final words or complete descriptions that

circumscribes his perception. It is as “The gaze will be fulfilled in

its own truth and will have access to the truth of things if it rests

on them in silence, if everything keeps silent around what is sees” 30

-Let’s put out the light in the room so we see more details, he

suggests. Theory is silent when gazing writes Foucault, but theory is

still bound up with its armature. “This gaze, then, which refrains

from all possible intervention, and from all experimental decision,

and which does not modify, shows that its reserve is bound up with

the strength of its armature.” Gazing at the screen in the dark room,

everything seems clear and the armature that holds up the gaze is

silent. To grasp the construction of the gaze, this armature must be

analysed as an “irreducibly heterogeneous system of discursive,

social, technological, and institutional relations”31 In this

analysis, the role of education and the space of the gaze.

30 Foucault. The Birth of the Clinic. p.13231 Crary, Techniques of the obsever. p.6.31 ibid.

28

The role of education

The journey from visible to invisible parallels in the experiment is

the reversal of the sequence of courses on the biology programme. The

first course our researcher began with, if he followed the

recommended course plan was physical chemistry, followed by organic

chemistry, biology and chemistry of the cell, genetics, microbiology,

physiology of plants or humans, zoology or botany, faunistics,

floristics and probably last ecology. These are the compulsory course

for a degree in biology, with some variation depending on what kind

of degree you want. If you are more interested in animals than plants

you choose zoology instead of botany and you chose between physiology

of humans or plants but otherwise; these are the courses you must

have in your degree. The sequence of courses is regarded as a

necessity but not an obligation, the student need to know physical

chemistry to know organic chemistry and organic chemistry to know

biology and chemistry of the cell because the reactions in the cell

are of course organic chemical. When the student understands basic

cell and functions the focus moves towards cell-to-cell interactions.

Genetics follows cell biology to explain how the cell and the

organism have evolved and how they reproduce. Then how cells form

tissues and then how these tissues form organs, which explains how

the individual organism is organised. After that, the student gets

acquainted with the organisms and their names, floristics and

faunistics. When the student recognizes the plants and the animals,

the ecological course explains the laws of interactions between

different organisms. The student has now spent two years of study,

from the atom to the molecule to the organelle to the cell to the

tissue to the organ to the organism to the organism interaction with

other organisms - from the very small intangible to the visible and

corporeal.32 When this conception of the world has been established,

the student has a scientific gaze, now is he able to explain why

zebras are striped on a molecular level.

In the laboratory on the undergraduate level is the biological,

chemical and physical knowledge tested against “reality” in pedagogic

experiments. This is to confirm theoretical knowledge in practice but

also to discipline. Laboratory protocols must be followed strictly

and basic methods learned. Supervisors, often doctoral students,

evaluate the student-experimenters performance and check the results

against theory and test substances. The laboratory is hierarchically

organised and “the laboratory visual culture is, after all, a culture

32 www.biol.lu.se

29

of human corporeal supervision and discipline, even in the case where

the human body is not directly studied.”33 The laboratory is a part of

the panopticon on the level of education; only the disciplined

scientist is allowed to deploy the gaze.

When the compulsory courses are taken, the student makes the

choice of what direction he/she wants as advanced courses are chosen.

The advanced course are often connected to a institution, in our case

was it the zoological institution where he also did his examination

project on the methodology he now is applying in his PhD project.

Education has in some way fostered him into his PhD project, of

course by his own choice, but it was a necessary way to take to get

where he is now.

The space of the gaze

In the laboratory, in the position of PhD student, he is given access

to the instruments and a social and cultural context that allows him

to deploy his gaze as an epistemological apparatus. His supervisor

guides him toward the appropriate use when they design experiments

together. The first year is dedicated to learn the practice of visual

representation, to create an image gallery and, to orienting his gaze

towards the design of fish eyes in critical vertebrate groups.

He transforms particular specimen, with help of the instruments

in the laboratory, into images that corresponds to the natural

scientific conception of the physical world. This is an eidetic image

of the world that only exists as a platonic ideal of the modern

biological episteme. In this platonic place do mathematics, physical

law, chemical reaction and ecological theories, explain everything,

and this place is structured in layers corresponding to the sequel of

course presented above. Mathematics explaining physics, physics

explaining chemistry, chemistry explaining ecology and, ecology

explaining all interactions among the living. When approaching the

physical world out there, observations are interpellated on the right

level of knowledge and disciplined into general knowledge on the

level of physics, chemistry and mathematics. When nature is

subtracted, the gaze sees and knows.

33 Cartwright. Screening the body. p.93.

30

With this paper, I have drawn a conceptual diagram of how the

natural scientific gaze is deployed in comparative zoology. In some

way is this is also a (mental) visualization of the order of things,

and this diagram would be an image to add to other images, yet this

image stands to challenge the previous ones in a quest for

multiplicity. The in-depth analysis of visual culture and the gaze in

zoology and other natural sciences will be undertaken in a coming

paper where the theoretical assemblage developed here will be

employed.

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31

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32

Appendix 1

The eye of the Bichir during dissection.

33

Appendix 2

The eye after removal from fish before washing and preparation.

34

Appendix 3

The first image that was taken during this experiment in the SEM. It

was printed out on paper to be used as an overview image or a map

during operating the SEM.

35

Appendix 4

The suspension of the lens. This is one of the characters to be

closer examined and compared to other species.

36

Appendix 5

A lens cut in half, showing lens fibres, the second character search

for during this experiment but this is from another experiment. This

is from a lamprey.