A poster for the Gordon Research Conference on Visualization in Science and Education 2007, commenting on the complexity of dealing with different perspectives on learning from visualizations.

1. History, Philosophy and Theory in Visualization “Everything You Know is Wrong” A Philosopher's Call to End All Paradigms “ Steve Fuller says academics have no idea how new ideas are really created.” Chronicle of Higher Ed , Sept. 15, 2000 Collins - Golem Golinski - Making Natural Knowledge Feyerabend - Against Method, Farewell to Reason (Popper’s student) Ludwig Fleck Rorty Jonassen and Dede vs Sweller Roth and Tobin Will the real DNA please stand up? ” Science and Technology Studies (STS) is a broad, interdisciplinary, and rapidly growing field that explores the relationship between science, technology and the ways they shape society and our understanding of the world.” Abstract Science & Technology Studies 1. “ Classical epistemology, philosophy of science and sociology of knowledge have presupposed an idealized conception of scientific inquiry that is unsupported by the social history of scientific practices;” 2. “Nevertheless, one still needs to articulate normatively appropriate ends and means for science, given science's status as the exemplar of rationality for society at large.” “ The question for social epistemologists, then, is whether science's actual conduct is worthy of its exalted social status and what political implications follow from one's answer. Those who say "yes" assume that science is on the right track and offer guidance on whom people should believe from among competing experts, whereas those who say "no" address the more fundamental issue of determining the sort of knowledge that people need and the conditions under which it ought to be produced and distributed.” “… narrative and meaning in our understanding of science and industry….” Liz Dorland Departments of Biology and Chemistry [email_address] "Chemical Industry, Upheld by Pure Science, Sustains the Production of Man's Necessities" Frontispiece (New York, 1937) Theories of Learning Communities of Practice Multiple Representations Debates: Constructivism vs Direct Instruction www.warwick.ac.uk/~sysdt/socialepist.html “ An intellectual movement of broad cross-disciplinary provenance that attempts to reconstruct the problems of epistemology once knowledge is regarded as intrinsically social. It is often seen as philosophical science policy or the normative wing of science studies. Originating in studies of academic knowledge production, social epistemology has begun to encompass knowledge in multicultural and public settings, as well as the conversion of knowledge to information technology and intellectual property.” -- Steve Fuller SSK: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Jastrow (1899) “Duck-Rabbit” (not Wittgenstein or Kuhn’s) http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/JastrowDuck.htm Eye Site: www.uic.edu/com/eye/LearningAboutVision/EyeSite/OpticalIllustions/ http://onlyagame.typepad.com/only_a_game/philosophy/index.html Theories, Models and Predictive Hypotheses http://philosophy.wisc.edu/forster/papers/Kuhn/Kuhn.htm The Learning Sciences Social Epistemology Instructional Design vs ?? Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. - book reviews Art in America, May, 1995 by Brian Wallis http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n5_v83/ai_16878533/prin (W.J.T.) “Mitchell, who has a fondness for inventing terms, calls this postmodern phenomenon "the pictorial turn" (in contrast to philosopher Richard Rorty's phrase, "the linguistic turn"). Mitchell defines the pictorial turn as:” “… a postlinguistic, postsemiotic rediscovery of the picture as a complex interplay between visuality, apparatus, institutions, discourse, bodies, and figurality. It is the realization that spectatorship (the look, the gaze, the glance, the practices of observation, surveillance, and visual pleasure) may be as deep a problem as various forms of reading (decipherment, decoding, interpretation, etc.) and that visual experience or "visual literacy" might not be fully explicable on the model of textuality” These interests are directed toward the goals of breaking down the distinctions between fields, stimulating debate, and directing attention to hybrid images (like the dialectical rabbit-duck logo) that "work through contradiction interminably." Such ambitions go well beyond those of most tenured radicals, but for junior postmodernists certain of Mitchell's positions will no doubt seem rather tame. Journals: Learning from Visualizations