A Case Study in the Applied Philosophy of Imaging: The Synaptic Vesicle Debate

Science, Technology, and Human Values 36 (1):6-32 (2011)
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Abstract

Thinkers from a variety of fields analyze the roles of imaging technologies in science and consider their implications for many issues, from our conception of selfhood to the authority of science. In what follows, I encourage scholars to develop an applied philosophy of imaging, that is, to collect these analyses of scientific imaging and to reflect on how they can be made useful for ongoing scientific work. As an example of this effort, I review concepts developed in Don Ihde’s phenomenology of technology and refigure them for use in the analysis of scientific practice. These concepts are useful for drawing out the details of the interpretive frameworks scientists bring to laboratory images. Next, I apply these ideas to a contemporary debate in neurobiology over the interpretation of images of neurons which have been frozen at the moment of transmitter release. This reveals directions for further thought for the study of neurotransmission.

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Robert Rosenberger
Georgia Institute of Technology

References found in this work

The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos & Bas C. van Fraassen - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.
Logical investigations.Edmund Husserl - 2000 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Dermot Moran.
Objectivity.Lorraine Daston & Peter Galison - 2007 - Cambridge, Mass.: Zone Books. Edited by Peter Galison.
Logical Investigations.Edmund Husserl - 1970 - London, England: Routledge. Edited by Dermot Moran.

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