Latour

“Visualization and Cognition”

Theme of the reading

Latour takes on a big question in this paper. What accounts for the rise of our scientific culture over the past 400 years. He proposes a surprisingly modest answer: the ways that scientists create, transform, and circulate inscriptions.

Getting ready to read

Look up the following words:

Hagiographic

Agonistic

Questions to keep in mind while reading

How are the agonistic encounters that Latour describes related to Goodwin’s notion of contested vision?

Why does Latour say we must simultaneously keep in mind the properties of inscriptions and the ways they are mobilized in agonistic encounters?

What are the nine properties of inscriptions discussed by Latour?

What sorts of cognitive effects can those properties produce as inscriptions move about the scientific community?

What is the relevance of the development of linear perspective to the creation of immutable mobiles?

How did the invention of the printing press affect the notion of “truth”?

What is a modern-day example of a system that collects inscriptions from a vast range of sources?