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标题：Photomicrography and the Problem of Scientific Realism
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作者：Karl-Magnus Gustav Brose
期刊名称：University of Toronto Art Journal
出版年度：2019
卷号：1
页码：41-56
出版社：University of Toronto
摘要：In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, prominent bacteriologist Robert Koch played a major role in reforming and codifying the practice of scientific photomicrography. Concerned with the various epistemic functions of photography as a medium for the illustration of scientific texts, Koch helped establish a set of shared standards to be followed by the emerging professional class of scientists studying the cell structure of bacteria. Koch rejected the unproblematic claims of "mechanical objectivity," a non-interventionist model of objectivity which privileged the camera for its apparent lack of subjective distortion. The desire for mechanical objectivity is connected to changing conceptions of the image's relation to the text in the seventeenth-century, during which the emergence of empirical science upended the subservience of images to a discursive model, insisting rather that the object itself be represented without the subjective interpretive act of an artist or writer. Koch's argument for the standardization of photographic procedures represents a new approach to scientific illustrations by fixing the act of viewing through the photographic eye, which establishes a common and institutionalized basis for interpretation and the critique of the individual scientist's abilities. The sociological ramifactions of this development are considered with respect to the debate between scientific realists and social constructivists, motivating the adoption of a middle path between these two opposing epistemic poles.