Vision, in my view, is the cause of the greatest benefit to us...
--Plato
The magnifying glass represents visual scrutiny, but is also associated with scientific inquiry on a grander scale. A traditional image of an investigator or scientist is one performing close visual inspection of an object, magnifying glass in hand. Why is visual investigation associated with the magnifying glass so easily equated with scientific research?
(Source: http://pro.corbis.com/images/42-17283509.jpg?size=572&uid=%7B67EB6FFE-30F7-48DE-90D7-69D4FE788CFF%7D)
Leroi-Gourhan asserts that by enabling humans to situate their bodies in space, hearing and vision have become the primary senses with which we view the world; “(o)ur lived behavior is filtered through images” (297).
Latour clarifies this by saying that visual information helps to "(convince) someone else to take up a statement, to pass it along, to make it more of a fact, and to recognize the first author’s ownership and originality” (5), which relies on visualization. Images allow for “translation without corruption” of an object; it is “always presented a rational image based on the universal laws of geometry” (8). This is referred to as optical constancy; no matter from what perspective or scale one sees an object, it retains its fundamental properties. It allows an object to be perceived yet remain unchanged by imposing distance between the stimulus and the sensory organ; whereas a sound wave must reach the ear to be perceived, an object can be visualized at large distances.
In turn, the sense of sight is traditionally associated with objectivity and distance from the observed world, whereas the other senses are associated with direct contact and immersion in one’s surroundings. Additionally, the principle of optical constancy outlined by Latour allows vision to act as scientific proof. Under these assumptions, vision is the most relevant sense within scientific research. Aristotle privileged vision, as did Plato, but acknowledged its fallibility and relied most heavily on mathematical measurements of visual percepts. Euclid utilized geometry to formulate his theory of vision. Despite their varied strategies, all three relied on vision as the primary source of information in their investigations of the physical world. This emphasis on vision is emulated over a thousand years later, when Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, classified animals based on visualization of differential physical features. (Years later, DNA technology has allowed for better cladistical analysis than classification reliant on visual evidence.) Privileging of visual information persists today. One notable example is modern medicine, where visualizations through CT scans, x-rays, MRIs, and other imaging techniques are so heavily relied upon in diagnosis as compared to other information from a patient or physical inspection by a doctor (See the final entry in Some Interesting Twists on the Magnifying Glass). Vision’s association with objectivity has allowed it to become the preferred sense in science and medicine, a discussion referenced by authors such as Sterne.
As a tool which exploited visual perception, the magnifying glass was undoubtedly affected by vision’s status as an objective perception of the world. Vision’s scientific status allowed the magnifying glass to become a useful scientific investigative tool in addition to its many practical uses. Magnification extended humans’ visual capacities and in so doing was an attractive capability for those involved in scientific inquiry. This could have potentially contributed to its widespread use. The power attributed to vision has contributed to the longevity and symbolic nature of the magnifying glass.
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