Picturing Science, Producing Art

Book excerpt: Between the disciplines of art history and the history of science lies a growing field of inquiry into what science and art share as both image-making and knowledge-producing activities. The contributors of Picturing Science, Producing Art occupy this intermediate zone to analyze both scientific and aesthetic representations, utilizing disciplinary perspectives that range from art history to sociology, history and philosophy of science to gender studies, cultural history to the philosophy of mind. Organized in five sites--Styles, The Body, Seeing Wonders, Objectivity/Subjectivity, and Cultures of Vision--their topics extend from Cinquecento theories of female reproduction to the technologies of cloning, from medieval depictions of the stigmata to electrical metaphors for sex, from astronomical drawings to radioencephalography, from Phoenician griffons carved in ivory to factories cast in concrete. The internationally renowned contributors go beyond both science wars and culture wars by exploring substantive links between systems of visual representation and knowledge in science and art. Contributors include Svetlana Alpers, Jonathan Crary, Arnold Davidson, Carlo Ginzburg, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, and Simon Schaffer.