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Representation is an explicit issue in science, and the adequacy and efficacy of any representation, whether survey, statistic, graph or graphic, is addressed within each scientific discipline by a large literature. Recognition that: “the organisation, sense, value and adequacy of any representation is reflexive of the settings in which it is constituted and used” (Lynch and Woolgar, 1990: 11), is also of value to sociologists of science, who are increasingly looking at the role of visual representation in science, in order to understand the ways in which the commonplace and often hidden aspects of scientific practice enter into the construction of scientific knowledge. There is a growing volume of research upon the role that representations play within scientist-to-scientist communications. These examine how representations function as black-boxed inscriptions: taken-for-granted aspects of scientific research which nevertheless make powerful visual links, or translations, from the empirical to the theoretical, and are a rich repository of social actions. These studies look at the incidents of controversial science to study science in action, because these are important points before which black-boxing occurs.

Martin Rudwick's (1976) essay on the visual discourses of geology in early nineteenth century European culture exhibited some of the promise of visual representation in unveiling social interactions at work in the activity of science. Subsequent work focused largely upon the iconographic power of visual representations in science; the ideologies of race, gender and class that these reflect; and their implications for guiding scientific research. For example, Emily Martin's (1991) study of the representation of research into human fertility shows how the attribution of stereotypical feminine and masculine characteristics to the ovum and the sperm have guided research agendas. Much of this work focuses explicitly upon medicine, as an arena where key aspects of social beings are forced into a dialogue with the ‘natural’ categories of science, themselves in turn related to culturally dependent metaphors. In this sense it can be suggested that: "the history of science is among other things a history of analogies and metaphors” (Kramentsov and Todes, 1991: 68).

Representations in science also have an important role in science studies as suggested by Latour, as mediatorsin the construction of networks. The practices and technologies through which representations are constructed are important components of the network; accessibility to these forms of representations will concentrate power at the nodes of the network, while the dissemination of these representations affects the size and scope of the network. The ability of representations to link empirical reality to abstract theory is a key moment of inscription within the network, whereby the ability to make the object under study more stable, more visible and more predictable becomes important to extending the network. For Latour therefore, the use of representation in science-to-science communication represents a key point of inscription or translation, whereby entities are enrolled into the network, enabling scientists to speak for heterogeneous aspects of reality. A second key processes of transformation occurs as the

expanding scope of the network redefines these objects, making entities from different times and different places combinable.

Lynch and Woolgar (1990) have compiled studies which explore representation in scientific practice in this way, and a number of themes emerge from their work. They recognise the importance of studying representations within their social context: “the inseparability of a theory of representation from the heterogeneous social contexts in which representations are composed and used” (Lynch and Woolgar, 1990: 12). This widens a focus upon the use of metaphors in scientific representation, to include a consideration of the different ways that metaphors are composed and contested in different places. There is further attention to a reflexive understanding of the role of representations and the substantive effects of forms of representation. The "necessity of incorporating the process of interrogation into the investigation of the object of investigation” (Thrift et al, 1995: 1), moves questions of reflexivity in social sciences away from a concern with biography and into a broader recognition of the inseparability of the acts of looking and touching, something recognised, though not often utilised, in science since the establishment of Heisenburg's uncertainty principle.

The reconceptualisation of the links between representation, theory, metaphor, social practices and material objects, moves a series of broader questions about representation in science into the centre of the sociology of science. In particular, a concern to position representation within the networks of institutions and scientific practice is reflected in recent work on the history of science. Stemerding's comparison of Buffon's and Cuvier's approaches to natural history classification suggests that: “we should not focus upon epistemological or theoretical concerns and justifications of these naturalists, but on the concrete and heterogeneous means or tools through which animals were mobilised, stabilised and combined into ever more comprehensive systems of classification” (Stemerding, 1993: 193). Blum (1993) looks at the scientific and technical aspects of American Nineteenth Century zoological illustration and the consolidation of pictorial convention in the wider zoological context. Secord (1994) has examined the dependence of early nineteenth century natural history on a huge range of correspondence as a means of gathering information and specimens. And Allison (1995) in a study of the processes by which curators make nature 'real again', compares the practical tasks of generating public exhibitions in natural history museums, to their reliance upon esoteric research for factual authority.

A focus upon the concrete processes of doing science examines the dependence of scientific projects upon a range of enrolled amateurs, entities and institutions, and emphasises the importance of trust in the integrity of representations for keeping the networks of science together. There is still, however, relatively little work on the role of representation in scientist- to-non scientist communications that addresses the perennial permeability of these boundaries.

As a consequence, the theoretical ideas discussed above have been subject to criticism by those academics concerned to validate the political spaces where non-elite or marginalised groups construct, articulate and deploy science. For example, Cooter and Pumfrey (1994) suggest that the focus upon the production of scientific discourses is overly dominant, identifying a limitation whereby "in the work of Bruno Latour, in particular, cognisance of the fact that "we live inside the world built for us by science" has not served to legitimise the study of the ethnoscience of our world, but rather the anthropology of the lab" (Cooter and Pumfrey, 1994: 242). Science studies have explored the ability of scientific facts to move out of the laboratory and over space, yet there is little attention given to the way that this processes is achieved through active mediators, or the possibility that science may be contested by different publics. In this sense, what started as a radical critique of science, risks merely reproducing its power through the stories that it tells. For example, Haraway suggests that "in disrupting many conventional accounts of scientific objectivity, Latour and others have masterfully unveiled the self-invisible modest man. [But] perversely, however, the structure of heroic action is only intensified in this project - both in the narrative of science and in the discourse of the science studies scholar" (Haraway, 1997: 33-34).

One exception to the neglect of mediations is Mitman (1993), who has looked at early cinematic ‘nature’ in the American Natural History Museum. He explores the relationship between scientific culture and other cultural domains by examining the historical intersection of film as a communications technology intended primarily for entertainment, and film as a field and laboratory technology designed for scientific research. Mitman's conclusions are perhaps inevitable but they are nevertheless interesting in signalling the media as an important, yet neglected arena of science. He concludes that scientists, publics and animals alike have become part of the media spectacle in the post-Hollywood age. The importance of this conclusion lies in its recognition that scientist and their objects of study never merely inhabit one world or one network. Scientists, and scientific representations now form an important component of the many extended networks of scientific research, applied science, conservation and the media as different voices jostle for representation.

Before I continue to explore the implications of this observation for this study, I want to ground some of the above discussion with examples from the history of natural history disciplines. These illustrate some of the general points as well as highlighting the specificities of natural history. This is achieved through three examples: firstly, through the establishment of the visual forms natural history classifications; secondly, the use of film within the disciplines of ethology; and finally, through negotiations over the naming and ethical treatment of animals. In the final section of the chapter I will return to the processes ofdoing television sciencein order to explore the key points in the networks of both science and television as they are increasingly interlinked.