Representing the Invisible:
Aesthetic Discourse and Epistemic Foundation
of Contemporary Astrophysics
X International Ontology Congress:
From Elementary Particles to Human Nature
Eduardo Zubia
“[Which] features of the stars we did not make, […] how these differ from features clearly dependent on discourse. […] By means of science, that world […] was made with great difficulty and is, like the several worlds of phenomena that also contain stars, a more or less right or real world.”
Goodman (1996) On Starmaking
1.1 Defining the problem
Does astrophysics represent an objective reality?
“Galileo [...] grew up in a humanistic rather than scientific environment [. From] Galileo's views on the [arts] emerges an aesthetic attitude no less consistent than and possibly interrelated with his scientific convictions.”
“[Epistemology] has largely returned […] to the search for a priori principles […] When epistemology fails to use the history of inquiry as a laboratory in which methodological claims can be tested, […] it becomes blind.”
Kitcher (2011)
“Epistemology Without History is Blind” Erkenntnis
1.2 Methodology
“[Theorists come to beliefs] even when their experimental colleagues disagree […] The process by which this fitting occurs is emphatically not a reduction to a protocol language [. The two traditions are linked] by local coordination.”
“Indeed, if the inferential conception is right, scientific representation is in several respects very close to iconic modes of representation, like painting. […] In fact a remarkable and important virtue of the inferential conception is its ability to capture the representational or nonrepresentational distinction in art as well as science.”
Suárez (2004) “An Inferential Conception of Scientific Representation” Philosophy of Science
1.3 Theoretical framework
“A scientific, technical, or artistic representation is an artifact. As such, it is both an object or event in nature, that we can regard purely trough the physicist’s or chemist’s or mathematician’s eyes. But it is at the same time something constituted as a cultural object, through its role or function, bestowed upon it in practice.”
Schwarzschild (1916)
“Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der
Einstein’schen Theorie”
Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften
2.1 Black holes:
Chandrasekhar (1931) “The Maximum Mass of
Ideal White Dwarfs”
Oppenheimer & Snyder (1939) “On Continued
Bolton (1972)
“Dimensions of the Binary System HDE 226868 = Cygnus X-1”
“[The] descriptive accuracy with which models represent physical systems is not simply a function of whether the model is theoretical or phenomenological. […] The model sows us how particular bits of the system are integrated and fit together in such a way that the system’s behaviour can be explained. [The model shows how the laws] are applied in specific circumstances […] in a way that abstract theory cannot.”
Morrison (1999) “Models as Autonomous Agents” Models as Mediators Prandtl (1904)
“Über Flüssigkeitsbewegung bei sehr kleiner Reibung” Dritten Internationalen
Mathematiker-Kongresses
Carusotto & al. (2008) “Numerical Observation of Hawking Radiation from Acoustic Black Holes in Atomic Bose–Einstein condensates” New Journal of Physics
“[…] Hawking showed that black holes are not completely ‘black’ objects, but rather emit thermal radiation […]. Despite its conceptual importance, the weak intensity of Hawking radiation has so far prevented any direct experimental observation.”
“The possibility of creating […] black hole-like configurations that allow the study of the analog of Hawking radiation has been discussed in the last few years […]”
Belgiorno & al. (2010) “Hawking Radiation from Ultrashort Laser Pulse Filaments”
Physical Review Letters
“[The] same physics that underlie black hole evaporation in the form of Hawking radiation may be found [in other] systems. Our measurements highlight spontaneous emission of Hawking radiation from an analogue event horizon […] and suggest a path towards the experimental study of phenomena traditionally relegated to the areas of quantum gravity and astrophysics.”
Schützhold & Unruh (2011) “Comment on …” Physical Review Letters
“In front of a photograph, our consciousness [takes] the path of certainty: the Photograph’s essence is to ratify what it represents.”
“Since every photograph is contingent (and thereby outside of meaning), Photography cannot signify (aim at a generality) except by assuming a mask. [A mask] makes a face into the product of a society and of its history.”
Barthes (1980) La Chambre Claire
Barthes (1964)
“Theorist and experimenters […] are traders, strategically coordinating parts of interpreted systems against parts of others. […] In the trading zone [there are] connections that can be identified with partially autonomous clusters of actions and beliefs.”
Galison (1997) Image and Logic
Safdie & al. (1993) “SSC Laboratory” Campus Development Plan
Schödel & al. (2002) “A Star in a 15.2-Year Orbit Around the
Reber (1944) “Cosmic Static” The Astrophysical
Journal
Perley & al. (1984) “The Jet and
Filaments in Cygnus A”
Balick & Brown (1974) “Intense Sub-Arcsecond
Structure in the Galactic Center” The Astrophysical Journal
Yusef-Zadeh & al. (1984)
“[The] role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real […]”
“[This] system of intensive encounters has ended up producing linked artistic practices: an art form where the substrate is formed by intersubjectivity, and which takes being-together as a central theme […] and the collective elaboration of meaning.”
Bourriaud (1998) Esthétique Relationnelle R. Tiravanija (1992)
3.1 Final remarks
Riess & al. (2004) “Type Ia Supernova Discoveries at z > 1 From the Hubble Space
Telescope”
The Astrophysical Journal
Komatsu & al. (2010) “Seven-year WMAP Observations:
Einstein (1916) “Die Grundlage der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie” Annalen der Physik
DEUS Consortium (2012) “Full Universe Run”
History and epistemology of astronomical observation
Related research:
Epistemology of images in astrophysics
