Re: Viewing Observation. The Philosophy of Medical Imaging.

Abstract

Visualisation and observation are distinct, though interrelated activities. Observation involves the sensing of data. Visualisation renders data tractable to the specific sense of vision. There is no visualisation without observation, and some observation requires visualisation for it to happen at all. Visualisation and observation have long been understood as critical underpinnings of theory formation, as well as practice.Over time, a series of debates have prised apart the supposed strict division between looking and theorising, as well as the assumed passivity of looking. These challenges replaced the assertion of independence with claims of causal influence running in both directions.Earlier discussion has focussed on the role of human observers, with the understanding that instrumentation played a mere enabling role, enhancing observation through technology for visualisation and visual enhancement. But new approaches in the philosophy of technology have also questioned this assumption.Postphenomenology, the set of practices leading to contemporary philosophy of technology, encompasses a set of approaches for re-evaluating the role of technology in observation, and with it reassessing the impact of observation on theory formation and clinical practice. With reference to ideas from postphenomenology, we consider the contours of a biophilosophical theory of visual observation.