Visual Communication in Science: the Case of Computational Neuroscience

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hubert Knoblauch
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 230927066

The aim of the project is to analyze the use of images in the case of Computational Neuroscience. Computational Neuroscience is a highly collaborative area of neuroscientific research combining biology, physics, and computer science. Neuroscientific research is a specifically new mode of science since a) images are used b) in the characteristics of research organization c) images are not only representations of the research objects, they are the epistemic objects themselves and d) the social organization of the computational neuroscience is beyond the organization of common disciplines, thus we denote this new form as heterogeneous cooperation. We consider the use of images as visual communication that includes ways of communicative action which produces, interprets and procure images.Next to microsociological analyses of the processes of producing, interpreting, processing and the translation of images between different scientists, we intend - in connection with the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of science - to analyze the organization of this new form of science. Based on studies of the sociology of knowledge, we assume that the basic units of science are constituted through shared conventions of seeing. Seeing includes the ways of production, interpretation and procures of images. In the analysis we "follow the images", i.e. the image trajectory constituted by the process of producing, interpreting and transforming the visual objectifications. By analyzing visual communication we want to identify the social worlds of seeing that constitute institutional science units of shared seeing (conventions of seeing) and although analyzing the translation processes of images at the borders and contact zones ("trading zones") of different science units. The analysis of homogeneity and heterogeneity in the use of images should allow insights of the way and structures of heterogeneous cooperation in science. On the level of discourse, we analyze the legitimately aspects of the organization and its status. In an emprirically verifiable way, we compare different image trajectories of visual communication and connect institutional and microsociological approaches. That allows not only an insight of the meaning of images in science but also an answer to the question as to the new structure of scientific work, its organization and its units. The methods that are used in the project are based on the Methodology of Grounded Theory which is combined by the ethnographic triangulation of various methods within the field of our expertise, videography, focused ethnography, expert interviews and analysis of images and documents of the research field. As a comparative strategy, we are focusing on at least two different image trajectories within the field of computational neuroscience.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants