Scientific Observation, Perception, and Epistemology, c. 1850-1915

The project will examine the impact of science’s shift away in the 19th century from direct ocular observation to novel ways of imaging objects, relations, events, processes, or systems, used to ‘visualise’ either what may not have been visible before, or to observe in a brand new way. In the last part of the 19th century, a crisis was well underway in Philosophy and many debated its relationship to the natural and human sciences. While some proposed a naturalism of sorts, others demanded that some science be the model of a new philosophical method and activity. In either case, however, it was clear that the role of science was going to be a fundamental and large one. Thus, assuming that there was some connection between the developments in science and philosophical questions, the primary problematic of this project will be this: as science was growing more and more epistemically independent of direct perceptual reliance, thanks to new instruments and imaging techniques, how did this in turn impact or shape the enormous amount of prolific work done by philosophers at the time on such phenomenological issues as the appearance/reality distinction, phenomenalism, sense-data, and sense-perception? Oddly, what stands out is that this shift in science does not immediately lead philosophers to abandon a sturdy dependence on direct ocular perception in their theories of science and observation, but rather, in many cases, strengthens it. This I believe had something to do with philosophy’s layered and difficult relationship with the nascent psychology, whether in its analytic, experimental, or physiological forms; and ‘psychological constructions’, in particular. Using cases of imaging (e.g. graphs, formulae, drawings, and photography) from Astronomy, Physiology, and Psychology I will enter into the central relationship between observation and construction, decisive for understanding the aforementioned situation.