Objectivity by Lorraine Datson and Peter Galison.

Hupomnemata are journals that people keep for the purpose of developing themselves. Apparently it is of greek origin and was brought into the modern context in an book by Michel Foucault entitled "Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth". A starting point for the evolution of subjectivity, and I mention it because it is a strange word that I had never seen before reading this book, but it is a very good description of what blogs are, or at least what I hope this blog would be.

An analysis of the development of objectivity in scientific thought from the 1800's until present. This theme is developed around the use of scientific atlases that were generated to be used as objective reference points in scientific thought. Examples of these would be atlases of flower types, birds, star charts, etc.

The major thesis is that the use of these atlases, and therefore the mirrored development of scientific objectivity, went through three main stages; these were: truth to nature, mechanical objectivity and trained judgment.

Truth to nature was exemplified by realistic drawings that were generally made by an artist supervised by an expert, a process they refer to as "four eye sight".

It was often the case that such an approach, although appearing detailed, was not necessarily that realistic. The second stage, mechanical objectivity, relied on the use of impersonal visualization techniques such as daguerreotype and photography. Eventually it was determined that such methods were also dependent on many subjective variables such as lighting effects and angles. It is also true that some photographs require an expert to interpret the information contained in them.

The final stage of "trained judgment" flows from this limitation. In this stage of the history of objectivity, trained experts consciously attempt to apply objectivity to the reasoning processes involved in assessing data such as spectral charts, radiograms and so forth.

This is an expansive and satisfying work. There is a scholarly attention to detail with respect to setting the historical framework of these ideas. The book is copiously and beautifully illustrated with supporting drawings and images.