Theory of Knowledge - Course Companion for Students Marija Uzunova Dang Arvin Singh Uzunov Dang

that object is a black hole, from which
if
particle can escape, not even the light
no
to take an image of it? This was the
necessary
challenge confronting scientists
technological
gave us the first image of a black hole,
who
2019. How did they overcome it? Just over
in
years before their breakthrough, Katie
two
spoke at a TEDx event. Watch the
Bouman
to find out how Bouman and team built
video
impossibly large telescope to photograph
an
elusive and never-before-seen object. Then
an
these questions.
consider
How did the team protect against their
1.
bias?
potential
What gave them confidence that their
2.
were reliable?
results
Chapter 7 we discuss the phenomenon of
In
regress, which deals with the
experimenter’s
of providing experimental evidence
challenge
phenomena that have only been theorized
for
never observed. How can we know that the
but
one gets from technological tools and
results
reect a real phenomenon, if we have
instruments
observed that phenomenon before and have
never
has kept company with death ever since
Photography
were invented, in 1839. Because an image
cameras
with a camera is, literally, a trace of something
produced
before the lens, photographs had an advantage
brought
any painting as a memento of the vanished past
over
the dear departed. To seize death in the making was
and
matter: the camera’s reach remained limited as
another
as it had to be lugged about, set down, steadied.
long
once the camera was emancipated from the tripod,
But,
portable, and equipped with a range nder and a
truly
of lenses that permitted unprecedented feats
variety
close observation from a distant vantage point,
of
acquired an immediacy and authority
picture-taking
than any verbal account in conveying the horror
greater
mass-produced death. If there was one year when
of
power of photographs to dene, not merely record,
the
camera is an example of how a new
The
changed the way that knowledge is
technology
in varied fields, from science, to art to
produced
In “Looking at War” Susan Sontag
journalism.
about how photography achieves both a
writes
of objectivity as well as perspective, and a
sense
and immediacy that far exceeds any
legitimacy
accounts of war.
previous
terms: Sontag Looking
Search
War New Yorker
at
are some continuities, but also very
There
differences, between the visual language
many
Sontag’s time and the visual language of
of
Consider, for example, the claim that
today.
relationship between image-making and
the
has shifted away from representing reality
truth
most abominable realities trumped all the complex
the
surely it was 1945, with the pictures taken in
narratives,
and early May in Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and
April
in the rst days after the camps were liberated,
Dachau,
those taken by Japanese witnesses such as Yosuke
and
in the days following the incineration of the
Yamahata
had the advantage of uniting two
Photographs
features. Their credentials of objectivity
contradictory
inbuilt, yet they always had, necessarily, a point of
were
They were a record of the real—incontrovertible, as
view.
verbal account, however impartial, could be (assuming
no
they showed what they purported to show)—since a
that
was doing the recording. And they bore witness
machine
the real, since a person had been there to take them.
to
3III. Methods and tools
Figure 3.10 Varroa destructor (mite) on the back of Apis mellifera
(honeybee)
Making connections
Technology and the experimenter’s regress
nothing to compare with?
towards altering and creating different realities.
Looking at War
populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in early August.
(Sontag 2002)
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