Science and Artistic Interpretation

Consider the picture above. Over the years, we’ve all come across such pictures in course books and the news alike. I showed this to my 14 year old sister, and she quickly prompted “The Milky Way!” without me even asking. Such graphic ideas often tend to stick. Sometimes to the point that they become strongly attached to the very identity of the concept described in them. If Physics doesn’t do the trick for you, take a moment to think about the DNA and try searching for DNA images on google search. My guess is you’d have imagined something very similar to the double helix that pops up in the image search.
There’s a plethora of work in the field of Psychology which suggests that pictures are useful in terms of memory and recall [1][4][5]. Graphics serve as a great way to introduce people to new ideas and to enhance the memorability of the concept [2]. They can impact not only your capability to remember, but even the capability to recognise objects [3]. But to really appreciate the impact artistic interpretations can have on your perception of a scientific principle, I’d like to show you some results from google’s image search. After all, what better proof than seeing it for your own self?
Here are the results for three terms — “Wormhole”, “Black Hole” and “Mars”. Take a moment to eyeball the results below.



Is there anything fundamentally different between these results? Not really. Between some realistic looking pictures and some schematic diagrams they all seem to be pretty similar. Further, is there any way to pick out the real ones from the picture grids above? Again, not really.
I specifically picked these search terms, as they represent ideas at three starkly different phases in the scientific process. Mars is a planet that was discovered ages ago. It has been captured in millions of cameras and we’ve even sent rovers on it’s surface! Black Hole’s on the other hand have been scientifically proven, but NEVER directly captured in a camera i.e. there’s direct evidence for black holes which have been found across the galaxy, but there’s no direct observation of them. And lastly, wormholes. Wormholes are merely a hypothetical concept at this point, and a highly speculative one. My lack of knowledge in physics may prove me wrong, but online reading tells me that the mathematics of General Relativity “allows for the existence of wormholes”. Of course, there are plenty of other such concepts which are “allowed” but just never caught as much attention in popular culture. At this point, wormholes, like all these other concepts can be considered nothing more than a plausible hypothesis!
Therefore, the found and observed, the theoretically proven but yet to be observed, and the merely hypothetical concept, all three enjoy the same treatment in the mind of the layman due to their artistic interpretations! While the purpose of science is impossible to lay down, I will go on a limb to say that one very important purpose is to communicate it’s findings accurately and without doubt. Needless to say, the impact artistic interpretations has on the understanding of the scientific phenomenon/concept is staggeringly high. And even more importantly, it may even condition the thoughts of new researchers who imbibe the biases inherent in such graphics.
The paradigm of constitutionalised education which divides knowledge into artificially created categories called subjects often sets people with artistic flair and analytical skills on two very different paths in life. It is time that every scientist acknowledges they have much to learn from artists who are experts at packaging information while preserving the central idea/story. Every scientific graphic must represent the idea in a manner which makes them easy to communicate, and their interpretation in the viewer’s mind free of biases and without corrupting the idea in the process.
While most graduate students are taught scientific writing in a rigorous manner, it would be nice to see graduate programs introducing workshops which incorporate such input from graphic designers and other artists to make scientists and researchers more capable at communication than ever. If you are a graduate student, I urge you to speak with your graduate program advisor about this! For everyone else, I hope this article serves as motivation enough to not take scientific graphics on their face value, and to take the time to understand the underlying idea being communicated :)
REFERENCES
- Bateman, S., Mandryk, R. L., Gutwin, C., Genest, A., McDine, D., & Brooks, C. (2010, April). Useful junk?: the effects of visual embellishment on comprehension and memorability of charts. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2573–2582). ACM.
- Gambrell, L.B. and Jawitz, P.B. Mental imagery, text illustrations, and children’s story comprehension and recall. Reading Research Quarterly 28 (1993), 265–276.
- Hockley, W.E. The picture superiority effect in associative recognition. Memory and Cognition 36 (2009), 1351–1359.
- McDaniel, M. A., and Waddill, P. J. The mnemonic benefit of pictures in text: Selective enrichment for differentially skilled readers. Advances in Psychology 108, North-Holland/Elsevier (1994), 165–181.
- Sampson, J.R. Free recall of verbal and non-verbal stimuli. Memory and Cognition 22, (1970), 215–221.
