Made real: artifice and accuracy in nineteenth-century scientific illustration

In their 1992 essay ‘The image of objectivity’, and again in Objectivity (2007), Lorraine Daston Peter Galison describe the development ‘mechanical objectivity’. Nineteenth-century scientists, they argue, pursued ‘truth-to-nature’ by enlisting ‘self-registering instruments, cameras, wax molds, a host other devices […] with aim freeing images from human interference’. This emphasis on self-recording morals machinery, important as it is, tends to focus our attention away often messy convoluted means reproduction – lithograph, hand-coloured engraving or photomechanical process, involving steps that seem sharply at odds narratives increasing standardization scientific restraint. draws Science Museum’s pictorial collections order look construction objectivity, this time point view making reproducing images. Case studies are presented Luke Howard collection cloud drawings James Nasmyth’s lunar photographs, suggesting scientists were more flexible approach depictions truth than has previously been supposed, ‘manufactured’ may be better term ‘mechanical’ when we talk objectivity nineteenth century. But is also reflexive story, about Museum an institution whose own history I argue conclusion, particularly tied up issues accuracy, depiction genre. These brought together consideration ‘atmosphere’ for historian science exhibition curator.