Mcardle tytler art&science late draft june

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Learning through drawing in Art and Science James McArdle and Russell Tytler

Abstract Science studies demonstrate the role of the visual in creating new knowledge, indicating potential parallels between creative processes in science and in art. Case studies show how art has intersected with science ideas, and the commonalities and differences between creative visual processes in art compared to science. We use the construct of affordances to illuminate these differences. We explore a school science pedagogy in which students construct visual representations, which more authentically demonstrates the imaginative processes through which knowledge is created in science. We discuss how, conversely, scientific impulses and processes may enrich art education. Art is centrally concerned with image production. Science is increasingly reliant on images for knowledge generation, analysis and communication (Elkins, 2011). We argue that a sharper conception of the commonalities and differences in the creation and harnessing of visual representations in art and science can inform productive directions for mutually supporting learning in science, and in art.

The image in science In science, Latour (1986, p. 3) argued that the emergence of scientific thought has depended on developing effective representational tools, and that changes over time to procedures for writing and imaging have altered the ways scientists argue and validate their case. From multidimensional modeling of galaxies to computer generated abstracted graphics, visuo-spatial imaging plays a critical generative role in scientific reasoning and knowledge building. We can find detailed early evidence of the central role of images in the work of Michael Faraday. Faraday, in his experimentations at the London Institute, was a careful documenter of his explorations and ideas, and a dedicated communicator. David Gooding (2004, 2006) analysed the role of Faraday’s diarized visualisations in generating new perspectives on electromagnetic phenomena, and establishing these as theory. Table 1, based on Gooding, shows a series of drawn entries in Faraday’s notebook entries over one day where he moved from observations of patterns of needle orientation around a wire, to 3D enhancement to imagine field lines in 3D, to the imaging of a process in time, and finally to an inference for construction of the first electric motor.


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