Scientific Visualisation in Practice: Replicating Experiments at Scale

Abstract

Here scale is taken to imply context, consideration of which is seen to have implications for the mobility of knowledge-as-visualisation. The suggestion is that technologies of visualisation are created within, create, and are negotiated within, contexts. Virtual spaces, such as that offered by the open-data paradigm, and the means for their exploration, here via visualisation, cannot be expected to furnish the means to ultimately settle controversies, a point made by an earlier generation of sociologists of science. This argument is demonstrated via an experiment in the replication of scientific visualisation. Accordingly, the science of visualisation, it is argued, is subject to contextual affect.

Re-mapping life

“…According to Thomas Turnbull (2015), data only make sense when they are examined in their context. By relying exclusively on quantity and quantification, we create a gap between the information collected and its context, resulting in a progressive loss of connection, as context becomes superfluous and all the attention becomes focused on data conceived of as 'pure' and impartial.…”