The Emergence of Symbolic Notation and Data Visualization in Algebra and Chemistry

该奖项支持科学史上的博士论文研究，重点是数学和化学符号的使用。这种记法目前被认为是科学工作所必需的。相比之下，在西欧历史的大部分时间里，在科学中使用符号并不被认为是一种合适的方法。然而，到了十九世纪，符号符号已经变得无处不在。这个项目的目的是解释为什么欧洲科学家在早期现代时期认为符号记法是可信的。为了确定科学家何时以及如何使用符号符号，研究人员将研究科学手稿，在这些手稿中，出版的紧迫性并未限制符号的使用。其中包括数学家和化学家的笔记本、药剂师的清单、医生的记录和手稿教科书，所有这些都是独一无二的，没有数字化。这个项目的结果将塑造科学历史学家和更广泛地理解符号符号和视觉思维的方式。它们将展示过于注重区分语言和图像的历史方法论的局限性；符号符号之所以强大，正是因为它们模糊了这两个领域之间的界限。更广泛地说，它们将展示如何通过考虑在数据可视化的严格定义下不被允许的可视对象来改进有效的设计。最后，它们将通过这位前高中教师研究员创建的教案和课堂工具传播给中学生，以提供另一种教师激发对STEM领域的兴趣的方式，并向学生展示科学和人文的结合可以导致创造性思维。通过研究符号符号如何在早期现代时期被视为可信的，这个项目展示了对“视觉思维”和数据可视化如何发展的更深层次的历史理解。如今，图表、绘图、图表和图片是显示数据和识别数据中的模式的不可或缺的工具。然而，早期现代科学家继承的古代和中世纪的科学推理方法基本上是口头的，一些科学传统完全不信任图像。因此，视觉思维的认识论有效性必须得到证明。该项目认为，在早期现代时期，符号符号在这一过程中发挥了关键作用。由于符号符号既可以被视为语言符号，也可以被视为图画符号，它们为科学家提供了一种实验视觉思维的方法，同时仍然能够将其描述为语言思维。换句话说，符号符号充当了一种渠道，通过这种渠道，可以通过诉诸口头证明的方式来确立视觉证明的有效性。此外，有人认为，随着时间的推移，随着科学家逐渐习惯于符号符号提供的视觉思维的优势，他们在实验其他视觉工具如图表、图表和图表时变得更加大胆。因此，该项目展示了科学革命中一项被低估的遗产：即科学中视觉思维的合法化是以符号符号的发展和应用为前提的。

This award supports doctoral dissertation research in history of science that focuses on the use of mathematical and chemical symbolism. Such notation is currently regarded as essential to scientific work. By contrast, for much of Western European history, the use of symbols in science was not regarded as a suitable approach. However, by the nineteenth century, symbolic notation had become ubiquitous. This project's objective is to explain why European scientists came to see symbolic notation as credible during the early modern period. To identify when and how scientists used symbolic notations, the researcher will study scientific manuscripts, where the exigencies of publishing did not constrain the use of symbols. These include mathematicians' and chemists' notebooks, apothecaries' inventories, doctors' records, and manuscript textbooks, all of which are unique and un-digitized. The results of this project will shape how symbolic notation and visual thinking are understood by historians of science and more broadly. They will show the limits of historical methodologies that invest too heavily in a distinction between language and image; symbolic notations were powerful precisely because they blurred the line between these two domains. More broadly, they will show how effective design can be improved through consideration of visual objects that are not admitted under a strict definition of data visualization. Finally, they will be disseminated to secondary students through lesson plans and classroom tools created by the researcher, a former high school instructor, to provide another means by which teachers can provoke interest in STEM fields, and to show students that the union of the sciences and humanities can lead to productive thinking.By examining how symbolic notations came to be seen as credible during the early modern period, this project presents a deeper historical understanding of how "visual thinking" and data visualization developed. Today, diagrams, drawings, charts, and pictures are indispensable tools for displaying data and identifying patterns within that data. However, the ancient and medieval methods of scientific reasoning that early modern scientists inherited were fundamentally verbal, and some scientific traditions distrusted images altogether. The epistemological validity of visual thinking therefore had to be proved. This project posits that symbolic notations played a crucial role in that process during the early modern period. Because symbolic notations could be seen as either linguistic or pictorial, they gave scientists a way of experimenting with visual thinking while still being able to characterize it as verbal thinking. Symbolic notations, in other words, served as a conduit through which the validity of visual proof could be established by means of an appeal to verbal proof. Moreover, it is argued that, over time, as scientists became accustomed to the advantages of visual thinking afforded by symbolic notations, they became bolder in their experiments with other visual tools like diagrams, charts, and graphs. This project thus demonstrates an underappreciated legacy of the Scientific Revolution: namely, that the legitimization of visual thinking in science was predicated upon the development and application of symbolic notations.