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，重点是使用数学和化学符号。这种记谱法目前被认为是科学工作必不可少的。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19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近代早期开始认为符号符号是可信的。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，出版的紧急情况并没有限制符号的使用。这些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。这个项目的结果将决定科学史家和更广泛的人如何理解符号符号和视觉思维。它们将展示历史研究方法的局限性，这些方法过于注重语言和图像之间的区别；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允许的可视化对象来改进有效的设计。最后，他们将通过研究人员（前高中教师）创建的课程计划和课堂工具传播给中学生，为教师激发对STEM领域的兴趣提供另一种手段，并向学生展示科学和人文的结合可以带来富有成效的思维。通过研究符号符号在现代早期是如何被视为可信的，本项目对“视觉思维”和数据可视化是如何发展的有了更深入的历史理解。今天，图表、图纸、图表和图片是显示数据和识别数据中的模式不可或缺的工具。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，符号符号在现代早期的这一过程中发挥了至关重要的作用。因为符号符号既可以被看作是语言的，也可以被看作是图像的，它们给了科学家一种实验视觉思维的方法，同时仍然能够将其定性为语言思维。换句话说，符号符号充当了一种渠道，通过它可以通过诉诸语言证明来确立视觉证据的有效性。此外，有人认为，随着时间的推移，当科学家们习惯了符号符号所提供的视觉思维的优势时，他们在使用图表、图表和图形等其他视觉工具进行实验时变得更加大胆。因此，这个项目展示了科学革命的一个未被充分认识的遗产：即，科学中视觉思维的合法化是基于符号符号的发展和应用。

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.