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TECHNO-SCIENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC ETHOS: THE OUTLINES OF ETHICS OF BIOBANKING THROUGH THE EYES OF THE RUSSIAN SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY (BASED ON A SURVEY OF SPECIALISTS IN THE FIELD OF BIOMEDICINE AND RELATED RESEARCH ACTIVITIES) // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 61-83

The paper proceeds from the visualization of the positions of scientists working in the field of high-tech biomedicine, and considers the transformations of science and scientific ethos basing on the example of biobanking development. It poses a question of a brand new social character of scientific practices generated by advanced technologies. Being in the process of technification and economic objectification, drastically changing, science is settling in the system of social practices from which it used to be absolutely separated before. In this respect, the paper addresses to biobanking as an example of a techno-scientific object that is gradually obtaining the status of the key component of biomedicine infrastructure and paramedical sciences development. The paper describes the special status of biobanks dealing with human biomaterials and having both biotechnological and biopolitical capacities that trigger an enormous controversy concerning ethical grounds for regulating biobanks as a techno-scientific branch and an emerging social institution. In this context, the paper focuses on the problem of responsibility of the biobank and related projects dealing with using human biomaterials and structuring relations with donors in the process of functioning. The paper emphasizes that the essential novelty of biobanks consists in their techno-scientific status combining social, technological and scientific components, and it naturally spreads upon the scientist’s ethos that cannot be called “classic” any more. So, the paper suggests paying special attention to the problem of the scientist’s responsibility and revision of the science ethos. Basing on the results of the survey conducted among the representatives of Russian biobanking (scientists, whose activities are linked to biobanking, developers and/or users of biobanks in research projects), the paper demonstrates some preliminary data showing the peculiarities of transformations of this kind. Designed by the authors of the paper in terms of the Lomonosov Moscow State University biobank project called “Noah’s Ark” (The National Depository Bank of Living Systems), the survey included both inquiry forms and feedback options that contributed to getting the most relevant answers from the respondents. As a result, the paper shows typical and non-typical attitudes representing the respondent audience views. Considering the survey, the paper concentrates on revealing the professional community attitude towards both the current status and perspectives of biobanking development in Russia. The qualitative research represented in the paper focuses on possible aims, top targets, usage potential, management issues, social risks and ethical regulations of biobanking.

Keywords: scientific ethos, status of scientist, ethics of scientific research, techno-science, biobank, biobanking, sociology of science

HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER, JAN WANDELAAR AND THE EMPIRE OF OBSERVATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2018. Issue 4 (18). P. 84-102

This paper deals with an interpretative experiment, in which two images compare with an idea formulated by American historian of science Lorraine Daston. According to Daston, in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, scientific observation was theorized and its wide dissemination led to the formation of a veritable empire of observation. Two images in question are The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger (1533) and the frontispiece to Carolus Linnaeus’s Hortus Cliffortianus (1748), designed and executed by Jan Wandelaar. The main issue is what these can tell us about the empire of observation as a politico-epistemological assemblage (practices, procedures, techniques of representation, modes of description, institutions, selves and styles of life), assuming that such an assemblage represented and legitimated itself not only by various types of discourse, but through visual representations. The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein through its visual order documented (beyond their numerous enigmas) the moment in history of Europe when the political apparatus began to constitute itself as an apparatus of observation. In this context, the ambassador (as a sovereign’s representative) is first of all an observer. Particular attention is paid to the terrestrial globe, depicted on Holbein’s picture, as a mechanism of synoptic vision and totalizing representation, serving concurrently as an epistemological instrument and as an instrument of political domination. In contrast to the seemingly realistic manner of Holbein’s The Ambassadors, Wandelaar’s frontispiece exploits mythological motifs and plots, which however refer to real aspects of the empire of observation: to Europe as a geographical zone of appropriation and consumption, organized by nonequivalent exchanges, but also as a privileged territory of epistemological accumulation, and to the space of observation as an ordered space. In conclusion it is stated that these two images, despite their complex symbolic and allegorical structure, reflect the factual modes of knowledge and epistemological regimes whose formation and consolidation they supported.

Keywords: botanic garden, empire of observation, globe, Hans Holbein the Younger, Jan Wandelaar, map, observation, politico-epistemological regime, space of observation, visual representation

THE CARTOGRAPHIC DISPOSITIF: FEW REMARKS ON “GLOBES” OF PETER SLOTERDIJK // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2020. Issue 2 (24). P. 131-150

The author starts from the premise that the second volume of Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres contains the conception of what could be called cartographic dispositif and tries to reconstruct separate provisions of this conception and relate them with some ideas made by contemporary specialized studies on the history of cartography. One of the main points, which Sloterdijk shares with these studies on maps and cartography, is that maps are too complex to be simple expression of spatial facts. Inscribing arguments about cartography in context of own theory of terrestrial globalization, Sloterdijk shows that cartographers were among its main actors and maps and globes of Earth were among its basic representational mechanisms and practical tools. The article provides description of what exactly was said by Sloterdijk about cartography and cartographic representations, extremely powerful tools of visualization and epistemic accumulation, but at the same time of political and economical control and of re-ordering of space. The main conclusion of the article is that Sloterdijk’s conception of cartography is in a unique position to support the sense of dizzying and intriguing complexity of cartographic representation and its historical types and forms (their very diversity is good enough reason for dizziness). This sense stands against deceptive obviousness (“we all know what a map is”), generated by equally deceptive “democratization of maps”, their pervasive presence and everyday uses. And if, as Matthey Edney says, “a map is representation of space complexity”, the very map is complex, being a strange hybrid of intelligible and empirical, theoretical and obvious, imaginary and real, what is seen and what is read, scientifical and political, actual and virtual, representation and performativе. But maybe this principal complexity of cartographic representation makes it a worthwhile object of research and fascination.

Keywords: globe, map, cartography, cartographic dispositif, visualization, Sloterdijk

IMAGES OF EARTH: CONCEPTION OF GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION IN DENIS COSGROVE’S CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 4 (30). P. 36-57

“Geographical imagination” is a very strange terminological combination. It might arouse suspicion in academically respectable geography as a consequence of epistemological dangers it presumably posed. The article examines the concept of geographical imagination in the research works of the distinguished British cultural geographer and historian of cartography Denis Cosgrove (1948–2008). Cosgrove has no advanced and systematic theory of geographical imagination, but it is the main focus of his studies. For Cosgrove, the question about geographical imagination is fundamental since, in his cultural geography, imagination becomes virtually a “transcendental condition” of every geographical act as an act of representing Earth and its parts in various geographical images (maps, paintings, landscapes, photographs, urban plans and city parks, digital representations). The article considers some basic characteristics of geographical imagination and the rich field of geographical image in Cosgrove’s cultural geography. 1. Geographical images are not some entities, spontaneously generated by the “productive capacity of imagination” in the interior of the “Cartesian Theater” and remaining closed within the borders of its scene. Geographical imagination is a name of a complex mechanism, whose work we find so hard to understand and describe (if this is even possible). In this work, hands, eyes, minds, and technologies are involved. The mechanism of imagination generates externalia (images of Earth). 2. Geographical images create new (empirically unimplementable) horizons of visibility, conspicuity, and intelligibility. For example, according to Christian Jacob, “the map presents a schema, visual as well as intellectual, that takes the place of an impossible sensorial vision”. 3. Geographical images are one of the “privileged places”, and also expressions, of graphic experiments, experiments of imagination, during which new ways of seeing and thinking Earth have been tested and are being investigated further. Geographical imagination is work on visual representations of not only the empirical order, but also conceptual structures. 4. Geographical images cannot be reduced to pure and neutral representations of geographic facts. In relation to the “factual” level, it demonstrates visual and semantic redundancy. For Cosgrove, the history of geographical imagination is also the history of “investment” in geographical images that human fears, hopes, desires, metaphysical speculations, religious pursuits, and moral sensitivity make. Considered as a whole, Cosgrove’s research in the field of cultural geography is one big act of an ontological, epistemological, cultural, and even moral rehabilitation of images.

Keywords: imagination, geographical imagination, geographical image, geography, Denis Cosgrove, map, cartography, image