From: eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Book Review: The Scientific Image by Harry Robin
Followup-To: rec.arts.books,comp.graphics.visualization
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 93 07:59:47 GMT

Followups-To: rec.arts.books,comp.graphics.visualization

The Scientific Image from Cave to Computer
Harry Robin
If you want to get this book, do it soon, or wait until it gets reproduced
	and it appears in Books-In-Print
$50

Second of two book reviews on visualization


I beat Burke at finding this book!  In short a one sentence review of this
book is that it's a coffee table history book, it is not a science book,
but it has numerous bits of science in it.

The ACM/SIGGRAPH/NSF report on scientific visualization noted and could not
understand the reluctance of scientists to use imagery for science.
The authors could have used this book.

Great pictures: Picture (drawing) depicting the second replication
of Ben Franklin's electricity-kite lightning experiment (in case you
didn't know, the scientist was killed in this replication).
Watson and Crick's original model photo.  This book is the first written
article I have seen other than my Usenet notes to note the scale in the
bottom of the picture.

It's not a perfect book.  I can find numerous questionable things.
The Boeing "first computer graphic" probably had predecessors.
Robin's chief advisor was Daniel Kevles, the highly respected scientific
historian at Caltech, should have known that the acknowledged grandfather
of computer graphics Ivan Sutherland was briefly the CS Chairman at Tech.
Nor that Sutherland's advisor, Marvin Minsky [MIT--a rival Tech, maybe why
Kevles left it out 8^)] feels some credit toward starting computer graphics.
Muybridge's animal motion studies are left out.  Edgerton is also relgated
to 1/2 a page (also from MIT).

I do recommend the bound hard back.  I think this text is better in some
ways that Tufte's coffee table book.

Maps are weak (the second reviewed image is a map) and photogrammetry is
left out.  This might be a weakness because Robin was at Juilliard and not
known as a scientist.  In discussing imagery with Uselton, Sam noted that
the anatomical images of da Vinci might at least rival maps.  So I
challenged him to find said images.  Well this book was published, since
that challenge and while nice, I can still assert maps retain their
information density.  Planetary imagery like the volcano's of Io
and confirmation of Peale et al's Science paper on tidal heating is
also lacking.

Cave paintings and Mandelbroit are in the book.
The book is smart enough to understand the difference in visualization
for discovery and for insight versus mass education.  Many great examples
of "wrong imagery" as well (Kepler's early concepts of orbital motion).
It includes "music" sound imagery (also Kepler), Rorschach ink blots, and
even familiar things from Tufte's book.

The sections of the book include

Observation
Induction
Methodology
Self-Illustrating Phenomena
Classification
Conceptualization

A nice coffee table book for the scientist to browse and flip thru
to see the inspiration of other scientists.  You could not justify it
for a class, but it certainly should be placed on class reserve if
it is ever used in conjunction with a class.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Associate Editor, Software and Publication Reviews
  Scientific Programming
  {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
Seeking Books to buy:	Bongard, Pattern Recognition
			3 down 1 to go.
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.visualization