Reflections on Theme 1 – Research Publications/Theory of Science

During this introduction week we started by having one seminar about research publications. This seminar also familiarized us a bit more with the topics in the class and we decided on the groups for the project as well. The research papers that were presented varied a lot and it became even clearer to me that “media technology” is a broad research area. Even though most papers were in some way related to social media and social networks there were also other papers with a more technical approach, like computer graphics, simulation, visualization etc. I think it is a good thing that we’re finally getting to focus a bit on what research areas there are and how to search in journals and papers after articles related to curtain topics and areas.

One thing that I’ve noticed that I believe is a bit confusing is the value of the impact factor. I believe that this number varies a lot also regarding to research areas. A specific impact factor in physics doesn’t necessarily stand for the same quality as the same impact factor in chemistry. Since media technology is a fairly new topic and subject I would want to know where media technology is on this impact factor scale as well.

During our second seminar (with Leif Dahlberg) we spent most of the time discussing Bertrand Russell’s book “The Problems of Philosophy”. I had a really hard time understanding the concepts of philosophy while reading the book, but it made more sense after discussing the questions in small groups. I still find philosophy rather complicated and it definitely brings up a new way of thinking that I’m not used to. However, I found it much easier to deal with the different theories and ideas connected to the subject when discussing it in the group.

I wish we had spent a little more time on the connection between engineering and philosophy. Even though most time was spent on questions like “what is knowledge?” I still didn’t really grasp the connection to engineering in a sense that philosophy could be a helping tool for engineers.

However, I did noticed that when I was reading a proposition about “innovation and research initiatives in the Stockholm region” and they discussed the importance of keeping Stockholm on top as a “knowledge-city” I found myself pausing for a minute… 

Theme 1

The IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics is a journal that present important research results and state-of-the-art seminal papers within subjects related to computer graphics and visualization techniques, systems, software, hardware, and user interface issues. (Impact factor 2.215)

Visualization Rhetoric: Framing Effects in Narrative Visualization

The article discusses the complexity of visualizing data. How social and cultural norms affect the end-users understanding and interpretation of the visualization, and also how important the creators task is to design an objective visualization without ambiguity issues. The important task of deciding what to include and what to leave out creates a lot of questions regarding the creator’s objectivity. To deal with all these influences there has to be strategies, which are discussed as rhetoric techniques, objective ways of dealing and handling with visualized data. The contribution of this article is to present these techniques and categorize them so that it makes it easier for the end-user to, in a critical way, look at narrative visualizations. It also explains that it's not only the visualization itself that has to be reviewed but in what context the visualization is meant to be used. Questions like who is the audience and what is the purpose of the visualization were explained and discussed. In the beginning of the article there are a lot of references to "InfoVis" but no real explanation of what it is. It kind of just assumes that the reader knows. They could have explained that it is a toolkit to create interactive data visualizations.

1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Russell defines “sense-data” as things that are immediately known to us, such as colors, sounds, smells, and so on. This data gives us a sort of immediate sensation of how things are and appear to us; however, having a sensation of a color is not the same as the color itself. The color itself, together with things such as tables and other surroundings that we get a sensation of, is in Russell’s book referred to as a “sense-datum”, not to be mistaken with his definition of “sense-data”. 

Russell introduces these different notations to help in answering two questions related to sense-data and sense-datum. In his questions he is asking whether tables exist or not and what the sense-data is and is not telling us. He then also discusses what consequences this brings to the answers.

(1) Is there a real table at all? (2) If so, what sort of object can it be?

2. What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

A proposition assigns curtain properties to a specific object. Russell also says that we can’t understand a proposition if we are not fully acquainted of all the constituents of the proposition. One example of a proposition could be “Bertrand Russell was a philosopher”.

A statement means something involving a description, which is composed wholly of particulars and universals with which we are acquainted.

3. In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

A definite description is a description that denotes only one singular object. This object is the nature of our knowledge however, we are not acquainted with the object. Phrases of the form “the so-and-so” is what Russell defines an object with a “definite description” unlike an “ambiguous description” of an object which is on the form “a so-and-so”.

4. In chapter 8 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 9 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

One problem that Russell’s addressing is that a true belief cannot be called knowledge when it is deduced by a fallacious process of reasoning, even if the premisses from which it is deduced are true.

Another point that Russell addresses is that we by no means easily can discover criterions for intuitive beliefs, which leads Russell to a conclution that all our knowledge of truths is infected with some degree of doubt, and a theory which ignores this fact would be plainly wrong.

New blog for DM 2572

This is my first post!