Kompetenzen der Bilder

In the history of science, language and image appear interwoven and in a constant interaction. Images and pictures, however, were always suspected of distorting the truth by their suggestive power, and their role in building up knowledge was and still is controversial. In addition, the concept of image is often associated with signs, symbols or metaphors, and this tends to mask its conceptual independence and uniqueness. All of this makes an assessment of the relevance of images in the scientific process a difficult undertaking. The use of pictures is indispensable, but also needs to be controlled. In this book, the authors analyze the role of images in science, in communication, reasoning, the visualization of information and deal with issues of mental image processing and generation.