Inducing visibilities: An attempt at Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s aesthetic epistemology

In this paper, I consider Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s strategy of histological observation and imaging in terms of what I call “induction of visibility” (Fiorentini, 2011). Cajal’s strategy of visibility induction drew upon both rational and aesthetic visual sensibility, and considered this interplay to be a constitutive element of knowledge production. I propose to describe Cajal’s fundamental attitude towards visually inferred knowledge in terms of an “aesthetic epistemology”.

► I discuss Cajal’s strategy of microscopic observation and imaging.
► I define it as process of induction of visibility.
► This process draws upon visual selection, visual assemblage, and judgment.
► Interplay between rational and aesthetic visual sensibility constitutes knowledge production thereby.
► This way to obtain and infer knowledge is defined as aesthetic epistemology.