This is a simple metaphor that I have used before, though I never wrote it up as a special topic. Today, when I was eating with Teacher Zhang and the others, I brought it up again, and I think this metaphor is still fairly illuminating, so I’ll talk about it here in some detail.
The metaphor is mainly meant to express our attitude toward science and how to understand the relation between science and the “world”: science is like photography, offering an image of the world.
We point at a photograph and identify it, saying, “This is Zhang San.” Is this Zhang San? Yes, this is indeed Zhang San, not Li Si or Wang Wu. The photograph can clearly display all kinds of details about “Zhang San,” even more finely than the naked eye can see them, and it is also more objective and more reproducible—two different people may have very different impressions of and descriptions of Zhang San, but it is much easier for them to take the same photograph of him. Through photography one can also carry out more quantitative analysis, such as the proportional relationship between this person’s head and body, and so on.
Science also presents the world as a kind of picture. We have to ask: the world-picture of science, whether we call it mechanistic or mathematized, is this picture really of the world? It certainly is, and the thing we speak of while pointing to this picture really “is” the world. Even when we ask what the world “is,” we can quite properly raise its “photo” and say, “Look, this is what the world is like.” It is like when you ask me who Zhang San is, I can take out Zhang San’s photograph and point it out to you: Zhang San “is right here.” In these cases, it is not that there is a “Zhang San in the photograph” and a “real Zhang San,” with the two Zhang Sans somehow linked up through some mysterious connection; rather, the one in the photograph just “is” the real Zhang San. This is also what I mean by media ontology: existence (being) is mediation, and we always talk about what things “are” through some kind of medium.
But the problem is that this medium is not the only or highest way. There are many other ways for us to know or speak about what Zhang San is. For example, I can tell a story and say: Zhang San “is precisely” the protagonist of this story; this story “is about” Zhang San. Here, “being Zhang San” is no more “is” or “is not” than “being Zhang San” in a photograph. If we take one particular form of expression as the only or fundamental form, thereby ignoring and denying other rich forms, that is dangerous. Our opposition to scientism is precisely an opposition to this attitude of excessively elevating one medium, not a denial of science itself. Even if we can speak about Zhang San in other ways, that does not mean denying that “Zhang San is indeed in the photograph.”
The world is indeed in science, and what science grasps is indeed the real world. Of course, why we can be certain of this is another question, but this question is also similar to asking why we can be certain that this photograph really is Zhang San’s—the photograph may be distorted or fake, it may be mistaken or misidentified, but first we do in fact believe that photographs can be true, and only then do these erroneous cases become possible. Science may be distorted or mistaken, but science can indeed present the world; that much is clear.
Different forms of presentation are not absolutely superior or inferior to one another, but along certain relative dimensions there are differences of better and worse. For example, if you want to quickly and accurately identify a person in a crowd, carrying a photograph is far more effective than laboriously describing them in words. Of course, in other situations photographs may also produce preconceived notions and biases, thereby hindering understanding. Science is like this too: when measured along certain dimensions, such as the ability to control things precisely, science may indeed be the most effective and reliable; but this priority is not absolute, and at times becoming too stubbornly attached to the prejudices brought by science can also lead people astray.
Aside from mediatized forms such as photography and storytelling, is there a most original and most authentic way of presenting things? If there is, it can only be “dealing with things” in the everyday lifeworld. But this dealing is hard to call “one” mode of presentation. It is not as if looking “directly” with the “naked eye” is more “real” than looking through a photograph; direct visual observation with the naked eye is also always within a corresponding environment, and its background and context affect how things appear to the naked eye, while certain backgrounds can likewise mislead the naked eye’s discernment. That is to say, “seeing with the naked eye” is also mediatized or environmental, and likewise partial; seeing with the naked eye is not necessarily more comprehensive or more partial than a photograph. What is called “everyday life” does not mean a “direct” contact divorced from all technology or media; rather, it is the “sum total” of all media. “Life” itself is rich: the day before yesterday I heard about Zhang San’s deeds, yesterday I saw Zhang San’s photograph, today I met Zhang San in class, tomorrow I will see Zhang San at the dinner table, and the day after tomorrow I will talk with Li Si about Zhang San’s story… all of these experiences of dealing with Zhang San belong to my “life,” and thus “life” is not some “one” medium. If “everyday life” is, in the eyes of phenomenology, ontologically primary, this does not mean that some particular most original medium is primary; rather, it means that the mediation of media as such takes priority over the specific content presented by particular media. Before we discern some particular thing through some particular medium, we already have some kind of pre-understanding of this possible experience, and this pre-understanding is founded on our prior life experience.
In addition, even with photography itself, there is still its multiplicity. The same camera can, depending on how it is used, produce photographs of different forms: some emphasize the foreground, some emphasize the background, some emphasize color, and some emphasize outline. There are also X-ray photography, infrared photography, and so on, each presenting a different aspect. This is like how different branches of science can grasp nature from different angles; some grasp it more deeply and minutely, but that does not necessarily mean there is some absolute hierarchy of superior and inferior.
From a diachronic perspective, photography itself also has its own development and evolution. At times, such improvement can occur entirely within photography itself, detached from the presentation of the world—for example, grinding certain parts more finely, designing certain mechanisms more economically, and so on. It is just like the development of mathematics and certain kinds of theoretical physics: they can focus only on the internal structure of science without needing to look at the “world,” and after internal structures have been refined through relentless improvement, we may discover that science’s imaging of the world is also becoming clearer and clearer. This is not anything especially magical. A mechanic may improve the performance of a camera without even knowing at all what a camera is for. But after all, a camera has always been something for presenting the world,
At times, a kind of drastic “Scientific Revolution” takes place. Such a revolution cannot be achieved simply through improvements at the level of parts; it requires a wholesale replacement of the mode of presentation. This is like the shift from oil painting to photography: both provide a flat image of the world, but the entire form and mechanism have changed. Photography comprehensively surpasses oil painting in accuracy across various respects, but certain standards of measurement and dimensions of expression may also be missing. For instance, painting may use vivid colors and exaggerated shapes to portray a person’s character and even moral bearing, but this mode of expression, when measured by photography, is simply distortion and deformation; and things like character, color, and moral bearing are basically excluded from the range presented by photography.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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