A for Alibi
Alibi: Latin elsewhere, at another place. The mode of defense under which a person on trial for a crime proves he was in another place when the alleged act was committed.
Science has produced a repertory of images that represent natural phenomena and visions of the world. The relation between these images and reality is a complex one, in the sense that their meanings are always fluctuating. Reality doesn’t determine representation, and representation is linked but not necessarily fixed to what we believe the world is. Like in the alibi, there is a place that is full, and one that is empty, linked by a relation of negative identity. In the case of the ordinary alibi, this process has an end; reality stops the turnstile revolving at a certain point. But in the case of the history of representation, the position of the actors is always shifting: the meaning is sometimes there to present the form; the form is in other cases there to outdistance the meaning.
Scientific instruments are mediators in between sense and reason, linking the objective external world and the subjective mind. As a challenge to human capabilities of observing and measuring the outside world, they have been often used to extend the senses, to see or to hear, amplifying the natural conditions. From a historical perspective, scientific instruments play an important role when understanding practice as a vital momentum in the construction of meanings. Scienti€c Instruments allowed the observer to approach nature in a way that would be otherwise impossible, in that sense, they do not just follow theory but they also determine theory; working in between what is possible and what can be thought.
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