Research on graphs and mathematical forms, such as those used in the empirical sciences, tended and still tends to investigate these phenomena from the perspective of static (mental, external) representation-things. Near the turn of the century, a shift occurred toward investigating such phenomena from the perspective of inscriptions with an associated shift to social practice of inscription-use. Neither approach could explain, however, why very experienced research scientists have difficulties explain- ing graphs that appear in introductory textbooks of their own field (Roth 2003).
When asked to explain graphs from their own current work, these same scientists almost exclusively and extensively talked about different aspects in the production of the graph, including the natural phenomena under investigation and the research methods used. Although I had previously suggested that as the result of such experi- ences, graphs bear metonymic relations for scientists, I now think that that the rela- tion is indeed synecdochical – a part standing for a whole including the part. As such, there is an indexical relation between the part, which is only figure, and the whole, which functions as ground.
In this laboratory, the graphs discussed in small-group and whole-team meetings make sense because they were an integral and constitutive aspect of the work as a whole. This work as a whole makes for a sensible contexture. My ethnographic studies show that any part of this contexture (tool, graph, object, scientific paper, material, equipment, etc.) made sense because of its connections to all other parts (e.g. Roth 2014a). When there were differences in opinions concerning an aspect of a graph, the subsequent discussions tended show that these differences were associ- ated with different background assumptions (e.g. a team member looking at a graph with the assumption of differences in the water temperatures). The collective work of the research team constituted a sense contexture, and anything foregrounded dur- ing a discussion (figure) – i.e. a text taken generally – therefore existed against everything else as the context (ground). This was especially so for the graphs pro- duced, which were the result of the work completed and, along a chain of inscrip- tion, were used to point back to something in the original specimen – here the absorption of light as indicative of the A1/A2 ratio, itself a correlate of the physiolog- ical changes in the fishes and their readiness for ocean migration.
In one of the team meetings, there was a discussion concerning the anticipated distribution of the A1/A2 ratio at a particular time point in the life of a fish popula- tion. The team considered the fact that there were 20 or 30 cells from a single fish eye on which absorption measurements had been taken; and these may all be from the same part of the eye, or these may be from different (dorsal, ventral) parts of the eye where there might be real differences. The team also discussed that for any particular measuring episode (leading to a data point for a particular time point), there is one eye from each of 20 fishes involved. At one point, PI1 got up from his seat walked to the chalkboard while saying that if the data were plotted numbers [of measurements] against percent-A1 he then would predict something like what he was drawing (the left-most graph in Fig. 6.1).
In the meeting, the graph made immediately sense to all but to the postdoc – as the unfolding meeting would show shortly afterward. It is only when something did not make sense that it would become the topic of talk; so while working together in the laboratory, they may not have talked at all for stretches of time. The graph made sense to the others because it literally was figure against a ground that was consti- tuted by the research activity taken as a whole. At the time, all team members other than the postdoc had worked together for one or more years. They knew and had completed every part of the research, from getting the samples to euthanizing the fish, extracting eyes (Fig. 6.2a) and from these (under a microscope) retinal pieces, macerating the retinal pieces, mounting them on a microscopic slide (Fig. 6.2b).
They had entered the mounted cells and observed them in the microscope (Fig. 6.2c), aligned them with the sampling light beam (see cross, Fig. 6.2c) and had made the two measurements required for determining the absorption spectrum (Fig. 6.2d).
Although the research associate was responsible for the extraction of the maximum of the absorption function and its bandwidth (Fig. 6.2e), from which the relative amount of porphyropsin and rhodopsin were derived, everyone else on the team had been to his office and seen how it was done. They knew the existing theory about the
changes in the photo-absorbing molecules in the retinal cells and the results of another research group in a nearby geographical area (Fig. 6.2f).
Each of the two lines in the graph pertaining to overall rod population, when the weighted mean is calculated, made for a data point in a graph plotting the percent- age of porphyropsin against date (Fig. 6.2d). From each absorption curve (Fig. 6.2b), the scientists extracted the position of the maximum and the bandwidth, which allowed them to determine the relative amount of vitamin A2-based porphyropsin (short “A2”) and vitamin A1-based rhodopsin (short “A1”). The measurement then added a count of 1 to one of the bins visible in the overall rod population graph (left- most graph, Fig. 6.1). The mean of all measurements entering the graph would con- stitute one data point in a graph representing the change of rhodopsin over time (i.e.
as in Fig. 6.2f). Although the team anticipated publishing a paper on these changes, this was not the ultimate motive of their research. Instead, as suggested above, the research was to assist fish hatcheries in the timely release of the fishes that they (a) raise beginning with eggs and milt culled from returning salmon and (b) eventually release into the wild when the young fishes physiologically change (becoming smolts) and begin their ocean migration.
Similar graphs had been the result of the scientists’ work in the past, when the retinas from 10 to 20 fishes were analyzed with more than a dozen rods from every fish. Over the course of a single day, therefore, the researchers had seen the absorp- tion curve maxima vary, which would translate into different A1/A2 ratios. Thus, each of the two curves was the result of – and represented – some 100–300 measure- ments counting toward the numbers represented by each “bin” (“# of rods” on the abscissa). At the time, the only person in the room less familiar than the others was
Fig. 6.2 Images from the research on the relative amount of vitamin A1- and vitamin A2-based material in the rod-shaped photoreceptors of coho salmon. (a) Extraction of fish eye. (b) Placement of slide in microscope. (c) Rod-shaped photoreceptor. (d) Absorption graph in wet lab. (e) Absorption graph and model curves after analysis. (f) Theoretical curve and confirming data from a previous study
the postdoctoral fellow, who had joined the team only recently. His actual time col- lecting data, going through the many steps described above (Fig. 6.2), was much less than that of others; and so there were aspects of the research that he was unfa- miliar with and that therefore did not (yet) make sense. It thus is the sense (senses) of the body that goes with and comes from the involvement with all parts of the production that leads to the sense contexture that forms the body of sense; and this sense of the objects, production, and transformation of inscriptions is common to all those who are involved in the same experiment. It is this common sense that under- lies the feeling that the graph makes sense; and this feeling is deeper for the old timers on the team than for the relative newcomer. Indeed, it is in the course of the first year of this study that I also developed that sense – after having done all parts of the experiment myself.