Explicit and Implicit Graphs: Changing the Frame

Abstract

A view long venerated in philosophy and science separates image and word into separate worlds. Images resemble their references or ideas of their referents. They present themselves all at once and lack clear linguistic procedures like syntax for ordering and decoding. Words, on the other hand, describe rather than resemble and are read linearly in time. Images are rich but diffuse in meanings, while words have less dense meaning and are more precise. The two do not translate directly into each other. The dichotomics reflect an ideological split between literal and metaphorical, true and fictional, scientific and artistic. Word and image often operate as unwitting stand-ins in this struggle. But the differences between word and image are smaller than they might seem. One area where the function of image is most like a word is in graphs. The graph is a culturally given way of reading – a visual organization as language. It provides a means of systematically thinking about how we use such language without realizing it. Is there an understanding of how graphing as a technology functions? Investigation of this leads to considering ways of looking at and of understanding visual organization in order to put forward some alternative goals.