Imaging and Imagining Space: How Popular Culture Shapes Our Expectations of Outer Space

Abstract

It is remarkable to think that visual phenomena that we take for granted today, and that seem self-evident and in no need of further explanation, appear in history only at a specific point in time. Today it is possible, for example, to create and reproduce photographic images of lightning flashes and the Milky Way. In regard to such images, the usual thought is that an image simply represents what already exists. In this chapter, we look into this commonly held belief, because in the history of images this simple relationship between a phenomenon and its representation is called into question by a theoretical perspective that claims the contrary, namely, that images can and do, to some extent, also have an impact on that which is being represented. The fact that people did not always depict phenomena, such as lightning or the Milky Way, and facts about the way they began to do so, allow inferences about their perception of these things (Baigrie 1996; Daston and Galison 2007; Galsion and Jones 1998).

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.—Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, 1632.