ABSTRACT
All educational philosophies justify themselves by pointing to the kinds of knowledge their workings produce. The justification usually takes the form of a means-end argument: by learning certain things in certain kinds of ways, the argument goes, certain kinds of knowledge or understandings will result. In terms of slow looking, this means that if slow looking is to be taken seriously as an educational practice, one must be able to point to a distinctive kind of knowledge that is evidence of its gains. In other words, whether students are taking the time to look closely at a seashell, a painting, a busy street corner, or the back of their own hand, there should be some demonstrable quality of understanding they acquire. In their monumental book, Objectivity, historians of science Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison trace the history of three paradigms of observation, which they collectively call "epistemologies of the eye".
