ABSTRACT
The idea of visual cognition as a form of knowledge might be said to have achieved its first widespread successes in the eighteenth century. The purpose of this chapter is to examine those instances where its impact can be detected readily enough, chiefly in those concerns which adopted methods close to scientific procedure. By this I mean those approaches to knowledge which treated physical phenomena as data requiring exact transcription, from which reliable deductions might be made. In essence, these examples might be said to represent the classic instances of a tendency to assert the primacy of the visual, putting perception at the service of research and of its dissemination. Such enterprises would necessarily have to be sharply distinguished from the material treated in other chapters of this book, but I would like to suggest that the authority won for the visual record in these instances might be profitably regarded as influential on the less rigorous enquiries which followed. Moreover, the debates animating the production of these records testify to the high seriousness of the endeavour, and help establish a critical framework for thinking about the place of visual research in other contexts.
