ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the ways that scientists construct and manipulate mental images, sometimes called spatial cognition. Case studies of innovation and discovery in science and technology confirm what we have known all along but have barely begun to describe and theorize in a systematic way: that visual modes of representation are essential to the generation and dissemination of new knowledge. 1 Can we develop a model of how scientists use images to devise solutions to problems? I will identify a schema that is widely used in a range of contexts and at different stages in the development of visual images, models, and instruments and in discourse about these cognitive artifacts. This schema elucidates the notion of cognition by showing how image-based thinking is a mental activity that is embodied and both technologically and socially situated (Clark, 1997, 2002).
