The author, under the subtitle "Cognitive Anchorage", posits (p. 242-4) that visual thinking is of a different order from verbal thinking, and that the understanding of representation is an entrée to an understanding of a different order..... images have a unique function in the creation of knowledge.... representation permits interpretation. By encoding complex data in visualizations, scientists are able to record new knowledge in such a way that incremental discovery can be grafted easily to the base of the known .... the image, the visual reperesentation of the thing, is indeed at the foundation of much of our cognition of the world. Since vision is our primary sense she concludes that the thorough understanding of the visual is the way we attempt to comprehend the order of things. Her conclusion is built on a thorough and well referenced set of images of North America from 17th and 18th century visitors who were explaining the novel landscape, people and animals to a European audience without experience of North America. I believe that Dickenson's conclusion is on solid footing and leads us to consider not just static images but the role of moving imagery. This, in turn, provides a doorway into the newly identified science of "Sensory Archaeology". ( )

A pretty neat book about a subject that is not discussed much: how come the pictures provided by early New World naturalists look nothing like real life? and why did contemporaries think it was all good? What sort of milieu and conventions were the natural scientists operating in and under? Neat illustrations, though many illustrations described in detail in the book are not in the text and a map would have been wonderful. Kudos for having both endnotes AND a bibliography, too many books these days only have one or the other or, worse yet, none or those stupid "p. 230 - 'he took off...' Moby-Dick, p. 313" style notes. ( )