CROTCHETS & QUIDDITIES What Stamps the Wrinkle Deeper on the Brow?

In a noteworthy 1935 book, Ludwik Fleck wrote that what science accepts and interprets as “fact” is not purely objective, but is a product of the history and underlying theory of the science at the time.1,2 Contextual and even subjective factors drive, mold, and constrain scientific inference more than we may realize. Fleck showed how scientific illustrations serve as ideograms that reflect but also subtly promote the prevailing worldview. This conveys information but also channels thought, because in deciding how to represent a phenomenon some features are made more obvious while others disappear. The resulting presentation can have seductively proliferating effects. What we see in graduate school can stay with us a long time! Fleck was not an evolutionary biologist but historical sciences may be more vulnerable to being prisoners of their theory—interpretive preferences—than experimental sciences like chemistry or physics. This certainly pertains to evolutionary anthropology, where our endless arguments about what is or isn’t visible in a fossil specimen generally depend on visual presentation and assessment. Multiregional continuity, or replacement? Human ancestor or side branch? Robust or gracile? Bipedal? Fleck singled out anatomic illustration to make his points. One example was the depiction of the surface anatomy of the cerebral cortex. Even something so seemingly straightforward shows how ambiguous or theory-dependent a simple illustration can be, in regard both to function and evolution. Interpreting past representations is problematic because we can’t really know what preconceptions the authors might have built into them (intentionally or otherwise). But the same is true today. What evidentiary criteria might we apply to determine what can, or should, be included in a modern representation?