ON THE USE OF VISUALIZATIONS IN THE PRACTICE OF SCIENCE

Visualizations used in the practice of neuroscience, as one example of a scientific practice, can be sorted according to whether they repres ent (A) actual things, (B) theoretical models, or (C) some integration of these two. In this paper I hypothesize that an assessment of a cha in of visual representations from (A) through (C) to !B (and back agai n) is used, as part of the practice of scientific judgment, to assess the adequacy of the ''working fit'' between the theoretical model and the actual thing or process that the model is intended to explain.