A retórica da validação na informação imagética científica: um estudo sobre a arte de “fazer ciência” a partir das imagens

Abstract

The aim of the research was to understand the presence and use of rhetorical elements in the production of scientific imagery for validation purposes. The notion of scientific imagery information has been answered here by any type of representation analogous to an actual object or constructed in a graphical and unstructured form textually. The literature review explored Rhetoric as an epistemological platform, and then analyzed it from the historical perspective of Roland Barthes. The frame of reference also revisited the breadth of the notion of image in Paul Otlet, as well as the concept of validation under the perspective of Maria Nélida González de Gómez. As methodological procedures, the research, of qualitative order, worked with documentary theses and structured interviews. For the identification of profiles, the study first recognized a pre-defined population, namely, professors with a doctorate degree from different specialties at the Pedro II College, Federal Institute of Higher Education located in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Then, the study explored the production of doctoral theses of this population, focusing on the identification of studies with intense use of images. After this pre-analysis, a sample of theses and researchers was delineated, resulting in the corpus investigated, namely, the total of 4 (four) documents and 4 (four) subjects, represented thematically by the Biological Sciences domains; History of sciences and techniques and epistemology; Systems engineering; and Computing and Technology of Chemical and Biochemical Processes. Based on the taxonomy of static images of Peter Enser, we identified the imaging typologies: direct imaging, indirect imaging, hybrid imaging, drawing, diagram. In the scope of the results, the instruments of observation of the corpus were constituted from the operationalization and the transformation of the concepts of the theoretical referential into analytical-discursive categories. Based on the precepts of the theory derived from rhetorical thought, the presence of a total of 26 (twenty-six) rhetorical categories, with emphasis on "representation", " scientific discourse "and" argument ". The epistemological anchoring of rhetoric allowed us to identify the assumptions of a primary experience of validation in the scientist's experience, similar to those documented by Bruno Latour, that is, the act of projecting the validation of theories, arguments and hypotheses from the elaborationre) use of images. The study finally proved from rhetorical theory the contemporary dimensions of validation in science under the use of images, that is, the different forms of the art of "doing science", in different domains, in the light of scientific imaginary information, based on an epistemological-historical double of Rhetoric already present in Aristotle, namely argument-persuasion.