Introduction
The talk discusses if the new biomedical images represents a new epistemic regime, that makes the modern established standards of objectivity and hermeneutic insufficient. A proposal is that the established traditional epistemic virtue “trained judgment” has further enhanced its importance with the emergence of the new biomedical imaging techniques. From the perspective of the examining doctor and the patient on display the apparent body image on the screen represents both an immediate viewed visual reality and an epistemic fact. Yet, the new biomedical images are techno-scientific objects that have technical and ontological similarities with fictional 3D-software. In the interactive images galleries new ontological dimensions can be created by the user, a hyperreality that is virtual reality experienced in the physical reality.i If one accepts that the techno biomedical pictures require new techniques of seeing and interpretation, an urgent question is what epistemic regime will be valid to find – or create – the essential scientific facts?

The images of tissue captured by CT and MRI are segmented into slices, known as the segmentation problem. Diagnosing and preoperative planning requires that that the slices are manually formed to a fully formed imaged, a slow painstaking error -prone process. However, even if the border between fact and fiction sometimes seems blurred, the biomedical digitalized images differ from other sciences – for example nanotechnology, particle physics, gene modification and robotics by having a reference point in physical body. In the other sciences the image technologies simultaneously intervene and invent nature, they are toolkits which produce aesthetically designed images, the same seductive aesthetic as in art and animated fiction and computer games. In diagnostic medicine a correct body representation is still crucial. Metaphysical questions such as whether the liver exists or not are less pertinent.

A suggestion is that the diagnostic biomedical images require the epistemic virtue “trained judgment” but supplemented by another epistemic virtue “truth to nature” in order to handle the challenge from the blurred border of examination, intervening, and inventing in the body. The “truth to nature” epistemic virtue is exclusive for biomedical images – as said above – the patient’s body is still the reference point, even when decomposed to molecules and rDNA. It may proffers reasons for founding the medical museums exposition policy on a redefined, altered concept of material artefacts.

The arguments are, firstly, that anyone hardly talks about science as one singular enterprise. Biologists and nano-scientists subjects are heterogeneous and expert knowledge is required for communication. This raises the question if the museums should have a common enterprise in collecting and exposing material artefacts. Maybe the museums should differentiate their strategies. Secondly, the medical museums represent a cultural identity, mainly connected to the body. For a new generation, brought up with the computer, the world presented and remodeled on the screen will be natural, and create a cultural identity with both presence and meaning for the spectator. Another kind of “thingness” emerges, connected to the hyperreality. Screen memories produced in a hyperreality may be as emotionally strong as any traditional reality experience. The museums can offer the visitors extended knowledge about different ontological levels of reality, which requires a trained judgment – otherwise not available for the laymen.

Ways of seeing are ways of knowing. History may have had its heyday as the exclusive ontological path to memory and reflection. The postmodern era offers new ways to presence and meaning (Soderqvist, Bencard, & Mordhorst, 2009). In the future the medical museum may offer a tour in a body planetarium, or how to create, interpret and manipulate MRI-images.

Epistemic objectivity standards in a historical and future perspective
One particular aspect of epistemology is objectivity. Objectivity is a notorious blurry concept, as it can refer to a whole range of statements: about objective truth of a scientific claim, objective procedures to guarantee a valid result, and the professional attitude that characterizes the professional scientist. One of the general virtues initiated by the Kuhnian discussion, further enhanced in science studies and in cultural studies, was the questing of philosophical concepts that had been assumed to be universal and monolithic. Among the concepts that acquired a history was objectivity (Höög, 2009). Even if topic had for long been a favorite among philosophers, their focus had been on the existence and legitimacy of objectivity, how to get a proper representation of reality (Nagel, 1986) (Quine, 1953). The definition of philosophical realism or objectivism – the view that there is a reality or ontological realm of objects and facts that exists independent of the mind doesn’t fit the new techno scientific objects. They are not mind independent facts but subjects of intentionality.

In their great book Objectivity Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison present a history of scientific objectivity since the seventeenth century (Daston & Gailson, 2007). The aspiration to depict reality in a reliable way has been a constant challenge for scientists in the pre-and modern era. Before the photography non-realistic tropes such as the allegory, metaphor and synecdoche were frequently used as a way of revealing the true nature of nature. Depicting the true essence of nature required a genius that could see the pure essence beyond the surface variability of nature. The common human eye was too imperfect to reveal the truth of nature. A famous quotation from Francis Bacon illustrates this epistemic virtue truth concisely: “Seeing that the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom” (Bacon, Weinberger, & Bacon, 1989; Daston, 1994).

In the beginning of the early eighteenth century, leading naturalists had begun to worry that the quest for natural regularities was being overwhelmed by scientific attention to nature’s extremes. Next epistemic virtue to come was “mechanical objectivity,” emerging during the nineteenth century and with its heydays during the first half of the twentieth century. The third and last epistemic virtue in Daston’s and Galison’s book is “trained judgment.” An expert is doing the interpretation that aims at discerning patterns, not types. Long experience and unconscious intuition are prominent features. A well-known example for the practice of “trained judgment” is the X-ray pictures (Jülich, 2002).

All these three virtues share a common goal, namely to do a faithful representation of nature. How durable and useful will these epistemic virtues be in the present high tech digital era? A suggestion is that diagnostic biomedical images make a special case that differs from other sciences, keeping alive the professional virtue of doing an objective body representation. Trained judgment and truth to nature will continue being epistemic virtues.

Biomedical imaging from a clinical point of view
The transition from analog to digital imaging – in¬¬ magnetic resonance imaging, radiography, and ultrasonygraphy – in contemporary biomedicine has revolutionized diagnostic practices, at least parts of it. Which questions are on display for a practicing medical technologist or a medical doctor? If we are doing clinical work the interest may be to find out better techniques that reduce the amount of radiation in the medical examination to reduce the risks with the examination. Another important task is to improve the diagnostic techniques. One of the new tools is the haptic technology, a computer technology that adds touch and feeling as means to facilitate the image analysis of a segmented liver or kidney. The professional awareness is considerable in recognizing that these images do not simply depict reality but are constructed artefacts. The professional training is on how to train the judgment to interpret these pictures. The haptic technology is one example that supports the claim that “trained judgment” together with “truth to nature” is an important epistemic virtue also in the future.

Biomedical imaging from a science studies point of view
The last 20 year of science studies has superseded the former analytical philosophy of science emphasis on theory and ideas in the sciences to the material culture of instruments, practices and work in the laboratory. A much more pluralistic picture of the sciences has emerged, which have made it difficult to talk about the sciences as one singular phenomenon. One of the interesting questions is how the epistemic vocabulary will be affected when the family of cultural studies, for example ethnography, art, visual studies, and cultural anthropology, are conceptualizing the new epistemic regimes.

A current tendency in the renewed questions about epistemology is to underline the distance of the image from the imaged object; the scans are interpreted as irrefutable facts about the body (Reichle, 2008; (Dumit, 2004). Jean Baudrillard’s concept of “Spin of simulacra” also emphasizes that the signs have lost connection to reality (Baudrillard, 1983). In the postmodern society the hyperreality and the scientist-engineer profession is already a reality. Colorful pictures are produced for the public media and the scientific journals, sometimes integrated parts of the research process as in nanotechnology, sometimes not.

However, the reign of the hyperreality can be questioned. The medical doctor and the engineer are more interested in what technologies will work, not in ontological question about what exists or not. Probably several epistemic virtues will be at work at the same time, and “trained judgment” and “truth to nature” will keep their importance.

Conclusion
A conclusion is that the current range and diversity of image-making techniques offer a desirable renewal of traditional medical museology. A challenge, not only for biotech museums, but for the digitalizing era in general is to illustrate how the technical and the esthetic devices manipulate the selected motive of the picture. The medical museums have a task, namely to provide a public arena to train the laymen judgments and give familiarity to how to interpret the images. The new haptic technologies offer new opportunities to add kinesthetic and tactile interaction with the images that compound virtual and physical reality to hyperreality. The body will be both tangible and sensuous – via the screen! Several of the new medical technologies are exclusive for the field and differ from other sciences. This fact can be a starting point for founding a new museological collection- and display strategy.

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Soderqvist, T., Bencard, A., & Mordhorst, C. (2009). Between meaning culture and presence effects: contemporary biomedical objects as a challenge to museums. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 40(4), 431-438.

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