The View from Above: The Science of Social Space

221 Pages·2013·53.43 MB·English

by  Jeanne Haffner

THE VIEW FROM ABOVE
77887788__000000..iinndddd ii 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
77887788__000000..iinndddd iiii 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
THE VIEW FROM ABOVE
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL SPACE
JEANNE HAFFNER
THE MIT PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
77887788__000000..iinndddd iiiiii 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
© 2013 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any
electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informa-
tion storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or
sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected]
or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cam-
bridge, MA 02142.

Set in Engravers Gothic and Bembo by Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited, Hong
Kong. Printed and bound in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haffner, Jeanne, 1973–
The view from above : the science of social space / Jeanne Haffner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-262-01879-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Space — Social aspects. I. Title.
HM654.H34 2013
304.2 ' 3 — dc23
2012029843
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
77887788__000000..iinndddd iivv 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
This book is lovingly dedicated to my father, Alfred L. Haffner Jr.
(1925– 2000), whose personal recollections of the Great Depression,
World War II, and the Cold War always made these historical moments
feel strangely familiar to me.
77887788__000000..iinndddd vv 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
77887788__000000..iinndddd vvii 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY PETER GALISON ix

PREFACE xiii
INTRODUCTION: THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL SPACE 1
1 FROM ENTHUSIASM TO EXPERTISE: AERIAL VISION FROM
BEFORE THE AIRPLANE TO THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR I 7
2 THE POLITICS OF SPATIAL FORM: AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY IN
SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH, ARCHITECTURE, AND URBAN
PLANNING IN THE 1920S AND THE 1930S 19
3 THE OPPORTUNITY OF WAR 55
4 MODELING THE SOCIAL AND THE SPATIAL: “ SOCIAL SPACE”
IN POSTWAR FRENCH SOCIAL-SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 81
5 FROM DISTANCED OBSERVATION TO ACTIVE PARTICIPATION:
SOCIAL SPACE AND PARTICIPATORY PLANNING IN 1960S
FRANCE 109
CONCLUSION: THE NEED FOR A V UE D ’ ENSEMBLE 137
NOTES 143
BIBLIOGRAPHY 173
INDEX 199
77887788__000000..iinndddd vviiii 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
77887788__000000..iinndddd vviiiiii 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4400 PPMM
FOREWORD
“ Just look,” goes the refrain. Galileo, we learn in school, told the princes
to look through the telescope, and they stubbornly refused; Robert Koch
fought for years to get his generation to look at the bacilli through the
microscope, until microbe hunting became the royal road for a generation
of medical work. But whether through sketching or photographing, and
whether through radio telescopes or functional magnetic resonance
imaging, there is no “ just looking.” The centuries-long battle over scientific
observation in and outside science has shown that time and again. Since
the 1960s if not earlier, philosophers of science have insisted that there is
no way to exclude theory completely from our observations. It is, they
taught, a pipe dream to pursue pure sense data. But even talk of “ theory
ladenness” fails to get at the depth of the issue. (On the theory ladenness
of observation, see Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions ,
University of Chicago Press, 1962 and 1970; Russell Hanson, T he Concept
of the Positron , Cambridge University Press, 1963 and 2010.) Scientific
seeing involves more than the smuggled assumptions of high or low
theory. To see a particular way involves more than just partitioning the
world in particular ways (with special instruments or careful object prepa-
ration). Equally important, scientific sight involves the self-conditioning of
the scientist.
Vesalius and Albinus made their anatomical atlases not by dutifully
sketching every bit of the scenes before them, but by learning and devel-
oping a form of sight that aimed beyond appearances, to the ideal reality
behind the body of this or that criminal ’ s mortal remains. This was a moral
as well as an epistemic injunction. Goethe polemicized a gainst drawing
what was before the artist — variations, damage, bad conditions of observa-
tion could all make nonsense of this particular flower found behind that
77887788__000000aa..iinndddd iixx 11//99//22001133 1122::4411::4411 PPMM