HAVE YOU SEEN SOMETHING INVISIBLE TODAY?

Dr. Anna Clemencia Guerrero, 2024

(Image: Katie Mast, SFI)

I am a James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. I am also an Academic Associate at Arizona State University where I help teach online history of medicine, bioethics, and biology & society.

I use my expertise in history and philosophy of science, microbiology, and scientific illustration to study the relationship between scientific pictures and knowledge. The pictures scientists make (drawings, photographs, photomicrographs, diagrams, computer simulations) represent a set of choices shaped by prior knowledge, cultural conventions, and the specific problems scientists are trying to solve. All scientific pictures are designed! I can tell you why scientists made the design choices they did, and how those choices constrain (not necessarily in a bad way!) future science.

By showing today’s scientists how their choices are constrained by past designs, and helping scientists make different and better decisions, I aim to hasten scientific progress.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Anna in the American Philosophical Society archives, 2022

(Image: Adrianna Link)

Watch Anna reflect on her experience as the inaugural Jacques Barzun Fellow for Collections and Programming in the History of Biology at the American Philosophical Society in 2022:

0r read: