In this paper, I consider Santiago Ramón y Cajal's strategy of histological observation and imaging in terms of what I call "induction of visibility" (Fiorentini, 2011). Cajal's strategy of visibility induction drew upon both rational and aesthetic visual sensibility, and considered this interplay to be a constitutive element of knowledge production. I propose to describe Cajal's fundamental attitude towards visually inferred knowledge in terms of an "aesthetic epistemology".
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