{
  "id": "mediating-science-drapers-tithonic-rays-lunar-photography",
  "type": "article-journal",
  "title": "Mediating Science: Draper’s Tithonic Rays and Lunar Photography",
  "author": [
    {
      "literal": "Giulio Galimberti"
    }
  ],
  "container-title": "Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science",
  "volume": "13",
  "issue": "1",
  "issued": {
    "date-parts": [
      [
        2026
      ]
    ]
  },
  "URL": "https://spontaneousgenerations.com/articles/mediating-science-drapers-tithonic-rays-lunar-photography/",
  "page": "1-11",
  "abstract": "This article examines John William Draper’s practice of lunar photography and his proposal of the so-called “tithonic rays” to argue that scientific phenomena emerge through the material and operational affordances of technical media rather than being merely recorded by them. The article offers a media-historical reinterpretation of Draper’s experiments as a moment in which the daguerreotype itself co-produced new epistemic objects, challenging anthropocentric models of scientific discovery and emphasizing the active epistemic role of nonhuman agents. The paper’s central contribution is to show how Draper’s daguerreotypes did not simply provide visual confirmation of existing theories but materially generated the very conditions for the emergence of new concepts of radiation and energy. By foregrounding the daguerreotype as a mediating actor in the formation of scientific theory, the article contributes to current debates in the history of science and media theory concerning the ways in which technologies participate in the production of knowledge."
}