Chapter 1: Understanding Visual Culture
Pg 17.

Studying the shapes and textures of a piece of visual culture is not the same sort of activity as investigating the social, gender and conceptual structures that piece exists within. Therefore, it could be claimed that the formal approach is not offering an understanding of the piece. Or it could be claimed that it is offering a different sort of understanding from the structural approach. Similarly, it could be argued that the imaginative reconstruction of the opinions and point of view of a character in a painting does not offer an understanding of the painting at all…….. It will argue that there are many ways of understanding visual culture, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Chapter 2: Explanation and Understanding: Visual Culture and Social Science
Pg 20.

There are two basic approaches to the study and understanding of visual culture, a phenomenological and hermeneutic subject - based one and a structural, object-based one.

{{{{Pg 21.

In eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, of course, the progress of science was astonishing. Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94) is often credited with being the founder of modern chemistry, devising the modern method of naming chemical compounds, distinguishing elements from the compounds and, with Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) going some way to describing the contents of the air we breathe. Michael Faraday }}}}}

Pg 22

As Bauman points out, Comte and Durkheim both believed that facts were 'things', existing independently of individual experience, objectively 'out there' in the world and waiting to be discovered by diligent researchers using the proper methods (Bauman 1978: 15).
Mill, in his System of Logic, published in 1843, argues something rather similar For him, explaining human behavior is also a matter of 'establishing casual sequences' and assuming them under 'laws' of human nature and society (Winch 1958:67,70). These 'laws' human nature and society are apparently to be regarded as being the same kind of things as the laws of nature. As Winch points out, for Mill
There can be no fundamental logical difference between the principles according to which we explain natural changes and those according to which we explain social changes. (Ibid,:71)

Pg 23

There are no facts without interpretation and there can be no interpretation in the absence of facts. Similarly, he is aware that talk of 'laws' of society is as old' fashioned as it is presumptuous, but still wants to be able to talk of 'principles', even if these 'principles' are supported by 'facts' which are themselves only facts according to the 'principles' by means of which they have been selected (ibid.58-9)

Pg 24

Walsh eschews the (positivist) idea that facts and theory are entirely independent of each other, with a fact simply existing, 'whether or not anyone takes any notice of it' (ibid.: 77). And he agrees that facts are only facts in the context of some theory. But he will not accept the (relativist) consequence that this means that all historical facts are unconnected with reality (ibid.: 88)