Introduction:
The images I reconstructed (Figure 9 – Purkinje cell of the human cerebellum and Figure 10 – Short axon cell of the cortex) come from Texture of the Nervous System of Man and the Vertebrates by Pedro Pasik and Tauba Pasik. This text, an English translation of Cajal’s original version in Spanish, features Cajal’s neuroanatomical illustrations and has made his work more accessible to the broader scientific community. For a considerable amount of his illustrations, Cajal primarily relied upon visualizing biological samples using the Golgi staining method, and to create the drawings, he used Indian ink or pencil, with cardboard or paper serving as the drawing platform. For my reconstruction, I could not employ the Golgi staining method, but I attempted to retain the authenticity of the illustration process. The tools that I found necessary for the reconstructions included a pencil, tissue paper, printed images of interest, cardboard, and a pen. Specifically, for figure 9, I used a pencil and a tissue paper superimposed onto the printed image. The printed image substituted the stained cell/tissue to which Golgi had visual access via a light microscope. Despite the substitution, I expected this reconstruction to yield a similar, but less nuanced, image because printing may not capture all the miniscule details. For figure 10, I used a pen and a piece of cardboard. I expected the reconstructed image to be considerably less representative of the original, as compared to my reconstruction for figure 9. However, since I did not trace the image, I anticipated the reconstruction process to be like what Cajal experienced when he illustrated the stained biological samples. While the tools I employed may have been sufficient to capture the general essence of Cajal’s illustrations, they also came with certain limitations – limitations that prevented objective renderings of the original drawings.
FIELD NOTE 1 OF 3
Date: 2.11.2022
People Involved: Sujay Marisetty
Location: I was in my cubicle space in the lab at which I work.
Reconstruction conditions:
It was not too loud. I could faintly hear some conversations happening in the background.
Time and duration of reconstruction:
12:22pm-1:22pm: 60 min
Equipment and tools used:
Mechanical pencil, sticky note, tissue paper, Scotch tape, printed copy of Ramón y Cajal’s image (Fig 9. Purkinje cell of human cerebellum)
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
I was working in my lab at the time of reconstruction. I had a break before I needed to go back into the lab space to complete an experiment. I noticed that my sense of smell was not so keen as normal, possibly due to congestion from riding my bike to lab in the cold. During the construction process, I had my lab coat on during the process, so it felt warm. I think the intensive process of tracing the minute details also played a role in making me feel warm.
Prior knowledge that you have:
I never traced detailed images before this session. I decided to tape down both the tissue paper and the image down onto the desk. I also had a sticky note on the side to allow me to shave off the lead of my pencil to create a pointed tip, as appropriate. I had a hunch that this would be helpful for tracing minuscule features of the image.
Reflection on your practice:
I started the process by outlining from the bottom. It made sense to start with the large branch at the bottom of the Purkinje cell and work my way to the dendritic arborization. However, after some time, I realized that outlining wasn’t the best approach for some of the smaller branches, as I had started to make rounded curves around the branches, whereas in the “real” image, the branches had irregularly shaped edges. I then proceeded to shade in the branches to my best ability and sharpened the tip of my pencil using the sticky note before I shaded the smaller branches. This process seemed to work better than the first one, so I continued this approach for the remainder of the session. Also, I found myself sometimes making excessively smooth curves in replicating the edges of the branches. Upon looking at the real image itself and noticing that such smooth edges were not present, I adjusted the way I drew these edges.
Photos/video documenting process:
Video:IMG_4302 2
Photo after session: 
Questions that arise:
This session reminded me of Daston and Gallison’s Mechanical Objectivity. In this piece, the authors mention that achieving mechanical objectivity requires repressing the “willful intervention of the artist-author” (Daston and Gallison, 121). Processes like tracing can help repress willful intervention, but I wonder… how do unconscious tendencies play out during processes such as replication and documentation, and how do they affect our understanding of scientific information? This leads me to further think about a different version of figure 9 that I found on an Atlantic post when researching Ramón y Cajal’s work (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/arts/design/brain-neuroscience-santiago-ramon-y-cajal-grey-gallery.html). This image of the Purkinje cell in this source shows tiny outgrowths (which I assume to be dendritic spines) on the small dendritic branches. Regarding people who do not have a background in neuroscience, what implications does the exclusion of these tiny outgrowths have? I wonder if during the reproduction of this image, someone deemed the tiny outgrowths not to be important.
Another question I had during this process concerned how Ramón y Cajal was able to capture the tiny details of the images.Perhaps, the question might be explained away by his artistic prowess, but I wonder if we can say that he accurately captured the details. As mentioned in Ambrosio and Clark’s chapter in Imagining the Brain: Episodes in the History of Brain Research, Bell claims that “the act of copying in itself would fail to capture ‘the minuteness of intention’ required for an accurate and useful representation” (117). In this case, regardless of his artistic skill, Ramón y Cajal would not have been able to capture an objective rendering of the stained biological sample. However, it should be noted that Bell mentions later on that when the artist-author has “systematic knowledge of the whole context”, regarding the terminology and foundational knowledge, copying can result in objective and meaningful representations (117). This begs the question… should expertise grant the privilege of determining how details should be represented? I would imagine that Ramón y Cajal did not completely recapitulate the orientation of every single curve within the original image obtained via the light microscope, but rather captured generally (with more detail than I did) the features of the branches.
FIELD NOTE 2 OF 3
Date: 2/12/2022
People Involved: Sujay Marisetty
Location: In my room on-campus
Reconstruction conditions:
It was quite for the most part. Jones (my residential college) has a relatively loud ventilation system, which sometimes I heard in the background. The only lighting during this session came from my desk lamp.
Time and duration of reconstruction:
11:00am -12:15pm: 75 minutes
Equipment and tools used:
Mechanical pencil, sticky note, tissue paper, printed copy of Ramón y Cajal’s image (Fig 9. Purkinje cell of human cerebellum),
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
The room was quite dark. The center of illumination was the tracing paper superimposed on the printed image. Although it was midday, the lighting in the room made me feel like I was reconstructing the image either during early in the morning or late in the night.
Prior knowledge that you have:
In the previous session, I started with outlining the image, which did not work as smoothly as I thought it would, so I resorted to coloring the branches on the tracing paper. For the most part, the tracing process felt mechanical, and I think having done this once will help me trace quicker in this session. Also, during the last session, I found it difficult to assess the shading intensity in the real image. For this session, I will try to focus on this aspect, while continuing my practice of sharpening the mechanical pencil tip, as needed for tracing the miniscule details.
Reflection on your practice:
One of the main challenges that I during this session was assessing the differential shading intensity of the image, below the tracing paper. After completing the reconstruction, I found that the larger portions of the cell were shaded more lightly compared to the smaller portions, which could possibly be due to using the sharp edge of the pencil tip to color the smaller portions. Replicating the shading intensity was arguably the hardest part of the process and one of the weak points of my reconstruction. Additionally, I attempted to replicate the smearing pattern in Ramón y Cajal’s original image, but the tissue paper did not seem to be a conducive medium for this. Despite these difficulties, I am happy with how the reconstruction went and surprised to witness the amount of detail Ramón y Cajal included in his illustrations.
At times, the paper seemed too saturated with light, which made me bend closer to the paper to identify the branches that still needed to be traced. This also vaguely reminded me of the discussion in class about strong lighting illuminating objects to the extent where features of the object disappear.
After finishing the reconstruction, I noticed there were some inconsistencies in the tracing process. When I superimposed the image on the tissue paper over the printed image, there was some sections that did not overlap as well. For instance, the some of the branches I shaded should have been larger.
Photos/video documenting process:
Video: IMG_4324 2
Final Product: 
Original Image: 
Questions that arise:
As seen on the image, there was a considerable amount of smearing around the branches. This made me revisit Daston and Gallison’s claim about repressing willful intervention to maintain mechanical objectivity. Was the smearing on Ramón y Cajal’s image accidental or a byproduct of intentional erasing and revision of the image? If the smearing happened to be a result of erasing and if the intention of erasing is to render a more accurate depiction of an image, does willful intervention necessarily have to be repressed to maintain mechanical objectivity?
Further, if erasing was intentional, how do we assign differing levels of significance to the features of an image? I would assume that if Ramón y Cajal erased parts of his image, it would be to replicate the cell structure as accurately as possible, with eraser marks being the cost of such a decision. However, the eraser marks are likely not attributes of the original stain of the Purkinje cells. These marks were artificially added in Ramón y Cajal’s drawing, meaning that he must have thought replication of other attributes deemed sufficiently important to warrant having eraser marks in the image.
Interestingly, there were a few specks distributed throughout the image. Were these specks a result of human error, or were they artifacts on the slide, or were they parts of another biological structure nearby (i.e., possibly part of another cell)? I think it is reasonable to assume that Ramón y Cajal was attentive enough to not make such errors. During the reconstruction process, I was hesitant to trace these small dots, until I peered at the real image to verify the presence of these dots. Are these specks significant? Do these specks need to be included in reproductions to maintain objectivity?
FIELD NOTE 3 OF 3
Date: 2/13/2022
People Involved: Sujay Marisetty
Location: Jones Computer Lab
Reconstruction conditions: The room has sufficient lighting (both natural and indoor lighting). Also, the room was relatively quiet, and had a large table for me to work on.
Time and duration of reconstruction:
75 minutes: 2:45pm – 4:15pm
Equipment and tools used:
Cardboard (Amazon box), Pen, copy of Ramón y Cajal’s image (Figure 10 – Short axon cell of the cerebral cortex)
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
The room felt cold, although it was not in my purview during the session. As I started out, the image looked relatively simple to reconstruct, but as I continued, I started to notice the tiny details that were not so apparent upon first glance.
Prior knowledge that you have:
Although I will reconstruct a different image in this session, I have some familiarity with the complexity of Ramón y Cajal’s drawings after tracing one of his illustrations. Surprisingly, for some of his illustrations, Ramón y Cajal used cardboard as a drawing platform, which I thought would be interesting to use in my reconstruction.
Reflection on your practice:
I began the reconstruction by shading the larger portions of the cell and then proceeded to the smaller branches. While drawing, I noticed that there were many irregularities in the boundaries of the branches. Attempting to replicate these features, I inevitably made some errors during the process. With the pen, I was not able to simply erase an error and correct the drawing. Despite this, I continued to sketch the other sections of the picture, adjusting as needed. Also, at times, I had to stroke the pen back and forth multiple times to get ink onto the cardboard, which made the effort of replicating differential shading much more difficult, as the ink would sometimes come out suddenly in large amounts. On that note, I mainly relied upon varying the pressure to produce differing grades of shade intensity, but this did not work as well as I thought it would. The cardboard itself was quite like the tissue paper, but sometimes, I made indents within the cardboard itself when I needed to heavily darken certain sections.
Photos/video documenting process:
Video: IMG_4346
Final Product: 
Original Image: 
Questions that arise:
The convoluted nature of the branches is starkly contrasted with other neater versions of neurons that have regularly shaped structures. Such depictions of neurons can be found in many biology or neuroscience textbooks nowadays. How do we reconcile the need to retain aesthetics with the need to retain objective renderings? How do we make the decision as to which is more important?
How is our vision deceptive? What should we make of the disparity between what we see and what we experience? I though the image to be less detailed than the previous image, but tracing every little edge and nook was time-consuming and arduous and made me rethink my previous notions of the image. This reminds me of Jay’s The Noblest of Senses, wherein he writes that Plato had reservations about the “reliability of the two eyes of normal perception” (27). It follows that if our sense perceptions cannot provide clarity on reality, then processes like documentation and copying are inherently not objective.