Abstract
Since the age of Enlightenment and its goal of making knowledge
accessible to everyone, thanks to that paramount work of dissemination represented
by the Encyclopédie, the use of images as a means of education and transmission
of knowledge has been established which, over time, it has been extensively
explored and improved. With Positivism and the affirmation of the taxonomic
principle as an ordering element within the various branches of knowledge,
the latter have progressively developed their own iconographic codes, which are
still the ones characterizing the visual communication language in their respective
knowledge spreading tools, from anatomy atlases and natural sciences treatises to
architectural manuals and technical handbooks. In fact, the visual language, in its
different scales of iconicity, is helpful and influential in conveying, explaining and
make understandable complex concepts and processes, contextualise them culturally,
historically and temporally and make relations and connections visible, both
in quantitative and qualitative terms to wide audiences. Furthermore pictures –
real, realistic as well as abstract or hypothetical – have been at the basis of many
inventions and discoveries and play a fundamental role in conceiving, conceptualising
and coding the scientific discourse. The paper proposes, discusses and
illustrates the narrative power of images in knowledge dissemination in engaging
the public at educational and lifelong learning level