Visual Images on the Covers of Scientific Journals and Books—Needed or Decorations?

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Notes

¹ The reader, acculturated to the written word, but interested in effective visual transmission of data and information is referred to the classic 3 volumes by Tufte, E. R., (1983) The visual display of information, Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press; (1990)Envisioning information; (1997) Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative; and (2006) Beautiful evidence, as well as to The art of looking sideways. Phaiden Press.UK.

² The reader is asked to consider the two types of questions posited by the cyberneticist Heinz Von Foerster; legitimate and illegitimate ones. The former are those for which the answer is not known and is, perhaps, even unknowable during a given state of knowledge and technology. An illegitimate question is one for which the answer is known, or, at the very least is consensualized, enabling the creation of a state of temporary or more permanent query-closure. The quest within a question becomes guaranteed. Rilke, the poet suggested that we should love he questions themselves as if they were ‘locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language..’ ‘…Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.’ ‘…Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.’ ‘Rilke, Rainer Maria and Kappus, Franz Xaver. Letters to a Young Poet in an edition by M.D. Herter Norton (translator). (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1993).’ Editor's note.

³ The reader is asked to consider that with the advent of artificial science and its theoretical underpinnings (chaos, complexity, and uncertainty theories) it is now posited that much of human behavior is complex, dynamic, multi-dimensional, level/phase structured, nonlinear, law-driven and bounded (culture, time, place, age, gender, ethnicity, etc.). ‘Drug use and misuse,’ as well as abstinence, however, these behaviors and processes are defined and delineated, would be such processes. There are a number of important issues to consider and which are derived from this: (1) Using linear models/tools to study non-linear processes/phenomena can and does result in misleading conclusions and can therefore also result in inappropriate and flawed intervention; (2) the concepts prediction and control have different meanings and dimensions than they do in the more traditional linear ‘cause and effect’ paradigms; (Buscema, M. (1998), Artificial Neural Networks, Substance Use & Misuse, 33(1–3); Editor's note

⁴ The covers of Substance Use and Misuse, initially The International Journal of the Addictions, have included visual images since publication in its second volume 49 years ago. It is one of the very few journals in this field, or many others, that does so, as an integral part of what it is. Editor's note.

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Notes on contributors

Yehuda Levy-Aldema

Yehuda Levy-Aldema, Israel, artist, photographer, teacher of the visual language, Israeli specialized tour guide, is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and a museologist; has been involved in the arts and museum work both in Israel and abroad, for over 30 years.