You See What You Know | Johanna Drucker | Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA | Season 13 Episode 17 | #238

In this episode, I sit down with Johanna Drucker, Breslauer Professor of Bibliographical Studies at UCLA and one of the leading scholars working at the intersection of visual culture, information design, digital humanities, and the history of knowledge. We explore a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to know something? Johanna argues that visual forms are not merely ways of presenting knowledge but are themselves ways of producing it. From scientific illustrations and maps to graphs, typography, architecture, and works of art, she shows how every visual representation shapes what we are able to perceive and understand.Our conversation examines the hidden assumptions embedded within information graphics, the limitations of objectivity, and why all visualizations involve choices about what to include, emphasize, and ignore. We discuss the relationship between seeing and knowing, the role of subjectivity in human understanding, and why experiences, perceptions, and aesthetic judgments often contain forms of knowledge that resist quantification. Along the way, we explore architecture, social media, art, mathematics, scientific observation, and the growing divide between empirical and humanistic ways of understanding the world.What stayed with me most was Johanna’s argument that education should not simply train people to process information but should help them cultivate richer ways of perceiving reality. As artificial intelligence increasingly takes over routine tasks, she suggests that distinctly human capacities such as curiosity, creativity, observation, conversation, drawing, movement, and reflective experience may become even more important. This episode is ultimately an exploration of perception itself and a reminder that learning begins not only with what we know, but with what we learn to see.Chapters:00:00 – Introduction01:03 – What Is Visual Epistemology?03:13 – Scientific Illustration and Learning Through Observation06:12 – Why We See What We Know07:20 – The Historical Elevation of Words Over Images10:10 – Objective Knowledge vs. Lived Experience12:01 – Why Information Graphics Are Never Neutral15:18 – Teaching People How to Read Visualizations18:23 – Beyond Critique: Building Better Ways of Seeing21:14 – Social Media, Creativity, and New Visual Forms24:09 – Time, Culture, and Changing Forms of Communication25:20 – Humanistic Knowledge vs. Empirical Knowledge28:25 – Architecture, Beauty, and Perception31:17 – Aesthetics as a Foundation of Knowledge34:07 – Language, Images, and Wittgenstein36:22 – Schooling, Measurement, and Experiential Learning39:02 – AI and the Future of Human Creativity43:16 – What Art Does That Nothing Else Can Do45:15 – Why Experiential Learning Matters47:35 – Drawing, Watercolor, and Artistic Practice50:20 – Finding the Through-Line Across Disciplines51:24 – Social Physics and Human Relationships56:10 – Curiosity, Pedagogy, and Lifelong Learning59:30 – Managing Creative Energy and Burnout01:02:05 – Experiencing Life Without Judgment01:03:58 – Closing ReflectionsBooks & Media MentionedWittgenstein's Gallery — Johanna DruckerThe Meaning of Life — Monty PythonLife of Brian — Monty PythonThinkers ReferencedErnst GombrichLudwig WittgensteinRené DescartesWilliam IvinsWilliam Carlos Williams