Scientific visualization has the potential to make science education more accessible and to provide a means for authentic scientific inquiry. The role of scientific visualization within science is explicated through examples of its use and by presenting a sociological account of science that portrays scientific visualization as an important new inscriptional system. The paper notes several problems with using scientific visualization in education, and proposes possible solutions to these problems. The paper culminates in a view of scientific visualization as a means to provide education with an important new inscriptional system for exploratory, inquiry-driven learning and to link the aims of education to the practices of science
