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Science and World Culture

Lawrence A. Scaff

in Max Weber in America

This chapter examines Max Weber's views on science and world culture by focusing on his lecture at the Congress of Arts and Science held in September 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis ... More

This chapter examines Max Weber's views on science and world culture by focusing on his lecture at the Congress of Arts and Science held in September 1904 in St. Louis, Missouri. The St. Louis Congress featured hundreds of papers assessing the state of knowledge in the human, biological, and physical sciences; medicine; law; the humanities; religion; and education. Weber spoke in a social science panel concerned with rural communities. The discussions centered on the methodological unity of the sciences. The chapter first considers Weber's insistence on science as an experimental inquiry into the phenomena and actualities of the world, which also assumed that scientific knowledge was a product of culture, before discussing his views on “rural society,” European capitalism and American equality of legal rights, and his implicit questioning of American “exceptionalism.” It also analyzes Weber's thoughts about art, gender, education, and authority.Less

Public Money and the Public Good

Ruth Barton

in The X Club: Power and Authority in Victorian Science

The chapter examines changing modes of support for scientific research and science education. The X-men were deeply committed to the expansion of science education but, contrary to historiographical ... More

The chapter examines changing modes of support for scientific research and science education. The X-men were deeply committed to the expansion of science education but, contrary to historiographical opinion, were not leading lobbyists for state aid to science. Their activism in education was sustained by the belief that science would change “ways of thinking.” They lobbied, sat on committees, examined, and wrote textbooks. Most notably, Huxley and Lubbock were members of the Devonshire Royal Commission on the advancement of science. They failed to persuade elite public schools and the well-endowed ancient universities that science was essential to a liberal education, but were successful at lower levels, through the burgeoning examination system of the Science and Art Department, which met the aspirations of middling sorts of people. Thus, the School of Science at South Kensington, a school for training teachers, became the chief institution of science education in England and the School of Mines, from which it was carved, diminished in status. Finally, the chapter focuses on Hirst, whose career in science education provides vignettes of the social life of the X Club and of gender issues– including the roles of the Club wives and contemporary controversies on education for women.Less

Joshua Reynolds’s “Nice Chymistry” in the 1770s

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

This chapter explores Joshua Reynolds’s experiments with unstable chemical materials both in his painting practice and in his theory of art. It places the painter in his native environs of Plymouth ... More

This chapter explores Joshua Reynolds’s experiments with unstable chemical materials both in his painting practice and in his theory of art. It places the painter in his native environs of Plymouth where Reynolds maintained strong connections to makers of watches and precision time-keeping instruments (including members of the Mudge and the Northcote families), along with artists known for their chemical experimentation. The chapter then tracks Reynolds’s involvement with chemical experiment at the early Society of Arts in London and in his own studio. Considered against the practices of seemingly more experimental contemporaries such as Joseph Wright of Derby, the chapter closely examines the preparation, delivery and aftermath of Reynolds's controversial sixth discourse to the Royal Academy in 1774, which would align academic art with what the painter called “nice chymistry.” Read against contemporaneous debates about the representation of time in history painting, the chapter argues that Reynolds’s strange “infant portraits” of the early 1770s constitute the most telling manifestation of his chemical work. The chapter concludes by placing these unstable paintings between ideas of the chemical homunculus and the time proper to the fine arts themselves.Less

The Clinician's Experience: Power Versus Magic in Medicine

Eric J. Cassell

in The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine

This chapter discusses the experience of the clinician, beginning with the science and art of the practice of medicine. It then moves on to the importance of the clinician's experience, the relation ... More

This chapter discusses the experience of the clinician, beginning with the science and art of the practice of medicine. It then moves on to the importance of the clinician's experience, the relation of knowledge to experience, and why experience has a bad name. The chapter then discusses the advantage of experience, the physician as the instrument, and how experience is able to mediate between science and art. It also looks at the experience of uncertainty.Less

Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts in the Early Modern Era

Eric Schatzberg

in Technology: Critical History of a Concept

The sharp medieval distinction between philosophy and the mechanical arts began to erode in the fifteenth century, in part because technical knowledge became increasingly important to political ... More

The sharp medieval distinction between philosophy and the mechanical arts began to erode in the fifteenth century, in part because technical knowledge became increasingly important to political rulers, especially in fields such as gunpowder weapons, mining, and public architecture. The links between technical knowledge and political power encouraged a surge in authorship about the mechanical arts, with works written by both humanist scholars and artisan-practitioners. Francis Bacon drew from this tradition when be began arguing, about two centuries later, for a closer connection between natural philosophy and practical application. Yet respect for the mechanical arts did not imply respect for the artisan. Instead, natural philosophers maintained a conceptual hierarchy of mind over hand that mirrored the social hierarchy of the philosopher over the artisan.Less

Introduction: Slow-Motion Mobiles

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

Scottish-born banker James Coutts sat for a portrait with painter Joshua Reynolds in the early 1770s. Painted on a panel of unprimed mahogany, the resulting picture is now a wreck. Flakes tear ... More

Scottish-born banker James Coutts sat for a portrait with painter Joshua Reynolds in the early 1770s. Painted on a panel of unprimed mahogany, the resulting picture is now a wreck. Flakes tear through the forehead, eye, and cheeks; they pierce Coutts’s visible ear and tatter his throat. So problematic was the panel that it was given in the 1850s to Scotland’s national art gallery as a means for teaching a moral lesson to aspiring artists about the dangers of Reynolds’s risky painting techniques. That conception of the first president of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts is difficult to square with familiar assessments. Yet, Reynolds’s chemical experiments were intensively discussed and collected by his votaries. By the mid-nineteenth century, they were seen to bear on painting and photography alike. This introduction argues that the force of Reynolds’s chemical experiments is reducible to neither painting nor photography; instead, it opens a history of “temporally evolving chemical objects”—of materials known and valued for changing visibly in time, while affording conceptual reflection on time. This introduction defines the temporally evolving chemical object and maps the structure of the book as a relay through and beyond British pictorial arts of the long eighteenth century.Less

Space, Time, and Chemistry: Making Enlightenment “Photography” in the 1860s

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

This chapter considers how late-eighteenth-century chemical replicas after chemically unstable academic paintings were rediscovered in the early 1860s. Seeking to acquire a prototype of James Watt’s ... More

This chapter considers how late-eighteenth-century chemical replicas after chemically unstable academic paintings were rediscovered in the early 1860s. Seeking to acquire a prototype of James Watt’s steam engine from the Soho manufactory established by Matthew Boulton in the mid-1760s, curator Francis Pettit Smith unearthed a set of replicas, which he called “sun pictures.” Smith identified the images as early photographs. On that basis, he claimed that photography must have been invented at Soho in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Although Smith’s story found support among several leading photographers in the 1860s, it was strongly opposed by Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, grandson of the Soho industrialist. This chapter demonstrates how M.P.W. Boulton destroyed Smith’s story. It also highlights the ways in which Boulton simultaneously integrated Smith’s chemo-mechanical findings into his own aircraft designs. The chapter concludes by arguing for the extensive connections between the leading inventors of photography and combustion-engine research.Less

The Art of Science: Nineteenth-Century Theory and the Logic of Practice

Philipp Erchinger

in Artful Experiments: Ways of Knowing in Victorian Literature and Science

This chapter examines how nineteenth-century philosophers from William Paley and Charles Darwin to John S. Mill and William Whewell described and debated the relations between art and science as well ... More

This chapter examines how nineteenth-century philosophers from William Paley and Charles Darwin to John S. Mill and William Whewell described and debated the relations between art and science as well as practice and theory. Offering close readings of Paley’s Natural Theology and of various passages from Charles Darwin’s work on breeding and gardening, the chapter distinguishes between two conceptions of art in the sense of skilful practice: art as guided by knowledge and different from nature on the one hand and art as productive of knowledge as well as continuous with an evolving nature on the other. As the chapter argues, these two notions of art played a key role in a controversy between John S. Mill and William Whewell that was carried out, between 1840 and 1872, through successive editions of their published works. Engaging closely with the style and spirit in which this debate was conducted, the chapter shows that Mill and Whewell argued from radically different conceptions of what ‘science’ means. As a result, they disagreed, for instance, about the very question of what constitutes a logical form of argument or proof.Less

Racial Photography in Palestine

Amos Morris-Reich

in Race and Photography: Racial Photography as Scientific Evidence, 1876-1980

Chapter Five documents the shift of racial photographic studies of Jews from Europe to Palestine. The chapter studies the two most prominent authors who wrote on race and employed photography in ... More

Chapter Five documents the shift of racial photographic studies of Jews from Europe to Palestine. The chapter studies the two most prominent authors who wrote on race and employed photography in Palestine: Arthur Ruppin, and Erich Brauer. Through “the epistemology of small differences,” archival study and comparison of photographic differences in the German, Hebrew, and English editions of their books, the chapter identifies the “good example” and brings out the specificity of photography as compared with statistics. The last part of the chapter studies the “case” of Yemenite Jews, arguably the most racialized group in the context of Jewish Palestine. Focusing on two prominent photographers, Ephraim Moses Lilien and Helmar Lerski, whose art touched racial discourse, the chapter shows the two-way flow (and fluid boundaries) between art and science. All the subjects of this chapter were educated in Germany and continued to publish in German. The Palestine chapter, therefore, constitutes a “parallel history” inseparable from its German context.Less

Racial Photographs from Icons to Schemes: The “Case” of Central and Eastern European Jews, 1880–1927

Amos Morris-Reich

in Race and Photography: Racial Photography as Scientific Evidence, 1876-1980

Chapter Two shifts perspective from an investigation of various photographic methods and techniques to close analysis of the actual roles of photographs in scientific argumentation. Focusing on the ... More

Chapter Two shifts perspective from an investigation of various photographic methods and techniques to close analysis of the actual roles of photographs in scientific argumentation. Focusing on the single most influential racial definition of Jews between the 1880s and the 1920s- the idea of the Jews as a mixed race people- the chapter analyzes the role photographs played in the scientific economy of this idea. In this vein, the chapter traces a genealogy from Felix von Luschan, through Maurice Fishberg, to Sigmund Feist. The analysis reveals a transformation in the use of photographs, from illustrations of an argument in the 1890s to the gradual emergence of serialized photographs in the 1910s. It shows that, in the transformation of the racial photograph from icon to matrix, photographs were more thoroughly integrated into scientific demonstration. The chapter agues that this transformation destabilized definitions of both “type” and “race”. The chronologically ordered narrative is interrupted by two excurses that intersect the immediate subjects of the chapter. The first focuses on the interaction between Felix von Luschan and Hermann Struck, and explores the exchange between art and science. The second reflects on the relationship between the archive and the imagination in the history of race and photography. Less

Reconstruction and Resurgence, 1648–1705: the Reich Under Ferdinand III And Leopold I

Joachim Whaley

in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire: Volume II: The Peace of Westphalia to the Dissolution of the Reich, 1648-1806

Against the traditional view that the Reich declined after the Peace of Westphalia, this section argues that Ferdinand III and Leopold I forged a viable synthesis of German monarchy and German ... More

Against the traditional view that the Reich declined after the Peace of Westphalia, this section argues that Ferdinand III and Leopold I forged a viable synthesis of German monarchy and German liberty. They were aided by a general desire for peace and by the need to defend the Reich repeatedly against France and the Turks. The Reichstag again became the central decision forum for negotiation between emperor and princes. Leopold I shrewdly exploited his position as overlord and supreme judge and the court at Vienna became a central vehicle of imperial authority. Leopold's reaffirmation of the crown's special relationship with the church (Reichskirche) and the cities further strengthened his position. He inspired plans for the economic regeneration of the Reich (J.J. Becher) and for academies of arts and sciences (Leibniz), schemes for religious reconciliation (Spinola, Molanus, Leibniz) and new writing about the nature of the Reich (Conring, Hugo, Pufendorf, Leibniz).Less

“Rend’rd Imortal”: The Work of Art in an Age of Chemical Reproduction

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

This chapter examines the work of entrepreneurs and industrialists from the mid-1770s through the 1790s who competed for supremacy in developing chemical techniques by which to replicate chemically ... More

This chapter examines the work of entrepreneurs and industrialists from the mid-1770s through the 1790s who competed for supremacy in developing chemical techniques by which to replicate chemically unstable academic paintings. Highlighting the involvements of many chemical replicators with radical politics, the chapter places lithography (the best known of the period’s chemical-imaging innovations), encaustic, and enamel painting in relation to the chemical scandal of the “Venetian Secret” as made public in 1797. Therein, Benjamin West and other leading Academicians had pursued a fraudulent compilation of painting techniques purportedly used by Titian and other Venetian masters. The chapter expands to consider a host of lesser known chemical technics including “pollaplasiasmos,” James Watt’s copying machine and the interventions into the philosophy of time advanced by Thomas Wedgwood, purported “first inventor” of photography. The chapter argues against the familiar identification of Thomas Wedgwood’s chemical research with photography.Less

Object Lessons

Sherry Turkle

in Educating the Whole Child for the Whole World: The Ross School Model and Education for the Global Era

This chapter discusses the importance of objects—artistic and mundane—in fuelling the passions of children who will eventually become some of the most important inventors and scientists. It engages ... More

This chapter discusses the importance of objects—artistic and mundane—in fuelling the passions of children who will eventually become some of the most important inventors and scientists. It engages with the current debate over the plummeting number of US-born scientists and engineers, asserting that a renewed focus on the philosophy and practice of education is needed to begin addressing the roots of the issue. The Ross Schools and their philosophy that respects the importance of the tactile, the sensuous, and the aesthetic in all aspects of the curriculum, with no exemption for science and technology, serves as an example of how schools might approach the teaching and learning of science today. The chapter also rejects the false dichotomy between science and art and instead provides descriptions of how art materials can become objects-to-think-with.Less

Conclusion: Coral Scientists on the Brink

Irus Braverman

in Coral Whisperers: Scientists on the Brink

Conservation is the art of cultivating—here, that means cultivating both corals and hope for the future. The book’s conclusion begins with a description of two art-science collaborations and then ... More

Conservation is the art of cultivating—here, that means cultivating both corals and hope for the future. The book’s conclusion begins with a description of two art-science collaborations and then moves to review the main themes of the book. It highlights that alongside the story of correlation, complexity, and wonder, Coral Whisperers has also told another story: a story about the polarized state of the scientific community that studies corals. Coral scientists from around the world emerge here not only as harbingers of doom and as messengers of hope but also, perhaps more importantly, as humans facing an existential crisis. The conclusion ends with a discussion of the 2017 documentary Chasing Coral, emphasizing that the journey from ephemeral optimism that can’t besustained to deeper iterations of hope that emerge on the brink of despair and exasperation requires a leap of faith. In the midst of their enormous pain and loss, coral scientists emerge to guide conservationists—and us all—through the perils of the Anthropocene.Less

“Pictures … in time petrify’d”

Matthew C. Hunter

in Painting with Fire: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Photography, and the Temporally Evolving Chemical Object

This chapter surveys research into artificial phosphorus conducted in the 1670s by leading figures in the early Royal Society of London. Mastered by itinerant chymists from German-speaking lands, ... More

This chapter surveys research into artificial phosphorus conducted in the 1670s by leading figures in the early Royal Society of London. Mastered by itinerant chymists from German-speaking lands, artificial phosphorus could be synthesized from human waste, then rubbed onto visual art to make it glow in the dark. But, it also spoke to broader interests: studies of light and combustion, production of organic vitality, and other problems of central interest to Restoration experimentalists. Tracking phosphorus research through those networks, the chapter centers on a spectacular lecture read twice before the Royal Society in summer 1682 by Robert Hooke. The final installment of his lectures on light, Hooke’s text used competing preparations of artificial phosphorus to model the ontology of time and to explain key features of human temporality. Examining how Hooke’s controversial claims about time would be reconfigured by contemporaries such as Nehemiah Grew, the chapter concludes by examining the ways in which the phosphorus research theorized by Hooke would later be claimed in larger chemical genealogies of photographic image-making.Less

Art or Craft?

Angelica Goodden

in Rousseau's Hand: The Crafting of a Writer

This chapter explores Rousseau's attitude towards various arts, especially as they are addressed in his Discours sur les sciences et les arts, and compares them with the artisan's practical activity. ... More

This chapter explores Rousseau's attitude towards various arts, especially as they are addressed in his Discours sur les sciences et les arts, and compares them with the artisan's practical activity. His view of human progress is discussed in the context of his personal ‘reform’ and disaffection with Parisian worldly life, though the ambivalence of his feelings for creative literature is not disguised. His taste for handwork and suspicion of technical and other aspects of modernity are further examined.Less

The Biochemistry of Life

Mark Jackson

in The Age of Stress: Science and the Search for Stability

The relationship between adaptation and disease was initially explained primarily in terms of the function or malfunction of the autonomic nervous system. However, during the middle decades of the ... More

The relationship between adaptation and disease was initially explained primarily in terms of the function or malfunction of the autonomic nervous system. However, during the middle decades of the twentieth century, scientific debates about adaptation and stress became increasingly inflected by the language and methods of endocrinology rather than neurology or psychology. The research of Selye and others, which focused on the relationship between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland and the adrenal cortex in mediating chronic stress reactions, was mobilised by military authorities and clinicians eager to identify the biochemical pathways and physiological processes involved in determining the symptoms and signs of physical and psychological disease. Chapter Three analyses not only the manner in which scientists and clinicians were increasingly explaining health and disease, and indeed the mysteries and meaning of life itself, in terms of the maintenance or disruption of hormonal and biochemical balance in the face of stress, but also the depth and impact of contemporary preoccupations with equilibrium, control and social progress.Less

Introduction: Changing the Angle of Vision

in The Lady Anatomist: The Life and Work of Anna Morandi Manzolini

This book modifies the monumental discrepancy between the Anna Morandi of a tenuous, 250-year succession of biographers and the woman revealed in her vibrant, three-dimensional atlas of the human ... More

This book modifies the monumental discrepancy between the Anna Morandi of a tenuous, 250-year succession of biographers and the woman revealed in her vibrant, three-dimensional atlas of the human body. The living eye and the intricate mechanics of sight was the focal point of Morandi's plastic survey of human anatomy. Her meticulous, verisimilar anatomical waxworks presented a foremost reinterpretation of the intersection of science and art established within the institute's walls. She created her collection for use by medical professionals and avid amateurs in the study of practical anatomy. Moreover, Morandi's wax bodies supplanted and indeed surpassed in critical ways real dissected bodies, whose defunct systems, parts, and attachments she could purify of their natural ambiguities and, using vibrant colors and three-dimensional movement, imbue with virtual life. This Introduction provides an overview of the chapters included in the book.Less