Topic：Colour Knowledge: Connections of Science and Technology in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Speaker：Prof. Friedrich Steinle
Host：Prof. ZHANG Wei
Time：October 29 (Monday) 14:00-16:00
Venue：Library and Information Bldg C 1202
图书信息中心C楼1202
Abstract:
Knowledge of colour in Europe has developed with high dynamics through the 18th and 19th centuries. The immense rise of colour knowledge had to do, on the one hand, with a similar rise in technical demand and economic importance and, on the other, with a strong increase in systematization and theorization of colours. Colour knowledge developed within artisanal and technical fields as well as in scientific approaches towards explanation. However, those different traditions gave rise to fundamentally different, if not diverging conceptual approaches. While at the turn of the 18th century, a large amount of colour knowledge had been created, that knowledge was far from coherent. Several attempts towards an overall, synthetic view on colour started around 1800 and were continued throughout the century. Even now, colour knowledge is dispersed over several disciplines and practical fields. Studying its history helps us better understand productive and less productive ways of bringing together practical use and theoretical approaches.
Speaker’s Info:
Friedrich Steinle is professor of History of Science at Technische Universität Berlin. His research focuses on the history and philosophy of experiment, on the history of electricity and of colour research, and on the dynamics of scientific concepts. He is member of the Leopoldina – German National Academy of Science, of the Akademie der Wissenschaftenund der Literatur at Mainz; and past president of the German Society for History of Science, Medicine and Technology. His books include Newton’s Manuskript ‘De gravitatione’ (1991) and Exploratory Experiments. Ampère, Faraday, and the Origins of Electrodynamics (2016). He is co‐editor of Experimental Essays ‐ Versuche zum Experiment (1998, with M. Heidelberger), Revisiting discovery and justification (2006, with J. Schickore), Going Amiss in Experimental Research (2009, with G. Hon and J. Schickore), and of Scientific Concepts and Investigative Practice (2012, with U. Feest).
