Aesthetics, Industry, and Science : Hermann von Helmholtz and the Berlin Physical Society / M. Norton Wise.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wise, M. Norton, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Helmholtz, Hermann von, 1821-1894.

Helmholtz, Hermann von.

Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin.

Science--Germany--Prussia--History--19th century.

Science.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (432 p.) : 31 color plates, 73 halftones, 6 tables

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

On January 5, 1845, the Prussian cultural minister received a request by a group of six young men to form a new Physical Society in Berlin. In fields from thermodynamics, mechanics, and electromagnetism to animal electricity, ophthalmology, and psychophysics, members of this small but growing group—which soon included Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brücke, Werner Siemens, and Hermann von Helmholtz—established leading positions in what only thirty years later had become a new landscape of natural science. How was this possible? How could a bunch of twenty-somethings succeed in seizing the future? In Aesthetics, Industry, and Science M. Norton Wise answers these questions not simply from a technical perspective of theories and practices but with a broader cultural view of what was happening in Berlin at the time. He emphasizes in particular how rapid industrial development, military modernization, and the neoclassical aesthetics of contemporary art informed the ways in which these young men thought. Wise argues that aesthetic sensibility and material aspiration in this period were intimately linked, and he uses these two themes for a final reappraisal of Helmholtz’s early work. Anyone interested in modern German cultural history, or the history of nineteenth-century German science, will be drawn to this landmark book.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

1 Parade auf dem Opernplatz

2 Pegasus and the Muses (Museums) of Art, Industry, and Science

3 Pegasus and the Muses (Museums) of Art, Industry, and Science:

4 Modernizing Military Schools:

5 What’s in a Line?

6 The Berlin Physical Society

7 The Mechanism of Matter:

8 “A Spectacle for the Gods”

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Jan 2021)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-226-53149-X

OCLC:

1031847682