This focused and incisive study reassesses the historic collaboration between James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Sutton. It reveals that Maxwell and Sutton were closer to true partners than has commonly been assumed, and shows how their experiments illuminate the role of technology, representation, and participation in Maxwell's natural philosophy.
Autorentext
Jordi Cat is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, USA. He is the co-author of Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics (1996), and the author of the forthcoming monographs Master and Designer of Fields: James Clerk Maxwell and Constructive, Connective, Conventionalist, and Concrete Natural Philosophy and Physics Beyond Laws and Theories: The Limits of Unity, Universality, and Precision.
Inhalt
1. Introduction: shared media, differing projects and projections 2. Enter Maxwell 3. Photographic illustrations 4. What objectivity? Whose objectivity? Automatic objectivity is social and scientific 5. Photography organized and scientific: from amateurs to professionals 6. Photography as instrument and profession: Art versus science 7. Photographic collaborations: two more cases 8. Maxwell's pictorial and photographic background 9. Methodology of experimental inaction 10. Enter Sutton 11. The place of collaboration and chemistry between men 12. Technologies of projection and color: Different problems and images. Color and truth. 13. A Tale of two experiments: From professional to cognitive autonomy 14. Photographic consequences 15. Conclusion