The Construction of Colorimetry by Committee

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4516017
AutoresSean F Johnston (0000-0001-6156-9768, University of York, autor de correspondencia)
Año1996
Volumen9
Número4
Páginas387-420
Fecha de publicación1996-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889700002568
OpenAlexW2029339137
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas6
Referencias citadas48

The ArgumentThis paper explores the confrontation of physical and contextual factors involved in the emergence of the subject of color measurement, which stabilized in essentially its present form during the interwar period. The contentions surrounding the specialty had both a national and a disciplinary dimension. German dominance was curtailed by American and British contributions after World War I. Particularly in America, communities of physicists and psychologists had different commitments to divergent views of nature and human perception. They therefore had to negotiate a compromise between their desire for a quantitative system of description and the perceived complexity and human-centeredness of color judgment. These debates were played out not in the laboratory but rather in institutionalized encounters on standards committees. Such groups constitute a relatively unexplored historiographic and social site of investigation. The heterogeneity of such committees, and their products, highlight the problems of identifying and following such ephemeral historical "actors

Compromise · Economics · Ephemeral key · Epistemology · German · Negotiation · Perception · Political economy · Political science · Positive economics · Sociology · Computer Science · Historical and Scientific Studies · History · History of Science and Medicine · History of Science and Natural History · Law