From Art to Applied Science

Bibliographic Data

ID3263196
AuthorsEric Schatzberg (0000-0002-7444-2093, University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume103
Issue3
Pages555-563
Publication date2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/667979
PMID23286194
OpenAlexW1984994229
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited19

Before "applied science" and "technology" became keywords, the concept of art was central to discourse about material culture and its connections to natural knowledge. By the late nineteenth century, a new discourse of applied science had replaced the older discourse of art. This older discourse of art, especially as presented in Enlightenment encyclopedias, addressed the relationship between art and science in depth. But during the nineteenth century the concept of fine art gradually displaced the broader meanings of "art," thus undermining the utility of the term for discourse on the relationship between knowledge and practice. This narrowed meaning of "art" obscured key aspects of the industrial world. In effect, middle-class agents of industrialism, including "men of science," used the rhetoric of "applied science" and, later, "technology" to cement the exclusion of artisanal knowledge from the discourse of industrial modernity

Art · Environmental Science · History and Developments in Astronomy · History of Science and Natural History · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments

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