1800s
1845
A01=M. Norton Wise
aesthetic
Author_M. Norton Wise
berlin
biographical
Category=NHD
Category=PDX
Category=TBX
community
cultural
culture
electricity
electromagnetism
emil du bois reymond
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_tech-engineering
ernst brucke
germany
government
hermann von helmhotlz
industrial
interdisciplinary
leadership
mechanics
minister
modernization
natural
nature
ophthalmology
physics
prussia
prussian
psychophysics
scientific
scientist
society
thermodynamics
werner siemens
Product details
- ISBN 9780226531359
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 10 May 2018
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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 Brucke, 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.
M. Norton Wise is distinguished research professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles.
