100
5.4 Secchi and the Visual Culture of Science
In my comparative history of visual cultures in science and technology during the
last five centuries (Hentschel 2014, Chap. 2), I proposed a set of nine different layers which all of these visual cultures share—despite the huge differences existing
between, say, geometrodynamics, stereochemistry and electron microscopy, geology, crystallography and botany, etc. From this perspective of mine, spectroscopy is
yet another good example of such a visual culture of science. It exhibits:
• Highly developed skills of pattern recognition
• A mastery of visual thinking (“anschauliches Denken” in the sense of Rudolf
Arnheim)
• Practical training in such skills (nicely documented by Eugene Ferguson)
• High prestige awarded to atlases and plates
• Obsessive improving of the quality of representations
• A broader context of specialized establishments or experts in duplicative media
(draftsmen, engravers, lithographers, photographers, photoprinters, etc.)
• An interest in the physiology of visual perception and in related research
instruments
• An aesthetic pleasure in the scientific procedure
• A fusion of profession and pastime, of labor and leisure
Secchi’s work and skills certainly exhibit all nine of these criteria. Thus Secchi
is a vivid proponent of what I call the “visual culture of spectroscopy” during the
close of the nineteenth century, a culture that spans across several disciplines,
among them chemistry and astrophysics, physics, chemistry, and photography, even
ranging into meteorology, medicine, and engineering. For meteorologists, Secchi
constructed a barometrograph, a thermometrograph, an anemograph, and finally
even a meteorograph which diagrammetrically recorded all of these weather parameters of pressure, temperature, wind strength, and rainfall on a single sheet of paper
(see Chinnici 2019, 201–204).
By comparing the personal vita, social backgrounds, the training, and everyday
lives of several dozen spectroscopists (cf. Hentschel 2014, Chap. 4), similar circumstances emerged that seem to have created a preference for highly visual fields
within the sciences:
• A family background in the fine or applied arts or in artisanal crafts
• Schooling at a polytechnic, a trade school, Gewerbeakademie, applied school, or
military academy (admitting civil engineers or architects), where drawing or
mapping was emphasized in the curriculum
• Employment as teacher at such a polytechnic, often prior to appointment in
academia
• Engagement as an instructor of perspectival drawing, descriptive or pure
geometry
K. Hentschel
5.4 Secchi and the Visual Culture of Science
In my comparative history of visual cultures in science and technology during the
last five centuries (Hentschel 2014, Chap. 2), I proposed a set of nine different layers which all of these visual cultures share—despite the huge differences existing
between, say, geometrodynamics, stereochemistry and electron microscopy, geology, crystallography and botany, etc. From this perspective of mine, spectroscopy is
yet another good example of such a visual culture of science. It exhibits:
• Highly developed skills of pattern recognition
• A mastery of visual thinking (“anschauliches Denken” in the sense of Rudolf
Arnheim)
• Practical training in such skills (nicely documented by Eugene Ferguson)
• High prestige awarded to atlases and plates
• Obsessive improving of the quality of representations
• A broader context of specialized establishments or experts in duplicative media
(draftsmen, engravers, lithographers, photographers, photoprinters, etc.)
• An interest in the physiology of visual perception and in related research
instruments
• An aesthetic pleasure in the scientific procedure
• A fusion of profession and pastime, of labor and leisure
Secchi’s work and skills certainly exhibit all nine of these criteria. Thus Secchi
is a vivid proponent of what I call the “visual culture of spectroscopy” during the
close of the nineteenth century, a culture that spans across several disciplines,
among them chemistry and astrophysics, physics, chemistry, and photography, even
ranging into meteorology, medicine, and engineering. For meteorologists, Secchi
constructed a barometrograph, a thermometrograph, an anemograph, and finally
even a meteorograph which diagrammetrically recorded all of these weather parameters of pressure, temperature, wind strength, and rainfall on a single sheet of paper
(see Chinnici 2019, 201–204).
By comparing the personal vita, social backgrounds, the training, and everyday
lives of several dozen spectroscopists (cf. Hentschel 2014, Chap. 4), similar circumstances emerged that seem to have created a preference for highly visual fields
within the sciences:
• A family background in the fine or applied arts or in artisanal crafts
• Schooling at a polytechnic, a trade school, Gewerbeakademie, applied school, or
military academy (admitting civil engineers or architects), where drawing or
mapping was emphasized in the curriculum
• Employment as teacher at such a polytechnic, often prior to appointment in
academia
• Engagement as an instructor of perspectival drawing, descriptive or pure
geometry
K. Hentschel