The Construction of Colorimetry by Committee

Science in Context 9 (4):387-420 (1996)
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Abstract

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”.

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Sean F. Johnston
University of Glasgow

Citations of this work

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The trajectory of color.B. A. C. Saunders & Jaap Van Brakel - 2002 - Perspectives on Science 10 (3):302-355.
The Trajectory of Color.B. A. C. Saunders & J. Van Brakel - 2002 - Perspectives on Science 10 (3):302-355.

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References found in this work

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.Thomas S. Kuhn - 1962 - Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Edited by Ian Hacking.
Laboratory Life. The Social Construction of Scientific Facts.Bruno Latour & Steve Woolgar - 1982 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 13 (1):166-170.

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