Mar 4, 2024
Rendering Magnetism Visible: Diagrams and Experiments Between 1300 and 1700
- 14:00 to 16:00
- Seminar
- Max Planck Research Group (Final Theory Program)
- Christoph Sander
Human beings can neither see nor feel magnetism, although its effects can be made manifest to sense experience through experiments. Since antiquity, philosophers have therefore often viewed magnetism as an “occult” force, for whose manifest effects a hidden cause had to be sought. Around 1300, scholars began to address the seemingly occult nature of magnetism not only through experimental investigation but also visually, attempting to represent experimental results in diagrams. Historical research on diagrams has been fairly negligent about the relation between diagrams and scientific practices, including experiments. This paper will try to redress the balance, by focusing on diagrams in manuscripts and printed texts between 1300 and 1700 that were produced in response to magnetic experiments. It will be argued that naturalistic and geometrizing forms of representation were combined in order to render experiments with magnetism understandable, replicable, and meaningful. This resulted in a visual style of diagram that oscillated between the abstract representation of invisible entities or powers and the concrete and performative depiction of actual objects or operations.
Contact and Registration
Link to the Zoom-Meeting: https://zoom.us/j/94690790127 Meeting-ID: 946 9079 0127 no registration required. For more information contact Kseniia Mohelsky officeblum@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
About This Series
The seminar series of the Research Group “Historical Epistemology of the Final Theory Program” runs once a month, usually on a Monday at 14:00 in the seminar room of the Villa (Harnackstraße 5). The talks deal primarily with the history, philosophy, and foundations of modern (post-WWII) physics or with wider epistemological questions related to the work of the group. There are no pre-circulated papers.