Making Light Work: Practices and Practitioners of Photometry

Johnston, Sean F.

doi:10.1177/007327539603400302

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…ideal) observers for use in colorimetry and photometry is the province of the 'Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage' (CIE) a body that in 1913 took over the functions of the earlier 'commission Internationale de Photometrie'" (Wyszecki and Stiles 1967: p. 238). According to Johnston (2002) the CIE 1931 "standard observer" was constructed on the basis of "an 'average' human color response based on fewer than two dozen British males." The 1931 standard observer has been replaced by the 1964 Standard Colorimetric Observer.…”

Section: Colorimetry and The Standard Observermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In early experiments, monkeys were anaesthetized; advanced technology however now permits drilling holes in their skull and/or the severance of brain connections in a wakeful state to allow single cell recordings of stimuli responses. Johnston (1996a) has shown how consensus was reached on the 1931 CIE international psychophysical color standard. 11 He points out that the primary bone of contention was not about facts, but about a subject.…”

Section: Colorimetry and The Standard Observermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There are lots of its speci cations that are incompatible with each other (Tonnquist 1986). For a brief history of the CIE system and the introduction of the "standard observer" see Johnston (1996a) and Derefeldt (1991).…”

Section: Colorimetry and The Standard Observermentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Trajectory of Color

Saunders¹,

Brakel

2002

Perspectives on Science

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According to a consensus of psycho-physiological and philosophical theories, color sensations (or qualia) are generated in a cerebral "space" fed from photon-photoreceptor interaction (producing "metamers") in the retina of the eye. The resulting "space" has three dimensions: hue (or chroma), saturation (or "purity"), and brightness (lightness, value or intensity) and (in some versions) is further structured by primitive or landmark "colors"-usually four, or six (when white and black are added to red, yellow, green and blue). It has also been proposed that there are eleven semantic universals-labeling the previous six plus the "intermediaries" of orange, pink, brown, purple, and gray. There are many versions of this consensus, but they all aim to provide ontological, epistemological and semantic blueprints for the brute fact of the reality of color ordained by Nature (evolution). In contrast to this consensus, we have argued that "seeing color" is not a matter of light waves impacting on our eyes, producing sensations to be categorized and labeled in the "color space" in the brain. While electrochemical events may unproblematically be regarded as the causal precondition for seeing color, the reception of sensations in "the color space" as semantically labeled natural categories, kinds, or information, is a "just so" story: it is Wittgenstein's beetle in a box.In contrast we consider that the authority of this consensus might better be regarded not as the result of the truth-tracking of nature, but as the sociohistorical outcome of philosophical presuppositions, scienti c theories, experimental practices, technological apparatus, and their feed forward into the lifeworld. The question we shall therefore explore is whether, or to what extent, we ourselves are changed, as the conditions of production of color science change. Thus we are doing a kind of anthropology at two levels: of color science itself (and its effect on our own lifeworld), and of those studied by the "anthropology of color". As be ts this stance we are agnostic about the theoretical entities of color science (cf. van Fraassen 2001), and within this new 302

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Section: Colorimetry and The Standard Observermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Colorimetry and The Standard Observermentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Trajectory of Color

Saunders¹,

Brakel

2002

Perspectives on Science

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“…Later, photometers became important tools in astrophysics (to measure stellar magnitude) and in the illuminating gas industry (to measure the intensity of gas lighting). For more on the development of photometers in the second half of the nineteenth century, seeJohnston (1996).…”

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confidence: 99%

To See Or Not To See: The Uses of Photometers and Measurements of Reflective Power

Chen

2000

Perspectives on Science

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Armed with a photometer originally designed for evaluating telescopes, Richard Potter in the early 1830s measured the re ective power of metallic and glass mirrors. Because he found signi cant discrepancies between his measurements and Fresnel's predictions, Potter developed doubts concerning the wave theory. However, Potter's measurements were colored by a peculiar procedure. In order to protect the sensitivity of the eye, Potter made certain approximations in the measuring process, which exaggerated the discrepancies between the theory and the data. Potter's measurements received strong criticisms from wave theorists, not because they felt they needed to defend their theory, but because they believed that Potter was wrong in using the eye as an essential apparatus in the experiments. Potter's photometric measurements and the subsequent debate reveal the existence of two incompatible sets of measuring procedures, each of which consisted of a body of practices concerning how photometric instruments should be used properly. In the debate, the differences regarding measuring procedures shaped the participant's judgments of experimental evidence and eventually their evaluations of the optical theories.

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“…First, 'preparadigm' and 'revolutionary' periods are difficult to identify in this subject and arguably telescope into the brief period discussed in this paper. Second, the 'incommensurability' is across disciplines rather than time periods.4 SimonSchaffer (1989) has explored the controversies surrounding the assumptions underlying, and difficulties of replicating, Newton's colorimetric work.5 Colorimetry, and the closely associated subject of photometry, straddled the technology/science divide and attracted the interest of a heterogeneous variety of specialists in institutions, industry and academia(Johnston 1994(Johnston , 1996.6 The use of indicator solutions to infer content from color dates back at least to Gabriel Fallopius in 1564(Debus 1962).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Construction of Colorimetry by Committee

Johnston

1996

Science in Context

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This 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 judgement. These debates were played out not in the laboratory but rather in institutionalized encounters on standards committees. Groups such as this 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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Making Light Work: Practices and Practitioners of Photometry

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

The Trajectory of Color

The Trajectory of Color

To See Or Not To See: The Uses of Photometers and Measurements of Reflective Power

The Construction of Colorimetry by Committee

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