Cover of The Republic of Color
The Republic of Color Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America
by Michael Rossi
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Cloth: 978-0-226-65172-9 | Electronic: 978-0-226-65186-6
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.001.0001

AVAILABLE FROM

University of Chicago Press (cloth, ebook)
Apple Books
Barnes & Noble Nook
DeGruyter Multi-User Ebook Program
EBSCO eBooks (formerly NetLibrary)
Google Play
Kobo
ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Republic of Color delves deep into the history of color science in the United States to unearth its origins and examine the scope of its influence on the industrial transformation of turn-of-the-century America.
 
For a nation in the grip of profound economic, cultural, and demographic crises, the standardization of color became a means of social reform—a way of sculpting the American population into one more amenable to the needs of the emerging industrial order. Delineating color was also a way to characterize the vagaries of human nature, and to create ideal structures through which those humans would act in a newly modern American republic. Michael Rossi’s compelling history goes far beyond the culture of the visual to show readers how the control and regulation of color shaped the social contours of modern America—and redefined the way we see the world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Michael Rossi is assistant professor of the history of science and medicine at the University of Chicago.

REVIEWS

"In a kaleidoscopic tour through American laboratories, artists' studios, corporations, and game boards of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rossi puts color at the very center of US life. Colors wavered, shifted, and set each other off; stabilizing colors meant bringing order to anxious social and political relations. Lighting up a landscape of previously hidden connections, this eloquent, original book unfurls a stunning series of interlocking tales of science and sensation in the making of modern life."
— John Tresch, The Warburg Institute, University of London

"Are colors creations of the mind or something out there, in the surrounding world? If their perception arises from the interaction between the mind and the world, does that mean that different minds perceive colors differently? The Republic of Color shows how modern American efforts to resolve such conundrums not only engaged profound philosophical questions about the nature of reality and human knowledge but were also constantly shadowed by sociopolitical concerns about the possibility of a shared community. This brilliant history is quite simply the most stimulating I have read in recent years."
— Shigehisa Kuriyama, Harvard University

“An intriguing look at the history of and current way we conceive of color. . . . This book does a beautiful job of weaving together the way the different color sciences have made a cultural impact throughout history.”
— Science

"How do we as humans perceive color? What are the physical, physiological, and psychological bases of color perception? Is there a racial explanation for how humans see and describe color? These are a few of the questions reexamined. . . . In seven chapters, [Rossi] explores how the study of color perception in the US has involved a surprisingly diverse set of investigators, influencing biological thought through personal connections. . . . In this fascinating study, Rossi relates the story of racism in the US by tracing the path that led from 'talking about color' to thinking about race. . . . Highly recommended."
— CHOICE

"As Michael Rossi demonstrates in The Republic of Color, blurring the distinctions between color in race and color in optics has a long and complex history in American culture and society. Rossi's wide‐ranging, well‐researched, and interdisciplinary study highlights a tenacious American obsession with color in multiple contexts from the mid‐19th through the early 20th century. . . . So much fascinating material. . . . The great strength of a successful study like Rossi's is the extent to which it encourages others to take up the project. Readers in many fields contiguous with the scientific and social focus on color will find much to inspire them here."
— Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

"Rossi's study of color in American life brings anxieties over the possibility of community in the modern world into brilliant focus. . . . This vibrant book will find an audience in aesthetes and Americanists alike, or virtually anyone interested in why the technical tools for making and modulating color look the way they do."
— Michael McGovern, New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

"Rossi provides an agile reconstruction of the historical and theoretical context in which scientific investigations of color incited larger assumptions about human evolution and cultural production. . . . He demonstrates an exceptional ability to weave the attitudes, scientific labor, and networks of a diverse cast into a meditative account that adds essential hues to an otherwise monochromatic representation of the making of modern America. Rossi skillfully segues from one to the other, exploiting seemingly tentative connections to illustrate the profound impact of color science across a broad spectrum from science to philosophy to medicine to pedagogy to industry. . . . The Republic of Color is an impressive first book throughout which Rossi emerges as a gifted writer, erudite storyteller, and conscientious historian of science. His ability to navigate, in a nuanced and elegant manner, the historical bias on race, gender, and disability that was deeply enmeshed in turn-of-the-century American color science is outstanding. . . . Rossi is deservedly situated at the epicenter of scholarship that reinvigorates color with an active agency to re-form and inform the world. The Republic of Color leaves one with a recalibrated attention to the world past, present, and future.”
— Journal of History of Science and Technology

"[A] remarkable and original intellectual history... Masterful in its clarity, logic, and lambent delight. [Rossi] has many delightful stories to tell, yet he never loses sight of the probing analytical threads that run through this well-crafted, beautifully color-illustrated book."
— Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society

TABLE OF CONTENTS


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0001
[Joseph Henry;common sense philosophy;objectivity;philosophy of vision;color and politics]
This introductory chapter sketches the early nineteenth century roots of American color science, beginning with the work of the American researcher, Joseph Henry. Henry was an exponent of “common sense philosophy” – a ubiquitous worldview in American science in which sensations of colors were taken to be objective manifestations of the physical world. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Henry’s philosophy was challenged by the emergence new sciences which held colors to be subjective manifestations of human psychology and physiology. These new color ontologies suggested radical new definitions of matters of fact – and, therefore, of matters of science, morality, politics, and aesthetic awareness.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0002
[Ogden Rood;Objectivity;Subjectivity;Impressionism;Chromatics]
This chapter details the transformation of color science from an objective, physical science to a subjective, psychophysical science through a focus on Ogden Rood’s textbook, Modern Chromatics (1879). Rood, a physicist and amateur painter, wrote Modern Chromatics in order to introduce readers – especially artists – to the idea that color was a phenomenon “in the eye” of sensing beings rather than one that belonged to objects. The book was astoundingly successful. Impressionist painters in France called it their “bible;” artists, decorators, architects, doctors, textile makers, philosophers, and researchers across Europe and America read Modern Chromatics to understand the new truth of color. Rood himself, however, struggled to reconcile the influence of his own work with its metaphysical implications – for if color was a product of mere subjective appearances, then what was it that he was instructing his readers to paint, to understand, to feel?
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0003
[Charles Sanders Peirce;Pragmatism;semiotic;chemistry;astronomy;language;phanerochemistry]
This chapter looks at the color science of Charles Sanders Peirce, a polyglot American scientist, mathematician, and logician who developed the school of philosophy known as Pragmatism. Color science was critical to the development of Pragmatism, and especially to one of Peirce's most powerful inventions – the philosophical tool called "semiotic," or the study of signs. In thinking about the way that color worked in chemistry, in astronomy, and in everyday communication, Peirce formulated a novel and enduring philosophy of language, truth, belief, and the real.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0004
[Benjamin Joy Jeffries;color blindness;railroads;medicine;1893 Columbian Exposition]
While it had been known for centuries that certain individuals appeared insensitive to particular colors, it wasn’t until the 1870s that color blindness was articulated as a common medical condition that required authoritative intervention. This chapter examines the science and politics of the medicalization of color blindness, focusing on the work of Benjamin Joy Jeffries, a Boston ophthalmologist who devoted his career to the diagnosis and control of color blindness. While Jeffries saw color blindness as a major public health risk necessitating strict legislation and medical supervision, others disagreed, insisting that color blindness was simply a matter of individual, subjective apperception. The resulting conflict was as much an argument over medical and scientific authority in modern America and individual rights as it was over color epistemology.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0005
[Franz Boas;culture;anthropology;multiculturalism;language;race]
This chapter follows the role of color perception in transforming definitions of “culture” in American anthropology, medicine, and politics. The question of whether all “races” of people saw color in the same way was critical to nineteenth century understandings of culture. Some researchers theorized that some “races” had lower color acuity than the civilized and therefore a lower “level” of culture; other researchers insisted that disorders such as color blindness were indicators of advanced culture. Still others – such as anthropologist Franz Boas – used color perception to demonstrate that culture was not tied to “races,” and, indeed, that it was unscientific to speak of culture as being more or less “advanced.” Cultures were multiple – no one culture was better than another: an idea that came to be known as “multiculturalism,” and which derived from nineteenth century research in color perception.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0006
[Christine Ladd-Franklin;evolutionary theory of color;development theory of color;logic;morality;gender;geminism]
This chapter looks at psychologist Christine Ladd-Franklin’s “evolutionary” or “development” theory of color perception, which attempted to reconcile two competing theories of color physiology: the “trichromatic” theory of Herman von Helmholtz, and the “opponent color” theory of Ewald Hering. At once a sophisticated and pragmatic solution to a scientific problem, and a radical articulation of the role of science in society, Ladd-Franklin’s theory demonstrates the moral exigencies of sciences of perception in turn-of-the-century America.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0007
[Milton Bradley;Robert Ridgway;Albert H. Munsell;color terms;language;morality]
This chapter looks at anxieties and debates over color names and color terms in turn of the century America. “The Color Question,” as board game magnate and sometimes-color-scientist Milton Bradley called it, concerned the accuracy and seriousness with which words for colors mapped onto color sensations. This was not simply a practical matter, but was also a moral one — definiteness in nomenclature indicated soundness of mind and stability of society. This chapter focuses on efforts to devise morally and scientifically sound names for colors, examining systems devised by Bradley and his associate, J.H. Pillsbury; Smithsonian Institution ornithologist Robert Ridgway; and art professor Albert H. Munsell. In these attempts, one finds not only a drive to industrial efficiency, but a great deal of anxiety about the mutability of human beings in modern society: a society in which even basic, shared measures of reality – such as the color of objects – could no longer be communicated reliably between observers.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0008
[Gertrude Davenport;Charles Davenport;Denman Ross;race;labor;color systems]
This chapter describes the ways in which abstract systems of color nomenclature indicated very concrete modes of understanding human beings, especially in terms of labor and race. Harvard professor Denman Ross’s system imagined ideal observers of pure, logical mentation. Albert Munsell’s system proposed a developmental strategy for cultivating the visual work in young children. And Gertude and Charles Davenport used Milton Bradley’s color system as a foundation for understanding race as a matter of eugenic interventions. In all of these cases – logical, pedagogical, eugenic – formal color ordering systems stood for ways of ordering bodies vis-à-vis particular visions of work and social hierarchy.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...


DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226651866.003.0009
[commission internationale de l'éclairage;International Commission on Illumination;National Bureau of Standards;Optical Society of America;Leonard Troland;Deane B. Judd;Edwin Priest]
This concluding chapter covers the institutions, ideologies, techniques, and technologies that emerged during the early twentieth century from previous decades of color research. While some – such as Ladd-Franklin’s “development” theory – were abandoned; and others – such as Peirce’s Pragmatism and semiotic – flourished, all found their ways into new medical, governmental, commercial, and popular modes of understanding and working with color, and with perceiving human beings.
This chapter is available at:
    https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Book published by University of Chicago Press, 2019. Page maintained by BiblioVault.