Arte e Ciência - Meteorologia e Pintura: A classificação científica das nuvens e os estudos de Constable
O texto abaixo transcrito foi retirado de um interessante artigo, da autoria de Peter Galison e Alexi Assmus (1), sobre a criação da câmara de nuvens - descrita por muitos físicos do século XX como o primeiro detector de partículas, até porque serviu de protótipo aos detectores posteriores, nomeadamente, à câmara de bolhas - por Charles Thomson Rees Wilson,em 1911, e considerada como a "materialização da confluência de duas tradições científicas, a analítica e a mimética," (2) pelos acima citados investigadores.
Também é interessante referir que o objectivo inicial de Wilson era demonstrar que as nuvens se formavam em torno de iões. No entanto, o seu laboratório de nuvens não transformaria a meteorologia, contudo as suas nuvens artificiais permitiram a observação de partículas reais. (4)
The Victorian Context of Mimetic Experimentation
The extremities and rarities of Nature held an endless fascination for the Victorian imagination. Explorers ventured to the ends of the Empire, to the deserts, jungles and icecaps. Painters and poets tried to capture the power of storms and the grand scale of forests, cliffs and waterfalls. Both artists and scientists reconized a tension between he racionalising law-like image of Nature proferred by the natural philosopher, and the irreductible, often spiritual aspect presented by artists.
There was a similar split in science itself between an abstract law-seeking, often mechanical reducionist approach that authors from Goeth to Maxwell had dubbed the 'morphological' sciences. Of these sciences Goeth took particular joy in meteorology, for 'atmospheric phenomena can never become strange and remote to the poet's eye'.Yet until Goethe was nearly seventy, there had been no systematic classification of clouds. Then, in 1802-03 a British chemist, Luke Howard, presented a classification system that he modelled on Linnaean taxonomy. Through Goethe, Howard's system entered the cultural mainstream.
Adressing a small philosophical society, Howard sorted clouds with a 'methodical' nomenclature: 'cirrus', 'cumulus', and 'stratus'. Howard chose Latin for his system, in contrast to chemists, who used Greek to label invisible chemical entities. Howard wanted to classify clouds 'by [their] visible characters, as in natural history. No doubt this affinity with natural history appealed to Goethe. When he discovered Howard in 1815, the poet hailed the new way of seeing clouds: 'I seized on Howard's terminolgy with joy,' Goethe announced, for it provided 'a missing thread'. From Goethe, the Dresden school of painters learned to wew clouds differently. The art historian Kurt Badt surmises that it was Luke Howard's expanded opus of 1818-20 that triggered Constable's astonishing cloud studies of 1821-22. Metereology thus fostered cloud studies in painting, in poetry, and later in photography. Clouds became a central figure of romantic thought.
(3)
(1)Peter Galison; Alexis Assmus, "Artificial Clouds, Real Particles," in D.Gooding, T. Pinch, S.Schaffer, eds; The Uses of Experiment-Studies in the Natural Sciences, (Cambrige, CUP, 1989) pp.225-274.
(2) Op.cit., p. 227.
(3) Op. cit., pp. 227-228.
(4)Op.cit., p.269.
O texto abaixo transcrito foi retirado de um interessante artigo, da autoria de Peter Galison e Alexi Assmus (1), sobre a criação da câmara de nuvens - descrita por muitos físicos do século XX como o primeiro detector de partículas, até porque serviu de protótipo aos detectores posteriores, nomeadamente, à câmara de bolhas - por Charles Thomson Rees Wilson,em 1911, e considerada como a "materialização da confluência de duas tradições científicas, a analítica e a mimética," (2) pelos acima citados investigadores.
Também é interessante referir que o objectivo inicial de Wilson era demonstrar que as nuvens se formavam em torno de iões. No entanto, o seu laboratório de nuvens não transformaria a meteorologia, contudo as suas nuvens artificiais permitiram a observação de partículas reais. (4)
The Victorian Context of Mimetic Experimentation
The extremities and rarities of Nature held an endless fascination for the Victorian imagination. Explorers ventured to the ends of the Empire, to the deserts, jungles and icecaps. Painters and poets tried to capture the power of storms and the grand scale of forests, cliffs and waterfalls. Both artists and scientists reconized a tension between he racionalising law-like image of Nature proferred by the natural philosopher, and the irreductible, often spiritual aspect presented by artists.
There was a similar split in science itself between an abstract law-seeking, often mechanical reducionist approach that authors from Goeth to Maxwell had dubbed the 'morphological' sciences. Of these sciences Goeth took particular joy in meteorology, for 'atmospheric phenomena can never become strange and remote to the poet's eye'.Yet until Goethe was nearly seventy, there had been no systematic classification of clouds. Then, in 1802-03 a British chemist, Luke Howard, presented a classification system that he modelled on Linnaean taxonomy. Through Goethe, Howard's system entered the cultural mainstream.
Adressing a small philosophical society, Howard sorted clouds with a 'methodical' nomenclature: 'cirrus', 'cumulus', and 'stratus'. Howard chose Latin for his system, in contrast to chemists, who used Greek to label invisible chemical entities. Howard wanted to classify clouds 'by [their] visible characters, as in natural history. No doubt this affinity with natural history appealed to Goethe. When he discovered Howard in 1815, the poet hailed the new way of seeing clouds: 'I seized on Howard's terminolgy with joy,' Goethe announced, for it provided 'a missing thread'. From Goethe, the Dresden school of painters learned to wew clouds differently. The art historian Kurt Badt surmises that it was Luke Howard's expanded opus of 1818-20 that triggered Constable's astonishing cloud studies of 1821-22. Metereology thus fostered cloud studies in painting, in poetry, and later in photography. Clouds became a central figure of romantic thought.
(3)
(1)Peter Galison; Alexis Assmus, "Artificial Clouds, Real Particles," in D.Gooding, T. Pinch, S.Schaffer, eds; The Uses of Experiment-Studies in the Natural Sciences, (Cambrige, CUP, 1989) pp.225-274.
(2) Op.cit., p. 227.
(3) Op. cit., pp. 227-228.
(4)Op.cit., p.269.
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