ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Competing Authorities: The Reality Status of Coloured Shadows

• In Event: Objectivity Reconsidered

English Abstract

The phenomenon of coloured shadows has a knack of polarising people with their preferences towards the "subjective" or "objective". The question of the nature of unexpectedly coloured shadows has been at the centre of various debates for more than two centuries. Goethe's wrestling with the coloured shadows led to a major restructuring of his Theory of Colour, involving an attempt to recognise various valid viewpoints in studying phenomena. Around the same time, a paradoxical group of viewing tube experiments to study the unexpected colours originated from Benjamin Thompson, Gottfried Osann and Gustav Fechner. In this paper, I will explore a more recent recapitulation of the viewing tube debate that began between Rudolf Steiner and a young Australian academic called Victor Bennie in 1922. This debate has continued on to the present day, mostly confined within the circle of natural science researchers associated with Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical movement, but it has also regularly affected researchers in the wider community of the science of colour. A central stimulus in this ongoing debate are the tensions relating to perceived sources of authority, whether to the statements of a leader in western esotericism or to the claims of a person employed in a university physics department.

Author

• Malin John Starrett, Independent Researcher