General Preface

Abstract

Nearly eight decades ago Otto Neurath complained about the fact that historians of science had not succeeded in developing a unified method for describing physical theories (Neurath 1915/1981). Neurath’s statement was formulated in the context of an attempt to outline the development of optical theories between the 17th and the 19th centuries. The author noticed that main stream opinions about how the field grew in the past were often not only simplifying but misleading, or even plainly wrong. Historians’ evaluations of the contents of optical theories of the past diverged as strongly as their views split about how these theories had intervened in the development of the field of optics, and in its cognitive and institutional evolution.

Note: This study was part of a larger research project on the effects of the emigration of German-speaking scientists after 1933 from Germany (see Fischer 1987, 1988a, 1988b, 1988c, 1990, 1991), which was conducted at the ‘Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung’ of the Technische Universität Berlin. It was made possible by a four-year Stiftung Volkswagenwerk grant to the director of the Institute, Professor Herbert A. Strauss, to whom I wish to express my warm gratitude for the unfailing interest, kind support, and professional encouragement with which he accompanied my research.