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Abstract
title ABSTRACT /title Thedifficult recoveryof Goethe's Anschaulichkeitinthe work ofHelmholtz - In the 1830s, Goethe's theory of light and colours represented a meeting point for the movement of ideas in the German romantic philosophy known as Naturphilosophie, fiercely opposed to Newtonian and mathematical science. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the great scientist Hermann von Helmholtz, as an official representative of German science, took a position on Goethe's ideas. Hemholtz initially reacted to Goethe's viewpoints, and especially to his optical theory, but his attitude changed in the conclusive years of his life, and he expressed a partial adhesion to the Goethian view of the relationship between the perceptual and the conceptual levels of scientific knowledge. The author argues that Helmholtz's adhesion was supported by his acceptance of Kirchhof's descriptive and phenomenological approach to mechanics.
Abstract
<title> SUMMARY </title>Some guiding ideas in the classification of historical scientific instruments are presented, with the aim of specifying usefull selectioncriteria for the exhibition in a scientific museum and historiography for the historian of physics. Classification criteria should be founded on the examination of structural features which belong to the instrument per se and to the modes in which it has been used in meaningful experiments. Examples are given in the history of some nineteenth century Electrometers. Some tools for a meaningful historiography of instruments are indicated in Information Theory.