Thought So

Thought So: On Words and Pictures Past proposes a new way to look at style in European-inspired art and science over the past 150 years. It examines pictures used by easel painters and words used by scientists and mathematicians, considering art and science as complementary creative enterprises. Author Lewis Pyenson affirms that historians of art and science are most effective when they formulate their own protocols to address the documents and artifacts they see. The book offers social history of art and science in an overlooked setting, modern Argentina, to motivate a new, general picture of Modernity. It interrogates large data sets in the worlds of art and physics publishing over the past three generations to suggest that we are at the door of a change in general artistic and scientific sensibilities—a distinct, integrative style.

Lewis Pyenson is Professor Emeritus of History at Western Michigan University. Among his books are a trilogy about physicists in the colonies of Germany, Netherlands, and France (1985-1993) and The Shock of Recognition: Motifs of Modern Art and Science (2021). He coauthored Servants of Nature (1999), a history of science for general readers. He is fellow and Life Member of the Royal Society of Canada.