Cambiare l'ottica

Can you touch a color? In the Age of Enlightenment, we thought so. In his biography of his friend and former colleague Professor Nicholas Saunderson (1682-1739), Dr. Richard Davies is careful to point out: “he could not, as some have imagined, […] distinguish Colours by that Sense; and having made repeated Tryals himself, he used to say, it was pretending to Impossibilities.” Blind at the age of one, Saunderson became one of the most famous mathematicians of the first half of the 18^thcentury after being appointed to the professorship held by Sir Isaac Newton at Cambridge University. But where did this curious idea come from, that a blind person would be able to touch a color? And what does it say about the potentialities and fantasies surrounding human perception?

These questions are the starting point for this study day. In his introductory presentation, Pierre Von-Ow will show that the myth of a blind person able to discriminate colors by tact has its origins in experimental chemistry in the 17^th century, and permeates the scientific and artistic imagination of the following century. Michele Mele will talk about the life and work of Nicholas Saunderson, and in particular about the tactile tablet he developed for the study of arithmetic and geometry. Angela Lucinio will conclude the meeting with a talk on the work of the blind pedagogue Augusto Romagnoli (1879-1946), founder of the institute that today bears his name in Rome and author of a little-known text on light and color.

This event is organized by fellow Pierre Von-Ow in collaboration with the Art History department.